Agents That's a thread on its own and likely to generate more bad language than is ever seen in this page!
I gave an example of how £62M pa was being taken out of one club in English football and paid over to American venture capitalists. This was a case of money being taken by already rich owners and the club suddenly finding they were in debt to the tune of £660M. The club was taken private, delisting from the LSE, and then relististed on the NYSE. This is just commodity trading, nothing to do with English football.
There is no mention of multiple ownership Dan. Bayern has never had a stake in any of those clubs - they have played friendlies against them and allowed the opponent to keep all the gate receipts, or they have paid well over the odds for players from those clubs, or they have loaned or given money. There has never been any question of those clubs having any affiliation to Bayern. Football is not just business - it is part of the cultural heritage of a town, part of the history of what a town has become. If I, or anyone else, wants to donate money to keep a cultural entity alive then we can do so, and the same applies to a football club. The Premier League has been milking the lower leagues dry for years and now needs to put something back in.
I don't disagree at all - but I honestly didn't think some of our rules / laws allow it. There was a similar discussion on the premier League board about Bury.
Fit and purpose test clearly isn't fit for purpose! The Bury guy admitted he didn't even know Bury had a football team !
Man united is probably one of a very limited number clubs to syphon directors profits out of the country. Most foreign owners plough much more in than they pull out, the Pozzos maybe the exception. £62m is chicken feed compared to the money being lost to the UK by paying extremely high player salaries and agent fees to foreigners. Anybody that invests in clubs like Bury should expect to continue to lose money for a long time. A classic example was moneybags Simon Jordan at Crystal Palace who lost his newfound fortune by recklessly bad fiscal management. The only prospect of football club owners actually making a profit is by reaching and staying in the PL.
Bury’s financial instability was evident for five years under the previous owner, Stewart Day, a Blackburn-based property developer specialising in accommodation blocks for students. In 2014 his company borrowed money secured on Gigg Lane at 10% interest a month, which compounded into 138% annual interest. That, sadly, did not clang enough alarm bells and Day continued building his flats, and loading borrowings on to Bury, until it all collapsed. When he announced in December that he had sold the club to Dale, for £1, Day said he wanted to spend more time with his family, while Dale spoke of it as a philanthropic venture. Day’s financial difficulties were laid bare within weeks, as his companies fell into insolvency and administration. Day’s property ventures were not even supported by banks; he had borrowed heavily from Lendy, a model based on attracting money from thousands of individual investors, which has itself collapsed and is now subject to a Financial Conduct Authority investigation. Day also pre-sold individual flats, promising guaranteed returns from students’ rent payments, and many investors are now distraught at seeing life savings lost. At Bury itself, loans now up to £3.7m, secured on Gigg Lane, were taken from an outfit called Capital Bridging Finance Solutions, based in Crosby, with 40% commissions paid to still-unnamed third parties as introduction fees. The publicly filed documents state that Capital in turn mortgaged Bury’s ground to a company registered in Malta, whose own lenders for the deal were eight companies domiciled in the offshore tax haven of the British Virgin Islands. The above is taken from a much longer article about how small town football clubs are part of the fabric of the town. What we see happened here is a poorly regulated system that allowed totally unsuitable ownership of a towns football club. Use a football club as security on loans that even banks say are unviable. Loans being taken out in the form of mortgages, sold on to multiple companies outside of the UK. As I said before, clubs are simply being regarded as commodities that you buy, sell or raise funds for other projects, and hard luck if you have been a fan for 50 years when the whole economic pack of cards collapses.
Do I detect an increasing number of people unwilling to pay for the Sky or BT service? Maybe the crazy amounts paid to English football clubs will start to diminish in future?
I'm not convinced this example is typical of most clubs in the FL or PL. Football clubs have always been traded as a plaything for well off owners. The only difference is now they are often not local businessmen but increasingly from abroad. The current weak pound may also contribute to their interest. Jim Bonser anybody?
The Bury example shows that lack of proper regulation by the football authorities allowed money to be raised against the club for non-footballing projects, thereby taking money away from the game. If you follow what is happening at Bolton you will see that there is multiple ownership of the club, the hotel, the access roads, car parks and surrounding land. How many other clubs are being run in this way, but it is hidden from public gaze until it all goes wrong? Some people are suggesting there are dozens of the smaller clubs in England on the brink of going under. Why did the FA bring in the tests for ownership if they were happy that everything was as it had always been? They knew full well that things were going on that would wreck the network of professional clubs if they didn't appear to do something. Unfortunately they could not be as tough as they needed to be because of the way that the law operates. We have seen how Bassini has been using the courts, and he should have had a lifetime ban on going near a club again.
I would not say they have always been traded as a plaything SH. They were, originally, clubs or associations, with a membership base. They were as organic to their locations as the working man's club was. Somewhere along the line things changed in England and it became a free for all with , as you say, increasing foreign ownership. Don't go along the lines of 'Football clubs have always been traded' as if this were a problem endemic to football as a whole - it is an English thing. Amongst the richest 4 clubs in continental Europe 3 are fan/membership owned. Nobody can go along and buy Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern lock stock and barrel. We need to redefine exactly what a club, or an association, is. In the end a club like Manchester City are neither 'English' nor are they a 'club', nor do they have a right to carry the name 'Manchester' in their title - as they have hardly any contact to the place.
When I stated football clubs have always been traded I was referring to English / UK clubs. As raising capital is becoming more complex and sophisticated there is bound to be some loss of transparency. Not many supporters really care until it goes wrong then they become accountants overnight. What is clear a club like Bolton ran up debts of £173 million over several seasons which is why the FA has sought to impose limits. The unrealistic ambitions of many football club boards that sanction player salary costs which equate to over 80% of income need to desperately evaluate their skill sets.
Eddie Davis who owned the club before Anderson did cover all of the clubs debts, so at the time he sold out the club was just about solvent. In the three years since, Anderson who had a history of bankruptcies similar to Bassini has not provided funds, so the administrators have said that the club now owes £25M. It is not a surprise to find Anderson and Bassini trying to wrap up a deal between them, and maybe the FL have got it right by saying that Bassini did not pass their tests.
Davies revoked his investment in Bolton FC when they were relegated from the PL whilst owing £200m. He only promised to wipe out £125m / £170m (depends who you believe!) when the club was sold. Some reports suggest the present debt is more like £42m. Is their stadium indebted? Bassini must have seen some potential profit somewhere in their murky finances.
What is clear there must be a financial commitment for any potential buyer for Bolton FC way in excess of £25m or else there would be a massive queue of buyers. I suspect the real figure is many times greater.
This kind of thing is rife throughout business. Too much money going into too few pockets. It is unsustainable.
Sadly officially announced that Bury have been expelled . Bolton given 14 days to find a buyer . Rather spookily Bury and Bolton were due to meet next next weekend .
That is sad and a disgrace that this is happening to teams in our league The Sky money must be shared out in all the leagues not just the so called top six teams, if they had their way they would carve up all the money between them and the rest of the Premier League living off scraps
I think they all get a bit but it's a very small percentage. Ofcouse the bigger clubs can earn more by having a greater number of games on TV.
