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The Takeover Thread - Duchatelet Finally Sells (Jan 2020)

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  • What’s going on with the takeover then? Isn’t it about time CARD got involved again? Some kind of statement from the club would be nice.
  • Of course the recent further twist upwards in TV revenue has reduced corporate as a % of income. (Of course a few of us think we should be campaigning for that to change as a result of TV money being distributed more fairly down the leagues and into grass roots, but sadly its a very few of us). However corporate revenue should not be underestimated. It has synergy with club and stadium sponsorship rights - which is about the only aspect of the Olympic Stadium shambles where Karren Brady has a relevant argument. For them, corporate capacity was the key attraction of the OS deal (even before the realised the taxpayer would pay for the whole re-build)

    Of course also, generally London is likely to be the most attractive destination for a foreign buyer.

    The question I was seeking to address is whether this London factor is sufficient to command the preposterous premium that RD is asking. Well I think the market is telling us the answer, is it not? Apart from the bidders who may or may not be interested in us, I was told by Blackpool ST of two parties that had ran the rule over us, this year and walked away fairly quickly. And actually went to look at Blackpool (among others) instead. While I am not at liberty to disclose the full details he gave me, the European one sounded to me very solid with a diverse range of retail holdings as well as interests in two clubs in its home country. He knew the details because both parties took the trouble to meet with BST, in order to work out what is really going on with the Oystons. So for me that is practical evidence that while the London factor exists, it does not justify a premium of 100% which is implied by the recent sale of Wigan vs what RD wants for us.

  • 1300 up

    Are you having a party?
  • I'm going to predict that the takeover will happen when this thread's page number catches up with the year number. So could be 2019; could be 2020....
  • .

    Ok, you’ve made your point.
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  • Stone the crows...
  • Solidgone said:

    Stone the crows...

    I think sounds knew the lead singer
  • Or was that Vinager Joe?
  • Vinegar Joe .. Elkie Brooks and Robert Palmer .. Stone the Crows .. Maggie Bell
  • edited September 2018

    For any buyer of us - surely they can see the potential of the club.
    Getting to the PL would be the obvious pull but maxing out on Corporate would add to the Income.
    We are a little'sleeping giant'

    Except for a couple recently promoted minnows, the majority of season tickets in the PL are about £600-2000 for the best seats and mostly £300-800 for the cheapest, now. Are Addicks prepared for that? I somehow don't think so. Tickets are so much more expensive than the last time CAFC were in the PL. Look at the lowest priced clubs and for the most part, where are they in the table?
    image

    Also, we would have one of the smaller stadiums. Combine the two, our match day revenue would be among the lowest in the PL.
    https://worldfootball.net/attendance/eng-premier-league-2017-2018/1/

    Which means we would struggle to stay in it. Clubs with low gate receipts typically go down sooner rather than later, which is why Palace and other clubs are desperate to increase their capacity and if necessary, attract a different kind of crowd. The ability to get 35,000+ for every match and charge tourist prices for many of them is not a luxury anymore, it's required.

    This is why that although I agree there is big potential here, what we really need to reach that potential (and keep it) in my opinion is an owner willing to spend £150-250M like Tony Bloom did on Brighton.

    Getting out of the Championship now requires clubs to lose the max allowable each year and often more the last year. If it were to take even just 4 years, that's £50M. If it takes seven, that's £90M. Unlike L1, the Championship has 3 new clubs every year getting parachute payments that are twice more than CAFC's entire turnover would be in that division. And often 4-8 clubs at any one time getting some form of parachutes. It's hell to get out of the Championship. Wolves lost £50-60M just the last two seasons to get out, breaching rules. Some think that is now the only way to get out, as there will always be a few clubs each year willing to role the dice. How to compete?

    The Valley by all accounts needs upgrades. Getting approvals, plans, plans approved, construction, cost overruns, etc.... at least another £75M over a decade and maybe£100M. Everton decided it would cost less per seat to just build a new stadium than re-develop Goodison due to proximity of houses and streets and the difficulty of approving one stand change at a time, plus the lost revenue each year a stand is under construction, which cannot be tolerated.

    Palace are renovating theirs. Arsenal have a newer one. Chelsea has approval for one. Shahid Khan is going to buy Wembley and yeah, he is eventually going to be tempted to move there. Palace is getting £100M to re-develop Selhurst and you just know the real price will be £150M+ by the end. West Ham now get attendances of 56,000 now, even in a crap stadium. You may all love the Valley, but it is not going to cut the mustard in the PL, as is.

