Five years as the world’s youngest football club owner: from brink of collapse to TikTok sensation

“We were younger than pretty much the whole squad. We had a 40-year-old centre-back who was playing for the club before I was born.”

I spoke to Tom Bradbury in an exclusive interview with the Sports Gazette, weeks after he announced his resignation from Walton & Hersham FC. With five years as owner behind him, I was eager to uncover how a group of university students became the world’s youngest football club owners and transformed a non-league team into a global success story. 

“We were 19 and clueless about running a football club,” Bradbury admitted, reflecting on the early fan backlash. “When the club you’ve supported for 40 or 50 years gets taken over by a group of young people, you’re bound to be sceptical.

“We did have accusations. That we weren’t cut out for it, that this was a disaster waiting to happen. A classic line we faced was that when the season starts, we’re going to be on holiday in Ibiza.”

From rags to riches

By 2019, the club, which once beat Brian Clough’s Brighton 4-0 on their way to winning the FA Amateur Cup at Wembley in 1973, had sunk to the 10th tier of English football. They had suffered years of relegations, financial troubles, and the loss of their home ground at Stompond Lane.

Enter Calogero Scannella, one of Bradbury’s schoolmates and a keen follower of non-league football in Walton-on-Thames. Hearing that the club’s owners were looking to sell, he convinced Bradbury and five others to pool their limited resources and save Walton & Hersham from extinction.

In the summer of 2019, the seven teenagers officially became the world’s youngest football club owners—a title they still hold today. 

(Left to right, Jack Newton, Calogero Scannella, George Cory, Sartej Tucker, Tom Bradbury) Credit: Tom Bradbury

Five years later, Walton & Hersham have achieved three successive promotions and currently compete in the Southern League Premier South Division (the seventh tier of English football).

Now playing at the Elmbridge Xcel Sports Hub, the Swans went from drawing 40 fans per game to averaging 700. With over 1.1 million TikTok followers and global fans tuning in to livestreams, the club has become a modern-day non-league phenomenon.

The three-peat

A record-breaking attendance of 2,095 witnessed Walton & Hersham secure their third consecutive promotion on April 30, 2023, with a 3-1 victory over Hanwell Villa. But to understand the significance of that moment, let’s rewind to their very first season. 

“When we took over the club, the finances were completely shot,” Bradbury explained. “The club had just been relegated, and it was a bit of a makeshift squad for that year.”

The 24-year-old recalled one particularly low point when there were more players on the pitch than fans in the stands. 

But then came a turning point: the appointment of manager Scott Harris. A Walton local with deep experience in non-league football, Harris brought a strong network of players and a bold, possession-based philosophy. 

“It’s hard to pull off that type of football with players of non-league quality, so mistakes were rife. Fans would moan at our keeper for not booting the ball up and instead passing out the back. But Scott stuck to the gameplan, and we really started to blow teams apart.”

Credit: Tom Bradbury 

Harris’ Guardiola-inspired tactics and a roster of technically gifted players – many of whom had stepped down from higher divisions – propelled Walton to their first promotion. In their second season, the Swans soared again, earning another promotion with their dynamic style of play.

The team fell short in their final game of the next season, missing out on automatic promotion. “I was devastated,” Bradbury confessed. “But we got to have an even better memory, which was getting promoted at home through the play-offs.

“The euphoria lasted a while. After the game, we all went to the pub with the players, the management, and a fair few fans as well. It was quite a boozy night.”

Credit: Tom Bradbury 

The aftermath 

Many supporters were surprised when Harris was relieved of his duties during the following 2023/24 campaign. The Swans were on a bad run of form in November and December, and the manager was let go in March 2024, despite being around the play off spots. 

The step up in quality to division seven was a harsh reality check, but Bradbury believed that it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to consolidate in the league rather than going for a fourth promotion in a row. 

“I think maybe at that time, we were being a little bit flippant, maybe a little bit arrogant, because when you’ve done it three times in a row, you think we’re going to do something special again.

“Myself [and two of the other owners] had taken a step back from the board in January, so we weren’t involved in that process [of dismissing Harris]. Football is like that – you see managers getting fairly or unfairly sacked all the time.”

Credit: Tom Bradbury 

Sartej Tucker, one of the owners, told the NY Times: “Ultimately, a successful football club cannot be governed by sentiment. Our decision to sack Scott was taken with no prejudice to his achievements. It was based upon a large accumulation of observations … across the final two months he was in charge.”

The Swans steadied the ship under new management and finished in a respectable seventh position, and are currently sitting in sixth place this term.

Global reach and social media sensation

Like many people during lockdown in 2020, Bradbury didn’t have a lot to do with no football on and spent a lot of time on social media apps. “I remember making a few TikToks at the time. I posted clips from a mini-documentary we’d done with 90 Min, and one of them went absolutely viral.” 

That’s when the group realised that people were receptive to their story. They had the opportunity to revolutionize the value proposition of the club and tap into this story around the world’s youngest football club owners. 

Media outlets such as the BBC, Sky Sports, and the NY Times have lapped up this success story. With 1.1m TikTok followers, Bradbury is amazed at how far their story travelled around the world.

“I remember a mate from uni who went travelling a couple of years ago, and he was in this random mountain in Tibet, walking through this little village with only a few hundred people. He saw someone wearing a Walton top, which is ridiculous.”

This virality opened up new income opportunities, with brands like Classic Football Shirts jumping on board as their front of shirt sponsor one year. Another successful revenue stream is merchandise sales, with a prolific customer base in the US.

Credit: Tom Bradbury 

What next?

From an outsider’s perspective, Bradbury’s resignation seemed unexpected, especially considering the on-pitch successes of the past five years.

“It was a tricky decision, leaving the club that you’ve been running and owning for five years.  I felt, as an ownership group, we’d achieved as much as we could. So I was content with walking away knowing that I’d left the club in a better position than when we found it.

“I just felt that for me personally, I wanted to pursue other interests. Being a football club owner at any level takes up so much of your time, particularly on the weekends. You’re doing long away trips, you’ve got midweek fixtures as well.”

With Scannella and Tucker the only two left from the original group with a new structure in place, they have aspirations of entering the Football League. But for now, progressing in the national league and continuing to foster a local community and build a global brand is paramount. 

Given what they’ve achieved in just five years, keep an eye on Walton & Hersham; their future brims with exciting potential.