Minority shareholders? Whatever happened to the straightforward ‘celebrity fan’?

Absolute scenes at the Swansea.com Stadium, with Snoop Dogg arriving in glory through the players’ guard of honour, while Cyril the Swan (as notorious in the mascot community as any artist on Death Row Records has ever been in the hip hop world) looked on, and the crowd twirled their Snoop-provided white tea ­towels wildly above their heads.

And then an understandably galvanised Swansea City grabbed a last-gasp equaliser against Preston, leaving visiting manager Paul Heckingbottom somewhat dryly remarking about “the smell of weed in the tunnel”.

Snoop was the second starry “minority shareholder” loaning Swansea his glitter after Martha Stewart, who pitched up for the Wrexham game in December, cementing an alignment with showbusiness royalty which is unprecedented for the club unless, of course, we count those two years under Brendan Rodgers.

Mind you, the purists aren’t happy about it. You’ll hear them grumbling, blaming Wrexham and Netflix. “Minority shareholder? Is that what we’re calling them now? Whatever happened to the simple celebrity fan? Famous people who could support their club without buying some of it?”

And then will follow fond recollections of the days when love of Chelsea alone could inspire Raquel Welch to enjoy the company of Jimmy Hill and an accompanying film crew at Stamford Bridge. Or when Sylvester Stallone, at the age of just 61, could suddenly show up at Everton amid photographers, simply because a lifelong passion for the Toffees drove him there.

Those days, in other words, when celebrity fandom was authentic and happened organically, give or take armies of PR people in the background making calls, and when you could uncomplicatedly enjoy the sight of professionally relaxed people looking slightly ill at ease as they posed for pictures in a shop-fresh scarf.

And obviously we should now be drawing the shower curtain of history around Michael Jackson’s appearance on the pitch with Mohamed Al Fayed at Craven Cottage halfway through Fulham’s 2-0 defeat of Wigan Athletic in 1999. But the purists will almost certainly want to remind us of it in this context, if only to point out that Jackson was content to leave, that drizzly afternoon, with the three points and his new scarf and entirely without a token shareholding. More innocent times, clearly, in so many respects.

And yes, I suppose by ­comparison with what we’re now seeing from the likes of Snoop, Stewart and even Ryan Reynolds, who doesn’t get to Wrexham as often as I’m sure he would like to, Tom Hanks’ in-person support of Aston Villa looks like die-hard celebrity fandom. I mean, it’s patchy, it can’t be denied, but it’s done without financial incentive, so far as we know, and entirely in the absence of a multi-series TV tie-in.

But what can you do? The game moves on. It’s all about global commercial forces now, and who can resist those? Plus, if we must have minority shareholders, let them at least be Snoop Dogg, a man who improves the world simply by being in it and who brings joy merely by stepping out of a people-carrier.

It’s tempting to look for further sports where Snoop might sprinkle his magic, although his options for new places to do so are rapidly thinning. He arrived in Swansea fleet-foot from appearances at the curling, the ice hockey and the snowboarding at the Winter Olympics. In the summer Games of 2024, in Paris, he was at the swimming, the dressage, the gymnastics, the beach volleyball, the judo and the fencing. He’s done the Super Bowl, obviously. He’s done Wrestlemania, even more obviously.

However, as far as I’m aware he’s never done the Burghley Horse Trials. Something for Snoop in Lincolnshire this September? Not sure the mass flapping of white tea towels would go down terribly well with the horses, but a calmer, less towel-led appearance from the legend behind Let’s Get Blown would surely be just the boost equestrianism needs as it seeks to grow its brand.

Or what about bowls, with the England National Finals in Leamington Spa in August? One can already smell the weed drifting across Victoria Park as the competition gently unfolds. Celebrity fandom is dead. Long live Snoop Dogg.

Photography by Athena Pictures/Getty