Bees United About To Celebrate Its 20th Birthday
Local football fans' group is unique in the English game
Club has enjoyed much success in recent years. Picture: Bees United
Brentford FC supporters’ group Bees United (BU)will be 20 years old this June but it hasn’t stopped growing yet.
The association of fans, which is officially the ‘Brentford Football Community Society’, once owned Brentford FC and is unique in the top two English football leagues. That's because it has a seat on the board of Brentford FC and a ’special share’ recorded in the clubs’ Articles of Association that exists to safeguard the Club’s local and long term future.
Chiswick resident, Bees fan and BU Secretary, Don Tanswell, said, “BU earned its special shareholder rights when it saved the club from financial disaster back in 2006” and soon after began the partnership with Matthew Benham that led to his eventual and current ownership of Brentford FC.
The club has gone from strength to strength and all eyes are now obviously focussed on the final end of season matches with the chance of promotion to the Premiership, very much achievable.
“There’s no better way”, Don says, “for Brentford fans to celebrate by at last going to cheer on the Bees”, at their new stadium in Lionel Road near the Chiswick Roundabout.
Football supporters often feel the clubs they support are out of touch with their fans but Bees United believes it has a special role in ensuring that the local Championship side, the “Bees”, Brentford FC, remains a club which the fans can always call their own. It is a registered “Community Benefit Society”.
BU is seeing a rapid growth in members and now boasts more than 2500 members, an increase of more than 2000 over the last year. It aspires to even greater growth if the Bees win promotion to the Premiership. Only recently Bees United celebrated its 20th and most successful members’ meeting with over 100 registering including several zoom-ins from fans overseas as far away as Canada California and Israel.
You can become a “Bee” and be part of all this by joining Bees United now.
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April 9, 2021