Those who were at the vanguard as the concept of fan ownership was introduced to Scottish football have heard all of this, and many other doubts around the viability of the model, before. Ad nauseam. And yet, a decade on from Motherwell becoming the first majority fan-owned top-flight club in Scotland, the Fir Park outfit are thriving with the Well Society as their main shareholder, embedded more deeply than ever in their community, and coming off the back of one of their most successful Premiership campaigns in living memory.

That success story is not unique to Motherwell, though. There are now four clubs in the Scottish Premiership showing that fan ownership is no limit to ambition, or to how competitive a side can be put out on the field of play.

Were it not for the intervention of their supporters and the Foundation of Hearts back in 2013, as club legend and then manager Gary Locke has starkly outlined, there might not be a Hearts today at all. Now, the Tynecastle club are the largest fan-owned club in the country, while on the field, they came within minutes of winning the title last season.

St Mirren, meanwhile, were the first fan-owned club in Britain to win a trophy when they picked up the League Cup last season, while Falkirk more than consolidated their back-to-back promotions to reach the top-flight by finishing in the top six last term.

All of that is, in the view of Derek Watson, current Well Society chair, cause for celebration. And on Saturday evening in Glasgow, that is just what he and many others from all of those clubs will be doing.

“As much as results can go up and down on the park, it's important to celebrate the success that we've had off the park over the past 10 years since we became the majority shareholder in the club,” Watson said.

“It's an ever-changing market in football and we've bucked the trend for the last 10 years. We came into majority shareholding in 2016 and now we're 10 years down the line.

(Image: Mark Runnacles / Shutterstock)

“So, we decided it was right to mark that with this event at the Drygate Brewery in Glasgow. It's a night of football chat, live music, and a celebration as we mark 10 years of fan ownership at Motherwell, but this isn't just an event for Motherwell fans. It's open to everybody.

“We're going to be joined on the night by Keith Lasley, who's a Motherwell legend of course but also St Mirren’s COO. We've got Kyrk Macmillan, Motherwell chairman, talking about how he's found it since he came in over the past couple of years, the challenges and opportunities of operating a fan-owned club at board level.

“We've got Stuart Adam from the Falkirk Supporters Society. He's a director at Falkirk, but he's also their Falkirk Supporters Society rep on the club board, so he's wearing both hats.

“We've got Peter Ferlie from Exeter City Supporters' Trust. They are the longest-standing, most successful fan-owned club down in England. Then we've got Dan Lambert from Bohemians, who, up until recently, was also their chief executive, but he has taken a step back recently as he’s also the manager of Kneecap!

“But he’s the guy behind all these merchandising ideas, which people might have seen, with the likes of Oasis and others sponsoring their tops. They're bringing more in through merchandise now than they are through any other stream. They're actually bringing in more through their merchandise revenue than we're bringing in through gate receipts here.

“We've got a few local musicians as well, and it's hosted by Gordon Duncan, who's a big Motherwell fan as well.”

The evening isn’t all about guzzling pints and listening to music, though, with a major benefit being the ability to learn from the experiences of other fan-owned clubs and learn from their successes, such as the merchandising boom experienced by Bohemians that Watson references.

"All these clubs across the UK and Europe can end up operating in silos, but we're not competing with Bohemians or Exeter,” he said.

“We're experiencing a lot of the same challenges and opportunities. How do we pool those resources together to make sure that we're sharing best practice and actually creating a network of clubs that look out for each other and help each other? More importantly, learn from each other.

“This is the first one that we've done, but going forward this is something that we hope to be doing every quarter.

“It's about speaking to our members and those of different fan-owned clubs from across Europe and having that chat as to how we can all work together for the greater good of the game. That's becoming more important than ever within a challenging market where you've got people that are completely overspending.”

Much of the time, that overspending can be attributed to wealthy owners, but Watson is relieved that Motherwell managed to stave off their own dalliance with a return to reliance on an individual benefactor a couple of years back, something he feels proved the value of fan ownership beyond doubt.

“We have had to dig deep sometimes,” he said.

“It's always going to be a challenging environment when we're in a place where a lot of people aren't cash rich, let’s be honest. You're asking people not just to buy season tickets or to get tickets for away games, or shirts for them and their kids, you're asking them to give a bit more as well.

St Mirren fans (Image: Stuart Wallace / Shutterstock)

“That's never going to be easy, but I'm really grateful and appreciative of everybody that has. Without that happening, we wouldn't be where we are. I'm really proud of where we've got to.

“A few years ago, we had a Netflix vice-president come knocking on the door. For many, the bright lights of LA and the story that we were potentially being sold about being on the TV and opening up to a new market might have sounded appealing. But once we dug a bit deeper, I think that was the perfect example of what the Well Society is and could be.

“It was the fans rallying together to say we're so much more than that. We're not some rich guy's plaything. We're here to protect the community that we serve.

“I actually think we're probably the best place that we've been in a long time. People have been so positive about the Well Society in recent years. I worry now that results haven't been going so well recently. You have to take that on the chin and we're the first people that will be in the firing line.

“But we're in a really safe place now. The executive board, the chairman Kyrk Macmillan, Brian Caldwell [the CEO] were appointed by the Well Society. We've got two reps sitting on the club board. We've published a working together document which outlines the roles of the two boards and how we work together.

“In the coming months, we'll be publishing a joint strategy which myself and Martin Grey and some guys from the club board have worked on as well. That sets out our stall as to who we are and where we want to be, not just in the short term but also in the long term and how we take fans and members and the wider community on that journey as well.

“We're not naive at Motherwell that it's always going to be rosy. It is more important than ever, as so many fan-owned clubs fall into private corporate hands across the world, that we keep pushing that message. The reason that we're doing this is because we're protecting the football club for the generations to come. We're protecting a community asset. It's owned by the people that care about it the most.

“Success on the pitch is the ultimate goal for everyone, but making sure that you've got a football club to operate going forward is also key and fan ownership places that in a good place.

(Image: Russell Cheyne / Shutterstock)

“We'll sing about the successes where we can, but we're not naive to the challenges. The message to members is it's going to be a bumpy ride. It would be a bumpy ride whether we were fan-owned or if we were owned by an external investor, but at the end of the day we've got the people who care about the club the most looking after it."

As well as reflecting on the previous decade of fan ownership in Scottish football, this event marks a moment to look into the future, and what the landscape may look like in another 10 years.

For Watson, the tide is only flowing in one direction.

“I find it really crazy that even the likes of Celtic and Rangers are not having fan groups putting on a bit more pressure to see if they'll be fan-owned clubs,” he said.

“If it can work at smaller clubs like St. Mirren, Motherwell, and Falkirk, can you imagine what they could do at Rangers or Celtic? It seems completely alien to me.

“I get that it's a lot harder because of how many shareholders they have, the sums are a lot vaster. But these are global brands and global football teams here. Think of the potential audience that they've got if they were to go out and say we're having share issues and we're becoming a fan-owned football club.

“I think you'll see more clubs going down this route. We've seen it recently with a lot of American owners in Scotland trying to come here and take over and it's not always had the success that they hoped for. I think further down the line you're going to have these people thinking, ‘I've tried to have my fun, and it's not quite worked out, it's time to go’.

“When these people move out of Scottish football, who is it that's left to pick up the pieces? It's going to be the supporters.

"Fans of all clubs that aren't fan-owned should at least be thinking: if we can't get a majority stake in the football club, how can we at least secure a minority stake and build on that for the future?"