May I refer you to a sentence I wrote on a previous post in this thread.
It's a business that has people with a massive interest in that unusually, isn't just a financial one.
The harsh truth is that SUFC is just a business. Our love affair with it seems to cover that fact up IMO.
Absolutely, it is just a business that a few people care about. Some cared to the extent that they formed a fan club in 1929 to help it out financially from time to time.
Then the fan club decided that they'd save up for a new ground and bought it and helped build it. They ran the tea bars, they printed the programmes. They bought the floodlights. They even gave a player a "sub" to buy an engagement ring.
Then the business men got their hands on it and decided that they didn't need the fan club and took steps to close it down. The business began to lose money and successive "saviours" came along. Not all of them caring to much about how well the business was doing financially but to bask in a bit of glory and investigate other opportunities.
A movement started in football to try to return football clubs back to the fan clubs and away from the saviours. They weren't called fan clubs any more but Trusts. The Trust movement called for greater scrutiny of the saviours in football, wanted to ensure that the saviours were fit and proper people to run football clubs, which were now called businesses.
The idea was to look closely on how these businesses were run, buy shares so the annual report and accounts could be scrutinised to make sure that profits weren't being siphoned off to somewhere like Bermuda.
Trusts saved up money for a rainy day. They helped clubs out when they needed a few quid to get an academy going. Some even bought their clubs back from the administrators to make sure that they had a business to go and visit on a Saturday afternoon.
A lot of these Trusts began to have meetings with the businesses and told them how they could make the customer experience better on a Saturday afternoon. A lot of the customers thought that these Trusts were doing a good thing getting close to the business and making sure that it would always be there. Some, customers, however, were always unhappy with the interference of these Trusts and did their best to run them down as they thought that those who ran the businesses knew best.
The Trusts did their best to inform the customers what was going on. The Trusts tried to work amicably with the businessmen but put them straight when they spotted a businessman pulling a fast one. Usually the businessman threw his toys out of the pram and said that he wouldn't work with the Trust anymore but was soon on the phone when a "favour" needed doing
When some businesses were going to the wall, the Trusts stepped in to mobilise the customers. They sought advice from other Trusts that had saved their particular favourite business and acted on their advice.
So is it worth these Trusts being there, monitoring what their favourite business does in order to keep it going. Maybe the best thing is for the businesses to be run into the ground and wound up. That would at least free up some land to kick start the economy.