TENANTS TAGS STEP UP THEIR SEARCH FOR A NEW HOME
HASHTAG United are on the hunt for a stadium of their own – and are holding out hope that a pyramid restructure will hand them promotion. The world-famous club, born from YouTube stardom, have made giant strides on and off the pitch since joining the National League System in 2018. The Tags have merged with local youth and women’s clubs to grow their community links, but now want to make the next big step in acquiring their own ground. “We’ve got a great groundshare with Bowers & Pitsea, there’s no issues there, but we’re just looking further ahead,” Hashtag founder and owner Spencer Owen told The NLP after announcing on Twitter they were searching for a stadium. “As a tenant we don’t get bar or food money, that’s one of the reasons our league hasn’t come back because clubs need that secondary spend to survive – we don’t even have that now! “It’s an open call to see if there are any clubs out there that may be struggling and whether it’s mortgage payments or lease payments or rent at their facility that’s costing money, if it’s in Essex, we’re thinking we could come in and take those costs away and say they can stay at the club forever, we’ll never charge you rent. “It would be a groundshare, essentially, the only difference is we’ll come in and take it over. “We’d invest in the facility, put a 3G pitch down, create a better facility which they would benefit from as well and I think for the right club it could be a really good situation. “I know there’s some negatives and some people see it as we’re coming in and doing this and that, but we’re only saying if this works for a club, we’re not insisting it on anyone.” The other option available is for Hashtag to build their own stadium from scratch. “I’m basically a bit impatient and trying to see if we can get things going a bit quicker, get us a ground and improve our revenue models but also genuinely help another club in the process,” said Owen. “Whether anything will come from it I don’t know but we’re growing, we’ve signed some big deals behind the scenes, we’re very lucky we’re not struggling as a result of Covid.” The Tags won the Eastern Counties League Division One South in their first season and were on course for another promotion last term before the campaign was made null and void. Then, they led the Essex Senior League before the season was curtailed last month, but there’s a chance they could still go up should The FA’s pyramid restructure go ahead. “It’s incredibly frustrating,” Owen added. “This year you can’t fault the powers that be for not finishing the season because the time just got away from us and we didn’t get enough games done. It’s just the combination of that and last year that makes it so hard to swallow. “We’re praying the restructure will happen. There’s a chance they could restructure and we don’t go up. I would still rather take that than no restructure because someone will get rewarded, at least.”