How Much Does Seagrave Cost Per Year

[PaulW]

2 hours ago, C.J said:

I have no idea why they've not done that already, and use that for houses 

I believe there's a legal requisite that the old training ground can only be usd for sporting purposes.

[Bluebeemer]

4 hours ago, FOXYTALK said:

Could we sell thee women's training facility and put them in with the men's team.

Maybe we should just swap and let the women train at seagrave and the men go back to Belvoir Drive.

[Bert]

3 hours ago, FoxesWalk said:

Could also do what Chelsea did and sell the women’s team to ourselves for 10s of millions 🤣 they got away with that somehow 

With what money?

[Raj]

Maybe open it out to fans.

Ginetta and his gang would mob that place for £200 a pop a day!!!

[CornwallFox]

46 minutes ago, Tommy G said:

Give it a break - you can't just label the entire big 4 as terrible. If you are talking about Audit and Carillion then yes there will be failures, it's a numbers game - there are plenty of issues with lower tier firms aswell, which is why they have tightened up audit reporting which makes the audit process now completely ridiculous and laborious, 3 months of the year I don't look forward to. 

 

What direct experience do you have with advisors to label them terrible? Or is it just something that you've picked up in the guardian. I deal with PwC Tax and KPMG for M&A and both in my experience are very good, but with anything there will be the opposite. 

 

Back to the subject, whether it's big 4 or otherwise, LCFC need some external help. Do you have a better suggestion?

They are direct competitors in the same marketplace, doing the same job, with the results of their work in plain sight to me.

There are hundreds of examples of failures. No small firm would survive their failures, yet simple name recognition apparently is enough for them to survive anything.

[FoxFossil]

Seagrave is an asset that could be sold/ made sustainable. Need to subject it to 'soft market testing' where you sound out major developers/ hotel chains etc to determine its value in the market. Could be redesigned/ part sold to retain core sporting requirements. If no interest from others, it really has no value, and the books should reflect that.

[Foxin_Mad]

19 minutes ago, Raj said:

Maybe open it out to fans.

Ginetta and his gang would mob that place for £200 a pop a day!!!

That's a great idea, maybe they could get the happy clappers in, they can pay £200 a pay to clap the players after a hard days training, put some honesty flags out, they'd love it. 

[Tommy G]

25 minutes ago, CornwallFox said:

They are direct competitors in the same marketplace, doing the same job, with the results of their work in plain sight to me.

There are hundreds of examples of failures. No small firm would survive their failures, yet simple name recognition apparently is enough for them to survive anything.

I'm not sure you're qualified to know what you're talking about, no offence. 

 

Vantis is an example of an ''non top 4'' accountancy practice that went under due to fraud effectively, never mind lack of competence with their clients. 

 

You haven't come up with an alternative strategy or your experience in dealing with your approach to cutting a cost base when the current mob haven't got a clue what they are doing.

 

I'll ask again, what would you do??

[Tommy G]

15 minutes ago, FoxFossil said:

Seagrave is an asset that could be sold/ made sustainable. Need to subject it to 'soft market testing' where you sound out major developers/ hotel chains etc to determine its value in the market. Could be redesigned/ part sold to retain core sporting requirements. If no interest from others, it really has no value, and the books should reflect that.

No value? The land and structures for starters have a value.

 

Bit of foxestalk extremism coming through

[Stadt]

Even if Belvoir drive can't be sold it's madness to still be operating it. More ground staff, cleaners, caterers, facilities managers, security and whatever else we just can't afford.

 

This ends in administration - Methven's most eprtninent option was that we have to slash our our operating costs but we don't even have a CEO!!!

[FoxFossil]

2 hours ago, Tommy G said:

No value? The land and structures for starters have a value.

 

Bit of foxestalk extremism coming through

Seagrave only has value if somebody is prepared to buy it or part of it. Same as the club, may have a negative value ; huge running costs, change of use to housing unclear. May cost more to convert/develop than its worth. Developers often see value in land, but less so structures. Debate can be resolved by going to the market and see what offers come in. If club is in administration then a fire sale to asset strippers results. Better to try and secure some value whilst there is some imo.

[Stadt]

3 hours ago, StanSP said:

Give us a clue! 

