Owen Oyston - Background

Background

At the age of two, Oyston's family moved to Blackpool. He was educated at St. Mary's Catholic College. He left school at sixteen and started his career as an actor. He briefly starred as a barrister in Granada TV's 1970s afternoon television courtroom drama series, Crown Court.

Oyston had moved to London in the 1950s where he started his business career as a sewing-machine salesman. However the firm failed, and in 1960 he moved home to Blackpool where he had considerable success in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in the estate agency business. By the mid-1980s Oyston's Estate Agents had become the largest firm of family-owned estate agents in the United Kingdom (UK). In 1987 he sold Oyston's Estate Agents for an estimated £37 million to Royal Insurance, just weeks before the stock market crash. Also in 1987 he bought a large stake in then struggling Blackpool F.C., becoming the club's owner on 31 May 1988 when he purchased new shares. His ambitions of a new, world-class stadium for the club made headlines through much of the 1990s, but nothing ever came of them.

He also built up holdings in the media, building up the successful Lancashire Life series of magazines before selling them in 2000 to the Archant Publishing Company. He was a major investor in the News on Sunday newspaper, a struggling left-wing tabloid newspaper. It had been launched in April 1987 and had been kept afloat during the general election campaign thanks to the extension of a loan from the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU). However after the election it went bankrupt and Oyston then bought it outright. Just five months later, in November 1987, it ceased publication.

He also had media interests in commercial radio. He was chairman of the Red Rose Group, later to be named Trans World Communications (TWC), which owned and launched Red Rose Radio in Preston in October 1982., Radio Aire in Leeds, Red Dragon Radio in Cardiff and Piccadilly Radio in Manchester. These stations later became part of Emap and then Bauer Radio media groups. Oyston later acquired the ill-fated The Superstation, which had been set up in 1987 as an over-night sustaining service for Independent Local Radio in the UK. He was also a major investor in, and Chief Executive of, Miss World international beauty pageant through TWC until 1991.

In the late 1980s, following the liberalisation of the strict regulations governing the provision of cable television in the UK, Oyston (through Oyston Cable Communications Group Limited) won, and started to develop, six of the government-granted monopoly broadband franchises, issued by the newly established Cable Authority and covering almost 700,000 households and businesses in the Northwest of England. In 1990, when the Baby Bell operating companies saw an opportunity to use cable telephony to gain a foothold in the UK's telecommunication market, Southwestern Bell acquired a majority 80% stake in the Oyston Cable Communications Group. Oyston's remaining 18% holding was also bought by Southwestern Bell, for £2.99 million, in 1991 (a Statutory Instrument dictated that the remaining 2% holding in Oyston Cable had been vested in Liverpool City Council, on behalf of all the local councils covered by the Oyston franchise areas.)

In October 1996, Oyston revealed that he was offered control of Manchester United, but that he refused to desert Blackpool. He commented: "I had the opportunity to buy a controlling interest in Manchester United, but I was not prepared to relinquish my family's interest in Blackpool Football Club. After discussing the matter in detail with the Football League, it was apparent that it would not consider any formula which would allow me to have an interest in both clubs."