    The training ground facilities themselves are not quality PL level, even if the pitches are. The proposed new building is at best "okay" for the PL and it is not under construction yet. Even MLS teams have facilities now that dwarf those of CAFC. Wolves spent £55M to get theirs to Category One and that was a few years ago. I think we need another £30M+ to get it to a level that will attract international talent. We won't survive in the PL without such an ability.

    So...... if we don't get an owner who can spend this kind of money without cringing, I think we have very long, hard road ahead. As in a generation or more. More smaller clubs will get sold to rich owners in that period who won't bat an eyelash at spending what is necessary to get to the PL.

    This is what worries me about the Aussies now. They seem scared by the £15M gap between their offer and Roland's wishes. If they can't deal with that, then how will they deal with the inevitable costs to get us to the PL? And even more... to stay there more than 1-2 seasons?



    yet bournemouth have a top gate of just under 12,000 and they seem to be getting on ok?

    didnt we previously have approval for extending the Valley (pre dowie) to 40,000. that would be more than sufficient imo
  • edited September 2018
    Yes but that was before selling the houses/land behind the east stand. Would be difficult to raise the height of the stand now.

  • TelMc32 said:

    Covered End - tbh I’d have to do a bit more homework,but I would have thought that c £20- 25m in the current market would be about right, but valuing football clubs is certainly an anomaly- after all the buyers are paying £20-25m to buy the right to lose another c £10m a year which is totally bizarre.
    In most business purchases, in order to justify a price of £20-25m you’d expect the business to be actually making a profit !! of probably c £2m to £3m a year.
    Football club purchases generally defy any business logic because they are a relatively quick way to become poor or broke.

    In the dim and distant past, I did mention a friend who has worked in football all his life and has also introduced a number of investors to clubs in recent years.

    Charlton were looked at, but the price that Duchâtelet wanted was unrealistic. I was told then that this is all down to property - The Valley & Sparrows Lane - as there is nothing else tangible - players on minimal contracts and mostly not valued highly and we are loss making.

    The valuation I was told was £20m to (at a push) £25m. Nothing has changed in terms of other tangibles, so Roland needs to bite the bullet or carry on losing £1m a month.

    It doesn’t take an Alan Turing-like genius to work it out.
    Was that before the sale of Lookman or before his arrival?
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  • The views of this thread are soon to be passing our record purchase. Jason Euell £4.75 million.

    Fucking hell those were the days.

    Objectively speaking, we was purely an excellent and really well run football club.
  • Dave2l said:

    The views of this thread are soon to be passing our record purchase. Jason Euell £4.75 million.

    Fucking hell those were the days.

    Objectively speaking, we was purely an excellent and really well run football club.

    Didn't Darren Bent become our record signing when we sold him? IIRC become a record signing and sale on the same day.
  • TelMc32 said:

    Covered End - tbh I’d have to do a bit more homework,but I would have thought that c £20- 25m in the current market would be about right, but valuing football clubs is certainly an anomaly- after all the buyers are paying £20-25m to buy the right to lose another c £10m a year which is totally bizarre.
    In most business purchases, in order to justify a price of £20-25m you’d expect the business to be actually making a profit !! of probably c £2m to £3m a year.
    Football club purchases generally defy any business logic because they are a relatively quick way to become poor or broke.

    In the dim and distant past, I did mention a friend who has worked in football all his life and has also introduced a number of investors to clubs in recent years.

    Charlton were looked at, but the price that Duchâtelet wanted was unrealistic. I was told then that this is all down to property - The Valley & Sparrows Lane - as there is nothing else tangible - players on minimal contracts and mostly not valued highly and we are loss making.

    The valuation I was told was £20m to (at a push) £25m. Nothing has changed in terms of other tangibles, so Roland needs to bite the bullet or carry on losing £1m a month.

    It doesn’t take an Alan Turing-like genius to work it out.
    When you consider Douchbag bought the club for (roughly) 18m, which was on the cheap as the spivs needed rid ASAP and since then TV money has gone up, as has land value, 20-25m would seem about right, imo.