Just incompetence, it could be fixed with a few phone calls to get a company out.

[Wortho]

6 hours ago, FoxesWalk said:

Could also do what Chelsea did and sell the women’s team to ourselves for 10s of millions 🤣 they got away with that somehow 

You are quite correct. Chelsea sold their women’s team to themselves for £200m!!

At the time every women’s team in total wasn’t even worth that amount.

The PL have now closed that “loophole”.

Chelsea got away with millions of pounds being fiddled. But they get away with it 🤷‍♀️

[ElusiveEd]

2 hours ago, Raj said:

Maybe open it out to fans.

Ginetta and his gang would mob that place for £200 a pop a day!!!

King Power Care Homes! 

 

A new direction I never saw coming. 

[CornwallFox]

2 hours ago, Tommy G said:

I'm not sure you're qualified to know what you're talking about, no offence. 

 

Vantis is an example of an ''non top 4'' accountancy practice that went under due to fraud effectively, never mind lack of competence with their clients. 

 

You haven't come up with an alternative strategy or your experience in dealing with your approach to cutting a cost base when the current mob haven't got a clue what they are doing.

 

I'll ask again, what would you do??

No offense but you're very wrong when it comes to my specific subject matter. I'm one of the experts in the country at what I do. I would suggest you don't make sweeping judgements based on zero knowledge. 

[MPH]

2 minutes ago, ElusiveEd said:

King Power Care Homes! 

 

A new direction I never saw coming. 

 

Ayew signed up as the first resident already..

[CosbehFox]

3 hours ago, davieG said:

As I understand it because there's Covenants in the Deeds placing restrictions that is believed to not allow housing as it was seemingly purchased from the YMCA  and was their sports facility. I believe the YMCA still have certain access rights.

 

This of course could all be bollocks 

You are right Davie. 
 

It’s all there to see on land registry and previous planning applications for the land.

 

The YMCA actually have a functioning residential building on the land. As well two pitches of their own. For example the dome at Belvoir Drive, often seen in lcfc footage, can be booked publically but through the YMCA. 
 

During planning process now involving any sports land you have to provide a provision for the replacement. Seagrave kept its golf course for example. At a school, if you built on the playing fields, you have to illustrate what’s your replacement pitch. 
 

It’s not easy. And you won’t find many examples of sporting land being built on (or not taking ten to fifteen years to get planning through). 

[CosbehFox]

4 hours ago, C.J said:

Someone at my works drives past it everyday, he says the carparks are nearly always half empty. It must be massively underused given it's size so could easily accommodate the women's team. 

If we're that hard up, then surely the income from some prime building land would help. 

During the day yes. 
 

Seagrave’s biggest use is at night and at the weekends when hundreds of academy players are playing there at the same time 

Edited 12 February by CosbehFox

[FLAN]

4 hours ago, Stadt said:

I can’t share more but there is at least one thing I know of that absolutely needlessly costs the club about £5k a year. 
 

There will be dozens of these things 

Fax maintenance contract 

[ElusiveEd]

Sell it to Forest or Derby.

 

Hard hat on. 

[Xen]

4 hours ago, coalvillefox said:

Because it's the best, womens only, training facility in the country and the club are immensely proud of that. It is also one of the standout reasons why some of the best young girls around choose Leicester when decide which academy they want to play for. It's not always all about the here and now, it's building something for the future also. I fully appreciate that Seagrave itself is also an incredible facility but it would feel like the women/girls just got shoved on an unused pitch somewhere in the far corner, at Belvoir Drive the whole facility is theirs.

I would've thought training at a start-of-the-art facility would be more appealing than training at a relatively dated women's only ground.

 

It's not like Seagrave isn't big enough to accommodate both the Men's and Women's sides comfortably. They don't need to be shoved into a corner - integrate them in with scheduled pitch usage, rotate gym schedules, players mingling in the canteen, etc etc. Heck, having it all as a 'One Club' philosophy would surely be a positive, rather than being the afterthought which they often seem to be. Other clubs put SO much more emphasis on their women's side (and academies, for that matter), for Leicester it almost feels like they're a distraction sometimes...

[VLC86]

3 hours ago, Bert said:

With what money?

Monopoly money.

