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Ted Lasso fans – it’s time to meet Richmond’s real-life football club
HAMPTON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 12: Hampton & Richmond Borough fans show their support prior to the FA Cup First Round match between Hampton & Richmond Borough and Oldham Athletic at the Beveree Stadium on November 12, 2018 in Hampton, England. (Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)
By Joey D'Urso
1h ago
4
The sun is shining, the beer is flowing and children are running around. There’s also a football match taking place, with an impressive 1,200 fans in the stands. It’s a pleasant Saturday afternoon in south-west London and the mood at Hampton & Richmond Borough FC feels closer to a family festival than a non-League football match.
The club was taken over in December 2022 by a consortium of businessmen led by brothers Stefano and Rafa Petruzzo who say they will invest “multiple millions” over the next few years.
Rafa and Stefano Petruzzo, the men aiming to invest significant amounts of money into Hampton & Richmond Borough
This club plays in the National League South, which is the sixth tier of the English pyramid. Up and down the country, non-League football is booming and relatively tiny clubs are seeing attendances skyrocket. This is despite — or perhaps because of — the runaway success of the Premier League, with fans wanting a cheaper and more authentic football experience on their doorstep.
Nevertheless, it is notoriously difficult to make money in football, especially in the lower leagues where TV money is non-existent, tickets are cheap and commercial opportunities are small.
The Athletic spoke to Hampton & Richmond’s new owners — who were involved in club strategy on a voluntary basis before the takeover — before a goalless draw with Dartford, to find out why investors are taking an interest in such a low level of football.
We have to start with Ted Lasso.
Now in its third series, the drama about the fictional American manager of AFC Richmond is an Emmy-winning hit in the US. It’s slightly more obscure in the UK where fewer people have access to the Apple TV streaming platform. The fictional club takes its name from the borough of Richmond in west London but it has no official connection to the actual club Hampton & Richmond Borough, who were founded in 1921.
The Petruzzos don’t mind leaning into the association, though, and a framed copy of the show’s ‘BELIEVE’ motto is on the wall in the clubhouse as well as a signed photo of star Jason Sudeikis.
“This is our tongue-in-cheek hello to Ted Lasso, but that’s probably as far as we go,” says Stefano Petruzzo. “What Ted Lasso does for a certain fandom is giving a visibility that there is a team called Richmond.
“We’re actually saying, ‘Well, this team actually does exist’.”
It’s not as mad as it sounds that English non-league football could go global. Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have spread the gospel of Wrexham FC to the world through their Disney+ documentary series, Welcome to Wrexham.
But the reality of football at this level is generally a lot more local and prosaic.
One issue the new owners have been struggling with is games being postponed due to frost or a waterlogged pitch, so this summer they are putting in a 3G artificial pitch which should also allow for the pitch to be rented out on non-matchdays.
“We want to open up new revenue streams, for example stadium hire, birthday parties for kids, corporate hires,” says Rafa Petruzzo. “Then comes ancillary stuff, for example content development. I think there’s an interesting story that people might want to hear about.”
Non-league football can be very accessible for younger fans
Making money at this level is hard despite booming attendances and the fact the National League is getting richer and more competitive, with many big-name clubs having recently dropped out of league football.
After surviving a relegation scare this season it will be hard for Hampton & Richmond to get promoted out of a league that will contain Torquay and Yeovil, both former English Football League outfits.
“Promotion is important because ultimately you owe that to the fans in terms of giving them that hope,” say Rafa. “But what we realised is for fans, for us, this is an event.”
“It’s not just a football match, it’s a seminal moment of the week. So you’ve got to give them an event. It’s about giving a community feel.”
The match certainly feels that way, even if the football on show is rather drab. Both teams miss golden chances but there is little jeopardy as Hampton & Richmond are safe while Dartford FC — who bring 100 or so away fans on the short journey to London — have already reached the play-offs.
The owners think they can make money outside of match days but Kieran Maguire, the accountancy expert behind the Price Of Football blog, book and podcast, says that is easier said than done, with money tight at this level despite many teams being semi-professional.
