Sly

Maybe more of an obscure one this! First Director to go since relegation? https://www.hibernianfc.co.uk/news/2025/june/30/hibernian-fc-appoints-dan-barnett-as-chief-executive-officer/ Hibernian FC is delighted to announce the appointment of Dan Barnett as the Club’s new Chief Executive Officer. Barnett will officially start at Easter Road Stadium on 1 August, 2025, joining from former English Premier League side Leicester City, where he spent six years as Commercial Director. Prior to joining Leicester City, Barnett’s experience includes high-profile roles at UEFA in Switzerland, two America’s Cup cycles in San Francisco, California and Bermuda as Chief Commercial Officer, and Olympic experience in the USA as Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer at U.S. Ski & Snowboard in Park City, Utah - the Olympic National Governing Body of ski and snowboard sports in the USA. Hibernian FC Chairman Ian Gordon said: “I am delighted to welcome Dan as the Club’s new Chief Executive Officer. The process of appointing our new CEO has been long and thorough, to ensure we hired the right person to lead the business side of the Football Club. We wanted someone with real business acumen that could help propel this fantastic club forward, and Dan’s experience and expertise made him the outstanding candidate. “Dan is an ambitious, forward-thinking leader with experience not only in football but sports organisations across the world. His commercial nous and track-record of implementing successful strategies will greatly benefit a number of areas at Hibernian FC. Alongside this, he will be a great cultural fit at Easter Road and HTC, and will drive standards to ensure we are constantly improving. I look forward to seeing how he takes our vision for the Club to the next level.” “It is a tremendous honour to be joining Hibernian FC as Chief Executive Officer,” commented Barnett. “This is a club steeped in a proud history, with an incredibly passionate fanbase, and with huge potential as we enter an exciting new era for the Football Club. From my first meeting with Ian Gordon, I have been excited about the vision for Hibernian FC and implementing a strategy to help us achieve our goals here. “I am excited to start work in August, to work alongside my new colleagues, our supporters, and our partners, and to begin implementing our plan together as we strive to deliver a successful future for the Football Club.” As Leicester City’s Commercial Director, Barnett implemented and led the Club’s global commercial strategy, repositioning the brand for a world-wide audience, and driving substantial year-on-year revenue growth through partnerships, sales, ticketing, hospitality and retail. Alongside his senior leadership role at Leicester City, Barnett was also a Board Member of Leicester City Women and worked with the English Football Association (FA) on the domestic and global broadcast rights strategy for the Women’s Super League. Barnett’s commercial success at Leicester City mirrors similar positive impacts in all his previous roles, positioning him ideally now to lead Hibernian FC in what is an exciting time for the Club.

In fairness, Leeds and ourselves aren’t exactly loved universally by other clubs in the football league. Leeds get a media lovin, similar to what I expect of Wrexham this season. Ourselves, not so much. We are just a fallen giant in some respects. A nice scalp and great for click bait.

I forgot we’d have them inflicted upon us again!

The gap between the Premier League and Championship is growing wider. Even with a points deduction, we’ll most likely be around the top half, even with the squad we have. What this squad isn’t though, is as good as two seasons ago. We are still a very attractive proposition for a manager. I think we just need to appoint the right one, unless we want to focus on a major squad overhaul. We don’t have time for that, so it sort of narrows the type of Head Coach / tactical approach we’ll approach. Rohan fits that bill from what I’ve seen. My concern is, so did RVN and that was a right cluster****!

Hermansen goes for £15m tops in my opinion. He’s solid but he didn’t look the same player after he came back from injury.

Who? Sky? 😂

That would still be assuming RVN goes! I was convinced we were waiting for the 1st July, however I’m now convinced we’ll see a picture like this ……

Just a heads up in case anyone missed this. All opening EFL games live on Sky including Saturday 3pm kick-offs. Sky Sports will broadcast every match from the opening rounds of the Championship, League One and League Two live next season, with most kicking off at 3pm on Saturday. The EFL starts a fortnight before the Premier League so the blackout at that time is not in place. The EFL has introduced a split start, with League One and Two kicking off on 1 August and the Championship seven days later. On the second weekend five games from League One and League Two will be televised. The Premier League kicks off on 15 August with Bournemouth’s visit to the champions, Liverpool, which will be live on Sky. The EFL fixtures will be announced on Thursday at midday BST, with TV details for the first six rounds to be confirmed by 3 July. In an attempt to help fans make plans, TV games and fixture changes until the FA Cup third round in January will be confirmed before the season, with picks for the second half of the season announced in November. The two-week window of TV coverage will give the EFL greater exposure before a season that brings a new and expanded domestic TV deal for the Premier League. Under the terms of that contract, Sky Sports is increasing its Premier League live offering from 128 to 215 matches and 52 fixtures will be shown exclusively by TNT Sports. All non-3pm Saturday Premier League games will be televised live for the first time, with up to seven matches available each weekend. SkySports will broadcast multiple 2pm Sunday matches, which will often feature clubs participating in the Europa League and Conference League.