[Vazman]

2 hours ago, Foxin_Mad said:

That's a great idea, maybe they could get the happy clappers in, they can pay £200 a pay to clap the players after a hard days training, put some honesty flags out, they'd love it. 

You mean a hard 60 mins Training a day.

[cat lady]

It might be my imagination,  but when the male footballers trained at Belvoir drive their fitness seemed much better 

[ramadaone]

4 hours ago, Terraloon said:

If you read my posts over the last few months I have been talking about running costs.They will have to be cut and cut dramatically 

 

 The other day I was trawling back through some of the closed years accounts and it’s quite interesting how some of the little snippets contained therein are quite frightening. Not just that but what they tell us it tells us that when the spending on transfers and wage growth got out of control the clubs “ ambitions” simply couldn’t be funded from the reality small income streams that a non PL club generates and even if in the PL without a significant transfer fee each year LC simply can’t afford the type of luxury facilities that Seagrave offers up.But it goes deeper in that to maintain two training grounds isn’t just financial madness it smacks of poor planning in that to have planned for just one site ( maybe different buildings on the site )  dealing with all teams would have bought about significant economies of scale .

 

 

Back to those snippets. A sum of circa £91 m by way of loan was provided by KP for construction costs in respect of Seagrave construction costs. The club clearly haven’t been in a position to pay down debt so either that has been swept up in the sum Top has written off or that debt is included in the sums still owed. 

 

In terms  of running costs of Seagrave we simply can do no more than guess the numbers.KP charge interest small sums on their loans ,  but charging and being paid aren’t one and the same nor are the sum in the accounts necessarily the same as will have to be shown in FFP submissions . If you work on the basis that say a nominal FFP  charge of 3% and that £91m is still owed there’s a £2-3 m charge in those submissions even if those sums aren’t the same as reflected in the accounts or ever likely to be repaid.

 

As for selling Seagrave the ship has pretty much sailed unless there is some way around the new squeaky PL rule re selling assets but as we all obviously know the league the club plys its trade is under the jurisdiction of the EFL where such transactions have been banned for many a year now. I am far from sure that Belvoir can be sold from a FFP perspective, the time to have done that was when Seagrave was delivered( see above) when no questions at all would have been asked.

 

 In those snippets in the accounts you can track for instance the massive increase in energy consumption by the club. Prior to Seagrave it was circa 12.2m KwH the latest published accounts that consumption was just under 17m KWH.

 

I can’t see that there is a statement as to how much of that is gas or how much electric. Being super conservative just on energy consumption my guess is that there is around a £500k increase in energy costs my logic is all , well most, of  that is a Seagrave cost.
 

I asked a contact of mine who is involved in a semi pro team how much the budget/ spend maintaining their one pitch he excluded man power costs and machinery hire and he estimated around £6k. I challenged him because that seemed massive and of course the 21 pitches at Seagrave will be maintained to a far higher standard and of course there will be economies of scale  he included watering costs,  annual refurbished costs etc.  Add in a staff of at least 10 grounds people and at least another 20-30 to maintain, clean and service the facilities themselves then you must be talking of at least £1.5 million

 

Business rates were something I mentioned the other week and add to those costs the water bill for the building, the insurance costs and that’s another £1 million minimum. There will be lots of other costs such as refuge disposal, window cleaning, TV licences etc etc . In themselves relatively small sums but collectively they are going to add at least another £100k 

 

So back to the question how much does Seagrave cost ? My best estimate would be £3-4 million in hard cash terms rising potentially to £5-6 million if you have to factor in the interest I talk about.

 

For perspective going back a few years ago the club used to tell us how much the stadium cost ( they no longer do ) pre Covid that was around £5 m
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"In those snippets in the accounts you can track for instance the massive increase in energy consumption by the club. Prior to Seagrave it was circa 12.2m KwH the latest published accounts that consumption was just under 17m KWH."   

Sits on top of a hill but no one thought to install wind turbines or solar panels !?!  I'm no more Green than the next man but surely this was just common business sense 

 

"So back to the question how much does Seagrave cost ? 

My best estimate would be £3-4 million in hard cash terms rising potentially to £5-6 million if you have to factor in the interest I talk about" 

Nearer double that second figure with all central overheads taken into account is my understanding