The last time Leyton Orient invited a documentary maker behind the scenes, they were playing in English football’s third tier, losing money and their overseas-based owner was trying to sell them. The result was the grittiest fly-on-the-wall film ever shot at an English football club.
If you have never experienced Orient: Club For A Fiver, you’re missing out. Or you could just watch Manchester City’s in-house film about their 2022-23 treble season and then imagine the exact opposite of everything you have just seen happening instead.
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Thirty years later, the documentary cameras are back. The east London club are again in the third tier after stints in the fourth and in non-League, are again losing money, and their overseas-based owners are looking to bring in a minority partner, so they are partly for sale.
That, however, is where the similarities end.
“We have this WhatsApp group for EFL owners (based) in America, which involves Peterborough, Wycombe, Northampton, Plymouth, Stevenage, Gillingham, Carlisle… I may have missed someone,” says Orient’s current chairman and co-owner Nigel Travis.
“Three of the group — Wycombe, Plymouth and myself — are doing a documentary that will come out this summer. It’s about the grumpy old men of football. We’re just finishing the ‘sizzle reel’, I think you call it (a short promotional video).
“It’s supposed to be fun and it has this American connection. But it’s helped by the fact Plymouth (in the second-tier Championship) are fighting relegation, so that’s in there, and then (Wycombe owner) Rob (Couhig) went to Wembley in the EFL Trophy (losing 2-1 to Peterborough United at the start of this month).
“People like to see behind the scenes. We explain things (in the documentary), but mostly we just rib each other.”
Travis, a lifelong Orient fan born five miles from the club’s Brisbane Road stadium, is talking to The Athletic from the U.S. city of Boston, having just returned from a long weekend in London consisting of meetings, filming and watching some football.
It was 7am his time when our call started, but it looked like the dual national had already achieved more with his day than his UK-based interviewer, despite the latter’s five-hour head start.
Strictly speaking, Travis retired in 2018, but the now 74-year-old, who started in human resources at Esso before climbing the ranks at Rolls-Royce, Kraft, Burger King, Blockbuster, Papa John’s Pizza and then running Dunkin’ Brands, is still chairman of four companies, including Abercrombie & Fitch and his beloved Orient. He also advises Blackstone, a major private equity firm, on investments in the food and restaurant sector.
“I’m shocked at how many people talk to me here (in the U.S.) about going to Leyton Orient,” he explains.
“The pivotal move was Ted Lasso. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been asked on the golf course here: ‘What do you do?’. When I tell them I own a football team, they say, ‘Have you seen Ted Lasso?’.
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“Then the more informed ones will say, ‘I really like that Welcome To Wrexham. How far behind them are you?’. I tell them, ‘We’re actually a year ahead!’.
“A lot of kids over here want to see English Football League games instead of Premier League games. The opportunity to maximise the EFL is staggering. All the media money is in the States.”
Twenty-six of the 72 clubs currently making up the EFL’s three divisions are now at least part-owned by Americans or by people who were born in the UK or Ireland but are based in the U.S. — and their influence is starting to tell.
For example, the EFL recently announced a new four-year deal for its international media rights that splits the work between two agencies. Pitch International, the league’s long-term partner, will sell the rights in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australasia, while Relevent Sports will market them in the Americas. Together, the deal is worth a minimum of £148million ($184m), an increase of 40 per cent on the previous agreement.
Relevent, which appears to have just won a significant battle in its fight to bring competitive European club football matches to the States, is in the portfolio of Stephen Ross, owner of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. It will be selling all of the EFL’s regular-season and promotion play-off games, all matches in the Carabao Cup, and three EFL Trophy fixtures. It will also manage the league’s betting rights in North, Central and South America.
But as well as the TV deal, each EFL club will still be able to stream any game to overseas-based fans that is not being shown by a local broadcaster and, thanks to the much-improved domestic rights deal with Sky Sports, the quality of the streamed product is about to take a giant leap forward. What used to be very basic, one-camera productions will have a minimum of two for games in fourth-tier League Two and four cameras for fixtures in League One and the Championship, the division one down from the Premier League. Games being televised by Sky in the UK will be covered with eight cameras.
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Travis spoke to The Athletic before it was revealed that FIFA, world football’s governing body, is reviewing its opposition to leagues playing competitive games outside their home territory, but he is already there when it comes to friendlies.
“In our WhatsApp group, we’ve talked about playing a tournament in the U.S. — perhaps at Rhode Island’s new stadium (an hour’s drive south of Boston),” he says.
“There’s a provisional plan for next summer — 2025. I think people over here would love to see an Ipswich v Leyton Orient friendly, or Wycombe v Gillingham. You could play three or four games as part of your pre-season.
“When I first visited America, I went to see the Fort Lauderdale Strikers (based near Miami in Florida) and everyone was saying that soccer is the next thing. Now, over 40 years later, it is here.
“People can see it, they’re playing it, they’ve been following Barcelona and all that, but I think it’s promotion and relegation they really like, too. And that is why there is so much investment in the league. Compare the cost of buying an EFL club with an MLS one — it’s miles apart and, in my view, the quality and intensity of the games are better in England.
“The EFL is on a massive upswing. The better streaming product will drive a lot of online traffic but also get more people to come over for games. And that’s where we’re really lucky — think how much you can do in a weekend in London.”
