[Saba Sports News] Mark Ashton, CEO of EPL promotion club Ipswich Town, spoke to TA about the team.
(Source: Getty Image)
Ipswich CEO Mark Ashton said he met PSPRS (the Arizona Public Service Personnel Retirement System) and other 2021 investors Three Lions at a USL conference about five or six years ago, The latter includes Berk Bakke and Brett Johnson. They had seen him give a speech on how to run a football club when he was chief executive of Bristol City.
They stayed in touch over the next few years. Investors were eyeing some overvalued clubs, and Mark was giving them some advice as a friend. In the end, all roads led to Ipswich and they asked him to join, which was a difficult decision but he accepted.
Mark mentioned that they were probably the first club funded by a US state pension fund. These investors saw sports as something they wanted to be involved in, but left the management of the investment in a different company, ORG.
They spent the first 18 months getting to know this beautiful, traditional football club. Ipswich had been in decline, with ticket sales of 12,000-13,000 (against a stadium capacity of more than twice that), no asset value on the ground and a decline in the middle of League One. It’s a mess. But they believe Ipswich have the scale and ability to become a sustainable Premier League club – if run properly.