Ground Share

[davieG]

Interesting info, and he's right about number 13 - useless bunch.

Courtesy of Wallington from the FoxFanzine site.

Spoke to Tim Davies yesterday re finances and the proposed ground share. In summary,

1. We owe Teachers £18m at 7% per annum which when cleared would give us back freehold of the stadium i.e. like a fixed rate mortgage.

2. The basic repayments are set at between £2.5m - £2.9m if we are in the Prem and £1m in the Championship paid in one go in the Summer before a ball is kicked.

3. 7% of £18m is £1.26m meaning that while we are not in the Prem we are paying £1m to Teachers per year, but the debt is increasing by £260k per year i.e. we are not even meeting the interest costs.

4. It would have taken 9 consecutive seasons in the Prem starting last year to clear the debt, or 19 seasons of yo-yo-ing. It would not be cleared if we stayed out of the Prem and repaid at the current rate.

5. The £2.5m - £2.9m paid last year equated to 1 or 2 decent signings which Tim thought might have kept us up.

6. Teachers have to sell the ground back to us early as part of the agreement and we are trying to negotiate a discount from the £18m owed to reflect early repayment of the loan, etc.

7. If we had achieved top 10 Prem status the full debt of £23m would be due to Teachers (unclear on the details of this).

8. The pitch dimensions can incorporate rugby.

9. The pitch will use the same technology as that at Wigan, except TD thought ours would be better as Wigan's owner insists on rolling it which is not recommended (this might mean something to someone who knows about these things).

10. There is no agreement for Tigers reserves to play at the Walkers. There is a possibility both reserve teams would play at Welford Road in the short term.

11. Tigers will pay half of the negotiated cost of the freehold and further compensatory amounts to reflect the fact they didn't have to bear any of the construction costs and the fact that our conferencing income is currently greater than theirs.

12. As with everyone else who has spoken to him I can confirm he is a very nice bloke and was in his office until 10.00 p.m. last night.

13. Why couldn't our local media have got any of these facts? (unless they did because I have long since given up reading/listening to them).

14. I hope I haven't misinterpreted anything he said!

[Guest]

It's essentially what we were told in the meeting.

However, I still think in the long term we would benefit from greater revenue from the Conferencing side, which he wouldn't answer.

The idea of a JV also causes great concern. When questioned about it by somebody with experience of JV's, he became very cagey IMO. I still think that conflicts will arise between the two sides, and I'm not happy that these will be resolved fairly.

I'm also not happy about what is coming out of Welford Road. The two sides seem to be contradicting each other on various points, like the aesthetics, finances, the fact that football will always take priority (primacy of tenure, I think it's called) etc.

Teachers have still not agreed to this proposal, understandable as they will lose out. Normally early repayment incurs a charge, not a discount, so I don't understand this.

At the end of the day, the board will go ahead with this. I could be wrong, but I have been led to believe that the board features a lot of accountants. They may have steadied the ship, they may stabilise our future, but our only hope of making significant money lies in finding our own Abramovich.

TD said in the meeting we were not in any financial trouble. If this is the case, I would chance my arm, and go for repaying the stadium ourselves. In the long long term, we will benefit from not splitting our non-football revenue 50:50 with a partner.