Indeed, Nigel. But what will the football tourist arriving from America find if they go to Orient?
“We feel we’re a solid League One club,” he says, not missing a beat.
“I wrote a book on culture (The Challenge Culture: Why The Most Successful Organisations Run On Pushback) and our culture is incredibly strong. Everyone is involved in everything. We have a monthly meeting where we tell all the players and staff what’s going on and they are entitled to have a view. Everyone can take the p**s out of me. There’s really no status at the club.”
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Orient’s turnover in 2022-23 was a shade under £6million, but they lost nearly £4m. The forecast for this season is better, with turnover growing to almost £8m, but the club are still predicting a loss of around £3m.
Yet the club’s fortunes have been transformed since 2017, when Travis and co-investor Kent Teague, a Texas-based businessman, rescued them from their lowest ebb.
The pair arrived just as Orient had been relegated to the National League, English football’s fifth tier, ending a 112-year stay in the EFL. It was their second relegation in three seasons and came only three years after they lost a penalty shootout in the third tier’s play-off final — a game they had led 2-0 at half-time — to decide who went up to the Championship.
Their dramatic slide down the domestic footballing ladder only tells half the story of Orient’s travails under the cack-handed control of Francesco Becchetti, a waste-management millionaire who had bought the club from British sports promoter Barry Hearn in 2014. The Italian disposed of 10 managers in three seasons, left the club’s finances in the dumpster and trashed relations with the fans.
When this topic came up on our call, The Athletic momentarily forgot Becchetti’s name.
“I will say it, but I’ll have to put some money in the pot (as a forfeit),” said Travis, before reverting to his preferred description of his predecessor — “the Italian”.
“The Italian regime was an unmitigated disaster and, besides us buying the club, the only good thing that came out of it was that it was one of the examples that stimulated (the UK’s then sports minister Tracey Crouch’s) fan-led review,” he continued, referring to the 2021 report that first recommended the creation of an independent regulator for English football.
“I’m indebted to Kent for putting up most of the money, which has since reversed. We put a six-year plan in place and we actually achieved it. That almost never happens.”
Orient’s rise started with them winning the 2018-19 National League title and continued with the League Two crown last season.
“What’s amazing is we’ve doubled the attendances — our gates are over 8,000,” Travis says.
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“We’ve had a phenomenal first season back in League One (where they are 10th out of 24 with two games remaining). We set goals, like most businesses, and we’ve beaten them. We’ve got a lot of talented young players and an excellent coach in Richie Wellens. All the staff are amazing and our fan engagement is right up there. We put in a new hybrid pitch that Spurs’ women (of the top-flight Women’s Super League) play on, too. That’s helped the quality of our football.
“Our academy is having an excellent season. Our women’s team started from a low base but are continuing to improve. It’s been a great year.”
One of the games Travis attended on his last trip to London was a 2-1 home defeat by Peterborough, a club owned by Florida-based Irishman Darragh MacAnthony, at the start of this month.
“Peterborough have done a fantastic job on the player-trading model and we need to add that to our arsenal,” says Travis.
So, Orient will be investing £4million in their training ground over the next 12 months to help them attract and retain more talent.
Producing more homegrown players will certainly help, but Travis knows Orient will never cover their costs — certainly not up in the Championship — on gates of under 9,000. Ipswich, by comparison, averaged 26,000 last season on their way to promotion from the third tier.
Hearn, the man who owned Orient before “the Italian”, toyed with the idea of moving them away from the stadium they have played in since 1937. He never did, though, and remains Orient’s honorary president and their landlord at Brisbane Road, which, as we are talking about increasing revenues, is officially known as the Gaughan Group Stadium for sponsorship reasons.
Travis, who went to the same school as Hearn, wants to stay in Waltham Forest, the London borough the club call home. Orient are in discussions with the local authority over several sites within the borough, with Travis keen to be as close to Leyton underground station as possible. He points out the station is receiving a £14million upgrade and that 5,000 new homes are being built in the area.
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This, he believes, is why Orient should take a leaf out of another London club’s book and become the “Brentford of the East” by building a 17,000-seat stadium, with room to grow, nearby. Club chief executive Mark Devlin did the same job at Brentford for seven years, so Orient have the blueprint.
In the meantime, Travis wants to improve the concourse and stairways in the charming but vintage East Stand, so the club can use the 500 seats they are currently unable to sell tickets for because of safety concerns. That would get the capacity back up to its full 9,200. He is also upgrading the bar in the South Stand. All told, that will cost £500,000 this summer.
All these improvements are starting to add up, aren’t they? So Travis and Teague are looking for financial help.
“We’re in the middle of trying to bring new investors in and we’ve had lots of good discussions,” says Travis. “We’re not looking to sell completely, more like up to 30 per cent. We need more money to finance what we’re doing. I intend to put more money in but we need more investors to tackle the fairly aggressive plans we have.
“When we bought the club in 2017, my goal was to make sure the club was thriving in 100 years’ time. I won’t be here to see that, but that’s the vision.”
Club For A Fiver was broadcast by Channel 4 in the UK in October 1995 and this viewer would not have wagered much more than £5 on Orient surviving for another year, let alone 100, after watching it.
And yet here they are, back in League One, looking up, not down, with ambitions that stretch from their front door to the New World. That is a story for the ages.
(Top photo: Mark Kerton/PA Images via Getty Images)