The Falkirk fans who have been fortunate enough to get their hands on tickets for their Scottish Gas Scottish Cup fourth round tie against Hearts at Tynecastle tomorrow evening will head through to Gorgie hoping to witness a major upset.
Not so very long ago, an away game against the top team in the country would not have been approached with such optimism.
Hell, a league fixture at home to part-time opponents in the third tier caused their supporters to break out in a cold sweat relatively recently.
“The 2021/22 season was the worst in our entire history,” said their chief executive Jamie Swinney with a visible shudder during a chat over a coffee in the Westfield café on the top floor of the Falkirk Stadium earlier this week.
“We finished sixth in League One and made a loss of £1.2m. We were turning up here and getting outplayed. We were getting beaten comfortably by Montrose, Airdrie, Cove Rangers, Alloa, Dumbarton. No disrespect to those clubs, but that just shouldn't be happening.
“Our crowds were still good considering where we were. But there was an apathy, a major apathy, in the fan base. There was a complete disconnect between our supporters and the old board. There was a lot of resentment and some protests.
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“We also couldn’t get our accounts signed off. Back then, the number of sleepless nights I had because I cared about the club, because I cared about my job, because I cared about the town, was brutal. We were really struggling.
“I tested positive for Covid one weekend and couldn’t attend our home game against Cove the following Saturday. But I was actually pleased, genuinely pleased, I couldn’t go. I can remember thinking, ‘They’ll beat us’. Sure enough, they did. I didn't enjoy the games at that point because the place was so toxic.”
What an extraordinary, inspirational, unexpected transformation Falkirk have undergone both on and off the park since those dark days. They have been crowned League One and Championship champions in the past two seasons. The first of those title wins was achieved without losing a game in a historic “Invincibles” campaign.
They have flicked two fingers in the faces of those who predicted they would struggle, and there were many of them, in the William Hill Premiership this term and go straight back down. A top six finish is firmly in their sights.
Their financial predicament has improved greatly as well as their form. They have sold a record 5,700 season tickets, generated unprecedented commercial revenues and posted a profit of over £600,000. Truly, 2025 was an annus mirabilis for them.
Swinney, the lifelong Falkirk supporter who was appointed back in 2021 when money was running out and entering administration was a very real possibility, and his associates deserve enormous credit for overseeing their remarkable resurgence. They are a Scottish football success story and then some.
It will be difficult for them to maintain their progress never mind build on it in the years to come. But manager John McGlynn and his players, who have beaten Aberdeen, Motherwell, Dundee, Kilmarnock, Dundee United and St Mirren and drawn with Hibernian and Rangers twice since coming up, have remained hungry for more this season. Their chief executive is exactly the same.
How, though, can a club which is fan-owned and is situated in a town with a population of just 160,000 possibly improve upon a position of such prominence? Remember, they have to replace their artificial pitch with a grass surface by next year or they will be turfed out of the Premiership by the SPFL. That will not be cheap.
Swinney appreciates that Falkirk face myriad financial, logistical and structural difficulties. But he intends, just as Brad Spencer and his redoubtable team mates will do when they take to the field in the capital tomorrow night, to meet the challenges that lie in front of them head on.
The 39-year-old attributes the resurgence which his boyhood heroes have experienced in no small part to the Falkirk Supporters Society becoming major shareholders back in 2023. Still, he is intrigued by the innovative new ownership models which many long-established and well-supported institutions across the world have introduced.
He is convinced that bringing on board a wealthy overseas benefactor is, provided the terms are right for both parties, the way to go. He revealed efforts are already well underway to attract if not a sugar daddy as such then a sugar daddy lite.
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“Phase one of our plan involved saving the club essentially,” he said. “We have now done that. We are in the Premiership where we should be, we have laid good foundations, we are well run.
“It has been hard at times. But phase two is even more difficult. Can we build a fourth stand and a training ground? Can we have a really strong academy? Can we get into Europe? Can we win the League Cup or the Scottish Cup? As I say, that is far harder than what we have done to date.
“For us to grow as a football club we need to grow our turnover. We need more seats. That allows us to grow our fanbase, grow our income. A new stand would be used seven days a week, not just on match days, and would be commercially viable. That is our ambition.
“If we can get the financing there is no reason the construction of a fourth stand would be blocked. We already have planning permission. But the financing is the big thing. So we're trying to find a minority investor. If we had somebody with deeper pockets financing us then it becomes easier.
“We want somebody who is willing to come in and buy 25 to 33 per cent of the club, a pretty sizeable stake but not a 51 per cent stake. If you own 51 per cent or over, you're covering the losses with your own money if things aren’t going well. If you're 25 to 33 per cent, you're part of the big picture, a very big part, but it doesn't all fall on you.
“I'm sure there are people out there who would love being a part-owner of a Scottish professional football club in the Premiership. If we can find that minority investor, it gives us a real strength.
