Ron Gordon is an incredibly ambitious man, passionate about football, and built up a business empire from just $200. How? Well, he explained all to Hibernian Quarterly.
When Ron Gordon became the majority shareholder of Hibernian Football Club in 2019, he saw a club, league and country with potential. A football club had long been in Gordon’s plans, although exactly which one remained open. In his mind, there was a strict set of criteria that had to be met, all reaching back to that important word - potential.
Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital, is one of the world’s most enchanting and atmospheric cities. From down on the cobbled pathway of the Royal Mile to a panoramic view from Carlton Hill, by way of Hibernian’s Leith heartland, the city’s gothic architecture, ‘reekie’ skyline and winding streets could leave the most stoic of hearts fluttering. It is Edinburgh that helped to capture - without letting go - Gordon’s attention.
A quiet, gentle spoken man, Gordon hasn’t come to the capital club just to idly watch the war for European football rage around him. He’s come over with some revolutionary ideas about the club and Scottish football as a whole. Whilst this might seem surprising at the offset, it really shouldn’t be given his business pedigree.
Life didn’t start out in a suit and tie for Gordon, or behind the lens where he’d later make his name. Breaking into the entertainment industry was a process that began with guest hosting a television show back in his twenties, a role that ushered in his preferred pathway of production and so, with two friends, the new owner decided to try it out for himself.
Recalling those earliest moments, Gordon said, “We basically chipped in $200 each to rent a camera for the weekend. The only reason we did it for the weekend is because you could rent the camera for $600 a day, the light, the camera and everything that came with it, but it was closed on Saturday and Sunday, so we rented it on Friday and would have to return it on Monday. Instead of having it for the one day, we’d have it for the two whilst still paying the one-day rate.”
Repeating this winning formula by filming several short vignettes on interesting people and topics over the weekend, then editing them during the week, Gordon and his friends could sell each for $1000. “Over time we began to accumulate money,” he said, “so when we got to something like $15,000 in cash, we decided to borrow money from a bank and buy our own camera kit.” Costing them around $40,000, the trio were in business.
Their success follows the blueprint of many other entrepreneurs. People wanted something, were willing to pay for it and he gave it to them. Born in Peru and, therefore, fluent in Spanish, the new Hibs owner spotted a market segment in broadcasting - the Spanish-speaking audience - that wasn’t being serviced, so he stepped up. “We made a play. We rented a TV station and converted it to Spanish, just to see if this thing would work,” Gordon then breaks out into a mischievous laugh, “Within six months, we were making money and I thought ‘this is gonna work.’”
Over the next 35 years, Gordon built ZGS Communications from the ground up, buying TV and radio stations to convert into Spanish, before selling it on to NBC Universal for an amount that far exceeded his expectations, around $200 million. It was a lifetime of hard work that had paid off and a moment that acted as a catalyst for an entirely new venture into football.
Why football though? One reason is that Gordon is an entrepreneur at heart, somebody who relished the creative opportunities provided by a career in broadcasting. Resourceful and unwilling just to throw money at problems, Gordon and the group would look for inspired solutions. When we think of creativity we think of art, poetry, dance. In his case, creativity could be applied to business too, “A little bit of what I’d like to bring to Hibs is a little bit more creativity around sales, in developing products and being much more promotional, being out in the community a little bit more..........."
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