Jim Ballantyne was the chairman of Scottish

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

team

Airdrieonians Airdrieonians Football Club is a Scottish professional football team in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, who are members of the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) and play in Scottish League One. They were formed in 2002 as Airdrie United ...

, from 2002 until June 2015 and from June 2017 until Jan 2018. He also served as president of the

Scottish Football League The Scottish Football League (SFL) was a league featuring professional and semi-professional football clubs mostly from Scotland.One club, Berwick Rangers, is based in the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is located approximately 4 km south ...

, and served on the board of the

Scottish Football Association The Scottish Football Association (also known as the SFA and the Scottish FA; sco, Scots Fitba Association; Scottish Gaelic: ''Comann Ball-coise na h-Alba'') is the Sport governing body, governing body of association football, football in Scot ...

. Ballantyne bought out

Clydebank Clydebank ( gd, Bruach Chluaidh) is a town in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland. Situated on the north bank of the River Clyde, it borders the village of Old Kilpatrick (with Bowling, West Dunbartonshire, Bowling and Milton, West Dunbartonshire, Mil ...

and renamed the club as Airdrie United in 2002. This allowed Airdrie United to take Clydebank's place in the

Scottish Second Division The Scottish Football League Second Division was the third tier of the Scottish football league system between 1975 and 2013. History The Second Division was created in 1975, as part of a wider reconstruction of the Scottish Football League (SFL ...

. The motivation behind the move was to create a replacement team for the original Airdrieonians club, who had gone out of business earlier that year due to crippling debts. Ballantyne had first attempted to gain entry to the

by applying for the place created when the original Airdrieonians closed, but Gretna were accepted instead. Ballantyne sold control of Airdrieonians to west of Scotland businessman Tom Wotherspoon in June 2015 and took up the role of vice-chairman at the club. In June 2017 Tom Wotherspoon stepped down as chairman and director of Airdrie FC with Ballantyne taking up his previous role as chairman until Jan 2018 when the club was sold to a consortium of local businessmen.

References

Living people Chairmen and investors of football clubs in Scotland Airdrieonians F.C. Scottish Football League Year of birth missing (living people) {{Scotland-business-bio-stub