“The model works really well at that point. You've got the power and the protection, the fan ownership, but you have someone who can come in and add a cash injection and professional expertise and support the club with the bigger projects that we hope to complete in the coming years.”
Swinney continued, “We are currently in an exclusive contractual arrangement with an agency which specialises in sports investment. We engaged with them about a year ago. They did a deep dive into the football club and created what I would call a prospectus. It shows everything Falkirk have to offer.
“They have gone out into the market. If interested parties emerge, and a number have, they then sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) and get to see the document. They can see all the numbers. At that stage, there is also an initial conversation. We have had a few of them too.
“We have been very, very selective. But we are definitely into double figures in terms of interested parties. In the majority of those situations we have called it because the fit has not been there for one reason or another. The fit is the most important bit I would suggest.
“They need to meet our valuation of the club, that obviously has to be aligned. But if there isn’t a fit there then the conversation doesn’t continue. We have to go to the shareholders for their approval to sign off on an investment. So if we aren’t 100 per cent convinced about an investor we aren’t going to convince the shareholders.
“We have had individuals, groups where there has been more than one investor and clubs show interest. We have had all three. Nothing has got far enough down the line for us to seriously consider taking it to the shareholders so far. But, as I say, I am convinced there is a market there for this.
“We are not just looking in America. We would be open to investors from anywhere. If you look at English and Scottish football you can see there is a huge number of American owners. The most likely market is America. The type of money we're talking about is small beer for Americans.
“But there are other examples of Middle East and Far East investors buying into football clubs here. I wouldn’t be against it. As long as the fit was right, I think we could bring something really exciting to the shareholders.
“Then we could go and achieve everything we want to, consolidating our place in the Premiership, getting one of the best hybrid pitches in Scotland down, getting a fourth stand and a training ground that makes us attractive to players built, in the next five years.”
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Swinney has also seen how the arrival of Tony Bloom, the billionaire professional gambler who is the owner of Premier League club Brighton and a minority stakeholder at Belgian champions Royal Union Saint-Gilloise, at Tynecastle this summer has energised Hearts. He admitted Falkirk would consider a similar tie-up.
“We wouldn't rule out being part of a multi-club ownership model,” he said. “Up until a couple of years ago, it wasn't permitted at all in Scotland. But the SFA changed that and since then both Hibs and Hearts have gone down that road and sold stakes.
“If it's a football club or a football group that's buying you, the cap in Scotland is 29 per cent. But, again, we think that can be quite attractive to a bigger enterprise because they tend to want clubs in different markets. There is a raft of advantages potentially, player development advantages, utilising expertise across the clubs in the group.
“Tony Bloom at Hearts is a great example. Brighton are punching well above their weight in England. Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium hadn't won the league in 90 years until last season. Hearts, obviously, are at the top of the Premiership just now. That shows it can work.
“Hearts fans were delighted when Bloom invested. They completely backed it. As long as the fans retain control there, they're going to see the advantages of it. A club down south or overseas may see Falkirk as perfect for their group.”
Swinney worked in youth football development – he had been the Head of Operations and Youth at the Forth Valley Academy as well as a coach with the SFA Performance School at Graeme High School – before he moved into his current position.
So helping to relaunch an academy which was, despite producing talents like Scott Arfield and Jay Fulton over the years, closed down in 2017 due to escalating costs has given him enormous personal as well as professional satisfaction.
Yet, he also feels the Championship champions can make strides forward in future if they can start to generate tidy profits selling players who have come through their own age-group teams and made the step up into the senior game.
“There are only three ways a club of our size in Scottish football can generate seven figure sums,” he said. “You can qualify for the group stages of a European competition, which no club outside the big city clubs has ever done. You can win the League Cup or Scottish Cup, which is very difficult. Or you can sell a really good player.
“We last won the Scottish Cup in 1957 and have only been in Europe once in our entire history. So our most likely route to getting that level of income, to generating significant sums of money, is selling players.
“Even Celtic and Rangers have challenges now because of Brexit. English clubs now look at 16-year-olds in Scotland and snap them up for £200,000 or £300,000. There are add-ons in any deal, but if the player doesn’t make it to the Premier League, which is what happens in most cases, that is all you get.
“There is the odd example of clubs making millions. Lennon Miller is the one I use a lot. Motherwell deserve a lot of credit for what they have done. They've got an elite academy which they've financed themselves and they've been able to get players into the first team and then sell them. There was David Turnbull and the likes of James Scott before Miller.
“If every so often you can sell a player for £3m or £4m, that amount of money for a club or our size is huge. We need to get to the point where we can do that. Even if we are only selling a player for a few hundred thousand, that is still money that is going back into the club.
“We are now running to a break even level and are actually making a profit. If we were to sell a player now that would be additional money we could invest into a training ground, into a fourth stand, into the infrastructure of the football club.”
Cynics, of whom there are a few in Scottish football, will suggest that Falkirk’s plans are grandiose rather than grand. But just look at how far they have come. They have done nae bad considering they were getting spanked at home by The Toonsers five years ago.
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