“(Sixth-tier clubs) are doing well if they turn over more than a million pounds every year,” he says, citing Ebbsfleet and Salford as two that have broken the seven-figure barrier in recent seasons. He says while it’s great news that non-League attendances are growing healthily in England, “it doesn’t move the dial significantly” in terms of finance.
“Say you’ve got an extra 200 fans paying £15 for a game… that’s £3,000,” explains Maguire, adding that over a season with 23 home games that adds up to £69,000 before any extra costs are taken into account, such as additional security.
Nice to have, for sure, and fans may well put extra money into the club on matchday by buying replica shirts or beers — but unlikely to make a significant impact.
One advantage of football at this level for many spectators is that there are not the same restrictions on drinking alcohol that there are at higher levels — that is part of the pull of nearby Dulwich Hamlet, relegated from the same division despite pulling record crowds. (The bar is the one aspect of the Hampton & Richmond experience that doesn’t work particularly smoothly on this occasion, with long queues.)
But it doesn’t bring in big money.
Hampton & Richmond Borough do have a shirt sponsor — Uncommon, a nearby co-working space — which the owners’ network helped bring in.
All clubs at this level hope for the possible windfall bonanza of a TV cup game. Hampton & Richmond Borough’s 2020 FA Cup tie against former Premier League side Oldham Athletic brought in a healthy sum, while nearby Sutton United got a huge boost from playing Arsenal in 2017.
The Petruzzo brothers are of Italian heritage but grew up in South America before moving to the London corporate world and joining what they call the “rat race”. Stefano eventually got a job in football, becoming strategy director at Liverpool between 2013 and 2019, which coincided with the club’s revival under Jurgen Klopp.
The pair’s interest in more obscure levels of the game was sparked after getting involved in the revival of Albion Football Club, one of Uruguay’s oldest clubs which had fallen on hard times.
“It opened our eyes to the grassroots instead of being a top-six snob, as maybe I was back then,” says Stefano. “There’s a lot to do in grassroots football that the Premier League clubs can’t do — they’re too distracted trying to catch up to Man City.”
They determined that the best place to get involved was not the English Football League — where, even in the third and fourth tiers, clubs cost a lot of money to buy, have huge overheads and one relegation can be financially devastating — but lower down.
“We realised that the sweet spot was probably around the National League South, and for us it was south because we’ve been in London most of our lives here in the UK,” says Stefano.
Although football at this level is split into northern and southern divisions it still means long away trips to places in the West Country like Weymouth and Yeovil, which can mean players getting back at 3am on a weeknight before going into office jobs the next day.
The brothers say an attraction of this club in particular is the local area — there are lots of major landmarks nearby like Richmond Park, a beautiful green space in a crowded city, and Hampton Court Palace, one of Henry VIII’s favourite places to hang out in the 16th century.
It also can’t harm things from a business perspective that this is a very affluent area. Although the UK’s cost-of-living crisis hits everywhere, people in this part of London are more likely to be able to keep paying ticket prices and buying drinks and burgers while interest rates and inflation are spiking.
“There’s more money, yes, but also more alternatives on where to spend your money,” says Kieran Maguire. “It’s more of a fun project. At that level, club ownership is something broadly people do for fun, it’s usually benevolent.”
“The money is there in terms of the property assets, but of course if you convert those assets, you haven’t got a football club.”
Maguire says he sees no major downsides of the Hampton and Richmond takeover but is concerned with clubs at the same level like Yeovil and Scunthorpe, adding that an advantage of a club being based somewhere leafy like Richmond is that “affluent neighbours” tend to know people like lawyers and accountants adept at working the system if malevolent owners attempt to do anything underhand. (There is no suggestion of that here.)
The brothers are tight-lipped on exactly how much they paid for the club but are keen to stress that nobody made money from the acquisition and the investment is “working capital” going straight into the club. They use the word “sustainable” a lot — they want this to be a business that can earn more than it spends without the need for owners to keep pumping in their own cash.