Is it more a case of people aren’t buying as much in Duty free? The traveler numbers I read yesterday, actually had 2024 on par with 2019, as Thailand is still externally popular. I guess if King Power navigate this storm, then the real challenge then comes when they have to bid for the contracts again, which all range from 2031 - 2033, depending on which airport. King Power moving out of those airports now would be challenging. However could a larger Duty Free business like Lotte, DFS, CDFG or Shilla mobilise quickly and take that space. They’ve got better buying power so could diversify staff if required. CDFG sort of makes sense, as it could utilise its Chinese links to generate quick, higher end products and they’d no doubt have links to sort taxes etc out for shipping cheaper. Lotte is the one though that might throw money at it to make it work. They wanted it in 2019 and made noise about the bidding process. They’re also supported by the South Korean government.

It’s more a case of the Thai airport aren’t making a lot, neither are King Power, so therefore it’s about sharing the pain. It’ll never return to lucrative market it was, therefore the KP cash cow has basically had its legs chopped off.

To put this into perspective. If King Power call in that loan of £100m to balance the books in Thailand for instance, the quickest way to generate cash would be sell players. If we went on a fire sale …. We’d need to sell half the squad to cover that bill. Then we’d still owe Harry Maquires Australian bank £120m+ as well. If we need to pay to sack RVN, that isn’t happening. The delay could be dealing with the impending issue in Thailand. Therefore stop and halt all non critical spending at Leicester. We’d be playing with kids if it reached that point, as we’d have no squads. Jokes aside, we then come to next summer, where we owe King Power a further £23m for the stadium …. How are we funding that?

The stadium is actually on a Hire Purchase agreement between K Power Holdings Company and Leicester City Football Club. Page 48 of the accounts on Companies House advises it. It states all amount owing on this agreement are due for repayment on 30th June 2026. Reading between the lines, if that’s all we have on hire purchase, we owed £23.6m for it. We owed King Power £100m as of June 2024, up by £40m from 2023. We owe Top £32m (we are paying him interest on this as well). We owe King Power Sports Investments £14m. We clearly trade internally with other King Power companies, however this isn’t usual for large companies with group holdings. It does make for the dressing of accounts in any company, as it makes it slightly difficult to see a true picture. It’s very messy but it’s safe to say we have relied on King Power for investment.

This, 100%. They’re back to pre covid levels and I think it’s more a case of King Power just sell so much overpriced junk, that no one buys it.

This is a bit of a PR disaster for them in all honesty. Doesn’t the culture basically demand respect etc? They’ll be getting renamed back to Raksriaksorn!

I’m guessing it’s Marketing or Insights teams!

I think someone made the point earlier in this topic. If you’re the Thailand Airport boss, you’re maybe looking over the fence at the likes of Malaysia etc and seeing what they achieve, compared to Thailand. You’d then be asking why.

Great point actually. Duty free as we knew it 20 years ago, doesn’t really exist. King Power is diversified, however I’m not sure it’s a return on investment like the monopoly they had in the airports.

They’ll have us liquidated and then rebranded as King Power Foxes! Then we can start the climb from the national league.

It’s just a bizarre situation we’re in really, King Power also keep trying to pin the downturn of the travelling trade into Thailand as a factor. If you look at passenger numbers through the airports, they are now higher than pre COVID. Maybe, people don’t want to buy King Powers tat!

I think, if they know they’d get away with it, we’d have been re-branded the King Power Foxes or something daft like that, rather than Leicester City.

His wealth is linked to King Power though. Without them funding us, we are screwed if we aspire to be a consistent Premier League team. We don’t have the pull as our commercial offering is terrible.

I’m really surprised they haven’t sold Belvoir Drive yet.

I see both sides of this argument, it’s got massive running costs and is costing us a fortune. Jokes aside though, we need to unlock its potential. It’s like owning a Ferrari, turning up to race and asking Driving Ms Daisy to be your Race Car Driver. We need to employ the world’s best coaches.

We could play at the Training Ground when we are relegated to the national league.

Whilst companies house stated Top is the person with significantly control, the accounts that were signed off in December 2024 basically state otherwise. We rely on investment from KPI (King Power International), player trading and bank loans. King Power own the stadium, Leicester currently don’t. It’s on hire purchase from King Power to Leicester. They’ve got a stock allotment ready to go for just over £100m in theory, which generates additional revenue. That could wipe off the bank loans to make us more saleable, or potentially be used to get additional investment. It is all very murky, as business is. However the long and short of it is, if King Power goes down, it’s going to have a directly impact on us. Worst case scenario, they asset strip us and basically sell everything off to fund King Power, as that’s the main business. We are basically a vanity project, that reading between the lines, isn’t appreciated that much throughout King Power.