Football's main `money man'

FRIENDLY and relaxed as he sits in his third-floor office off London's Liverpool Street, Tony Fraher hardly seems the sort to inspire much vitriol in the average football supporter. He is, however, what is commonly described in the game as a "money man".

Unlike Blackburn's Jack Walker or the late Matthew Harding at Chelsea, men with seemingly bottomless pockets and a tendency for emotional displays on their teams' big days, he must simply get used to being thought of as the enemy.

Mr Fraher moved to Britain in 1983 with the investment wing of AIB where he spent four years before moving on for a highly-successful spell at Morgan Grenfell.

When Mr Fraher, the Wicklow-born chief executive of Investment Fund managers Singer & Friedlander, talks of receiving abusive calls when he goes on radio programmes he actually seems a little bemused by people getting so worked up about his role on the financial side of the sport.

But get worked up they do, as when he announced recently that his company would not be investing in Newcastle United.

He has grown used to this sort of reaction but, he maintains, the antipathy he encounters is largely due to a lack of understanding on the part of those who profess to love football but don't know what it is that their beloved sport has become.

"What people don't seem to realise is that our interests coincide almost perfectly. Supporters feel that all the institutions are interested in is money, but if the team isn't doing well then the club is hardly going to produce much profit so of course we want to ensure that any club we're involved with has the resources that it needs."

Those clubs, a mere handful at present, include Nottingham Forest and Chelsea but, as a result of a fund aimed specifically at investment in companies involved with the game which Singer and Friedlander launched at the start of February, the number is set to rise over the coming year.

As it does, Mr Fraher and his company seem set to become an important part of the football establishment. At the time the fund, which is run out of the Financial Services Centre in Dublin, was launched a target of £200 million was talked of for the first 12 months.

With three months gone, the amount raised is roughly in line with expectations, says Mr Fraher, and with savers in France, Italy and Spain due to be targeted when the fund broadens ifs horizons later ink the year, he is very confident about its future growth.

"I think it's important to point out that the fund wasn't aimed solely at football supporters. We wanted to attract people who are interested in the business side of the game, who have seen the sort of growth associated with it and were interested in becoming involved."

The spectacular surge in revenues produced at Old Trafford over the past few seasons is the biggest single factor in generating interest, but Mr Fraher insists that, as other clubs learn from Manchester United's approach there are many clubs which will provide highly-rewarding investment vehicles.

"The thing about the clubs is that they command the most fantastic brand loyalty, it makes them different from just about any other sort of business...

"Take Manchester United, around a million people will pay in to see them this season and whatever number of others won't be able to get tickets. At the moment those people might have a shirt, a mug and buy the club magazine, but from a business point of view that is barely scratching the surface. Millions of the club's supporters go on holidays and Manchester United could sell them that for a small commission. Over here, because of deregulation, there's no reason why the club couldn't even sell them electricity and gas."

Retail banking is one area that a number of clubs have already moved into with most Premiership outfits already issuing affinity credit cards. It is the number of revenue opportunities like this at big clubs that attracts Mr Fraher to them although few, he feels, have the potential to operate on the level of the Old Trafford club.

"Celtic could certainly do it, for obvious historical reasons. It has a huge traditional support base and, for instance, its matches are already shown on cable all over America."

Aside from the Glasgow club there are probably no more than half a dozen clubs that could reach the sort of scale Manchester United has already managed.

For the moment, though, he contents himself with being the public face of one of the emerging forces in the rapidly expanding business of British football. Not all of the resulting attention is favourable but whatever Fraher gets he takes in his stride. What else can he do? After all, at the end of the day, it is only a game.