They say getting to that point requires “lighting the fire” with initial investment capital. They intend to invest “multiple millions” over the next few years, which goes a long way at this level.
Like all football club owners, they talk a good game on their love for the club, respect for the fans and appreciation of the local area.
But they are also businessmen and genuinely believe making money is possible in the long term because of some of the unique traits of non-League football right now, specifically in England, where crowds are still massive way down the pyramid, in a way only rivalled perhaps by Germany.
“If you look at Italy, even the third division, Serie C, which is pretty professional — they don’t attract the crowds that you see in our league,” says Stefano.
Football is an unusual business because it does not fit usual economic trends.
If your supermarket provides a bad service or you are not getting value for money, you may well decide to try out the other shop down the road but if you are a Tottenham fan disappointed with your side’s poor season, you are highly unlikely to swap your season ticket for an Arsenal one because their ‘service’ has been better this season.
But non-League football can short-circuit this conundrum because many fans simply support two clubs — a Premier League team and a local one. At Hampton & Richmond, there are plenty of people wearing the shirts of Premier League teams, with nearby Chelsea the most common, though lots of others are on display.
While the stereotypical non-League fan is a man of advanced age, there are lots of women and children at Hampton & Richmond, perhaps more so than at an average Premier League game, something that is helped by allowing under-16s in club colours to attend for free.
The brothers believe they can thrive by offering a product that can exist as a complement for top-flight football rather than a substitute — a big crowd arrives early to watch the Premier League early kick-off in the club bar.
Recently circulating images on social media appeared to show Premier League players ignoring young fans asking for autographs.
Although the facts of the incidents were disputed, the videos spread far and wide because they tapped into a broader feeling that modern stars earning grotesque sums have become too far removed from the supporters who pay their wages.
Things are different at this level where young fans can easily shake hands or get a selfie with their favourite player after the match.
“This football allows us to create a level of engagement and community and relatability with youth that you don’t get in the Premier League,” says Stefano.
The Rocket Hospitality Beveree Stadium has a capacity of 3,800
As inspirations, the owners cite Wrexham, who brought massive attention to non-League football this season but who will move on to the bright lights of the EFL next season after securing promotion from the National League.
But there are others too. Macclesfield FC — a club born from the ashes of former EFL side Macclesfield Town, who went defunct in 2021 — have been attracting thousands to football many levels below Hampton & Richmond.
South Shields FC, who will play next season in the National League North, have attracted huge crowds under managers Kevin Phillips and Julio Arca — both former Sunderland players.
Another more unlikely inspiration is just down the road at Walton & Hersham FC, a club who have just had successive promotions and will be playing one level below the National League South next season.
The club’s owners market themselves as the world’s youngest and have built a huge following on TikTok — their 1.1 million followers puts them ahead of many Premier League clubs.
Although this exact innovation is hardly replicable, it shows how non-League clubs can find ways to differentiate themselves in a way that is tricky higher up the pyramid where the sums of cash, and the stakes, are higher.
While the Premier League is booming, lower levels of English football are too, and both can be true at the same time.
“Winning and losing feels the same here as it did (with Liverpool) in the Champions League,” says Stefano. “It feels exactly the same for me.”
(Top photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)
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-
Shepperton Supporter
- Posts: 1725
- Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2021 10:18 pm
Interesting read, let’s see how this evolves. Looks like we are in for an exciting ride!
-
TW2-Beaver
- Site Admin
- Posts: 234
- Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 6:02 pm
Interesting read, thanks for posting. Agree less of the Richmond/Ted Lasso nonsense.
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Lord Elpus
- Posts: 662
- Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2021 3:09 pm
It's becoming tedious isn't it? At least when every single article about us used to mention Steptoe And Son it was linked to an actual real person at the club.TW2-Beaver wrote: ↑Sat May 20, 2023 6:11 am Interesting read, thanks for posting. Agree less of the Richmond/Ted Lasso nonsense.