Quantuma administrators secure sale of Dumbarton FC to Mario Lapointe

The future of one of Scotland’s oldest football clubs has been secured by professionals from Quantuma. Canadian entrepreneur Mario Lapointe has successfully completed a takeover of Dumbarton FC, seven months after it collapsed into administration.

Founded in 1872, Dumbarton FC has been in professional competition for 152 years – winning the Scottish League twice in that time, including the first-ever title in 1891, which the club shared with the original incarnation of Rangers. Eight years earlier, Dumbarton has also won the Scottish Cup in 1883.

While those glory days are far beyond living memory, the club has also triumphed in Scotland’s second tier twice – in 1911 and 1972 – and won the third tier in 1992, along with the fourth in 2009. But recent years have seen it placed into a state of financial precarity.

Despite securing promotion from Scottish League Two in the 2023/24 season, the club was sent straight back down, after a miserable campaign. The Sons finished 16 points adrift of Annan Athletic, at the bottom of Scotland’s third tier – thanks in part to a 15-point deduction for going into administration.

Quantuma managing directors Ian Wright and Craig Morrison were installed to oversee the administration in mid-November 2024. According to the Quantuma insolvency experts, the club’s directors “were left with no option” after failing to receive money owed from the sale of development land in 2021 – while fans rallied round, organising a GoFundMe, which raised over £122,000 to ensure the club could complete the season at all.

But after seven months of uncertainty about the club’s future, the administrators have shared some good news – ahead of what could be a make-or-break pre-season. Mario Lapointe – the Canadian entrepreneur who has been linked with the club for a number of months – has completed his takeover of Dumbarton.

Lapointe was confirmed as the preferred bidder for Dumbarton, after a previous proposal from Gareth Phillips was withdrawn due to his ill health. With the deal having finally gone through, Lapointe will now meet sponsors and supporters at three venues in Dumbarton, as well as attending a home friendly against St Mirren to take stock of his new club’s squad.

Commenting on the deal, Quantuma’s Wright and Morrison stated, "So many people have helped to get to this conclusion, but most importantly has been the support of the fans. We wish Mario and everyone involved with the club every success for the season ahead and for the longer-term future of the Sons."

A mechanical engineering graduate from the Université de Sherbrooke, Lapointe founded SMT-ASSY in 1996. The electronics manufacturing company based in Quebec has its own ties to professional football – having become the main sponsor of St-Lazare Hudson Soccer Club in 2013. According to Dumbarton, this reflects a long-term “passion for sport, and in particular, football”, and a recent profile by The Herald suggested he had already been searching for a “European lower league football club to buy”.

In that same interview, Lapointe said it was the GoFundMe efforts which first caught his attention. Suggesting mostly that website consists of people who only “make it to $25 or something and say, ‘thank you’ then give up” he was surprised when “the opposite happened with Dumbarton”. Citing admiration for the fact “people cared about their team” – and that “it was not only people from the town of Dumbarton”, but “fans of teams from other towns were helping out as well”,  Lapointe recognised the institutional importance of the historic football club.

Looking ahead, that might give some insight into what kind of an owner he will be. When compared to other Canadians to have recently invested in UK football clubs – Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney at Wrexham in particular – he admitted “I’m not going to be that guy”, adding he was “not a multi-billionaire who makes movies and has lunch with Netflix executives when I can find the time”. But he did promise something that most fans would have happily taken when the club first entered administration: stability.

He told The Herald, “What I want to get involved in first is putting the finances of the club where they should be. What I have noticed in football is that the ego and ambitions of too many owners is deeper than their pockets. They put the viability of the team in jeopardy. Especially in Italy and in Spain. Dumbarton had debt but it only had debt because of all that stuff that went on with the previous owners… [Now] Dumbarton won’t need to make money. But what it does need to do is stand on its own two feet. This team has been here 153 years and I want it to be there 150 years after I’m gone.”