  • edited September 2018

    I’m not going to quote the long posts above about how we’re doomed if we make it to the PL and don’t have mega rich owners. Season tickets don’t have to go up to eye watering levels. They can stay at a reasonable price to fill the bulk of the ground and thereby reduce the number available on a casual match basis. Those tickets can be sold at a premium if the match warrants it (Man Utd, Arsenal Chelsea etc) otherwise it’s the tv and other ancillary income that is what the club would survive and thrive on

    Name other clubs our size doing this now? I assume Bournemouth come to mind. But for every one of these, I can name 6 clubs or more that tried the same exact thing and got relegated doing so the last few years. And I can give you one or two trying that right now that will go down this year... Huddersfield and Cardiff. And I can name clubs that fit my profile, with rich owners willing to lose a lot of it, whose clubs are not going down now or anytime soon.... Wolves, Brighton, Watford. In fact, Bournemouth's owner is very rich, so I am not sure I can actually think of some PL club "thriving" on subpar attendances and low matchday income. I believe what you think exists is a "unicorn."

    What others say about match day income being less important now because of TV money is simply incorrect and is a shallow analysis that does not match studies and research data on the subject.

    First, TV money is not distributed evenly, or even close to such. Clubs that generate more match day income spend it on players. This makes them win more. This moves them up the table.... which LEADS to much bigger TV income. And that TV income is then spent on more players that are better and the cycle continues.

    Second, sponsors look at match day income and attendances to determine what to pay for sponsorships, which is a huge factor in staying up over time. Lower attendances and lower matchday money send a signal to sponsors that not enough eyeballs and not enough money exist with followers of that club, and thus the club also gets much lower sponsorship income.

    The combination of these two factors will mean CAFC, with an owner unwilling to lose money, and a good dose of it, will never make us more than a yo-yo club. This is not 2001, anymore.
  • edited September 2018
    .

  • edited September 2018
    CAFCDAZ said:



    yet bournemouth have a top gate of just under 12,000 and they seem to be getting on ok?

    didnt we previously have approval for extending the Valley (pre dowie) to 40,000. that would be more than sufficient imo

    That is called "selectivity bias." You find the one club with a low gate that has made it 5 years and then "project" that as proof. It's like when someone says "Wow, its 40C out today, which proves global warming cannot be true." Same thing.

    Let's not forget that Bournemouth's owner is a billionaire. And that he spent more than FFP allowed to get promoted and got fined millions for it. So even your one example actually proves MY point.

    Clubs can make the PL without a super rich owner. And without overspending. And with low gate income. It's called "luck." But they don't stay there long. The way to get there and stay there is to have very rich owners willing to overspend and then make sure you are at least in the middle of attendances.

    Just re-look at the chart of attendances I showed on the other page. Look at the top half and the bottom half. Despite TV income, notice how attendances strongly correlates with where clubs finish, over the long term.

    Why does Tottenham have a new stadium? Why does Chelsea want one? Why does Everton want one? Why did West Ham move from a great stadium? Why did Arsenal leave? Not because they are "old." It's because they KNOW that with new stadiums they will raise prices and get more seats and more tourists and thus.... more money. It won't make them a profit in most cases. Every cent will be spent on new players, except maybe for Arsenal.

    You simply have to have the money (from every source you can) or you will never reach your goals. If the goal is to win the PL, that requires X, 90% of the time. If it is to make top 4, it requires Y. If it is to stay up, it requires Z.

    I am fine with having Z and just "staying up." But the best way to ensure that is to be Wolves, Watford, Brighton, Leicester. Not Huddersfield and Cardiff. In every single case I mentioned, FFP rules were broken to go up and in all cases, big fines were imposed doing so (except Wolves, who are soon going to get it, retroactively.) If our next owner is not comfortable with that.... then everyone had better be fine with lowered expectations, because there are always a few clubs EVERY year in the Championship who ARE willing. And those are the ones going up. Newcastle lost £90 million to go up in the Championship.... in one year! And that was WITH parachute payments. It was money VERY well spent.

    And as more of them go up by spending (and stay), and more rich clubs that do the same go up from the Championship, it leaves less and less room over time for "family clubs" to see the light of day.

    Because the money in the PL is so vast, more new owners feel that £40M to buy a club and then another £100-150M over six year on wage over-runs and infrastructure improvements is worth it, for once they are in the PL, they recoup all that and then some, in valuation. They are right. Wolves is a PERFECT example.

    As more owners figure this out, clubs with nice, properly run family orientations, hoping to limit losses will become permanent minnows. Food for whales.
  • CAFCDAZ said:

    For any buyer of us - surely they can see the potential of the club.
    Getting to the PL would be the obvious pull but maxing out on Corporate would add to the Income.
    We are a little'sleeping giant'

    Except for a couple recently promoted minnows, the majority of season tickets in the PL are about £600-2000 for the best seats and mostly £300-800 for the cheapest, now. Are Addicks prepared for that? I somehow don't think so. Tickets are so much more expensive than the last time CAFC were in the PL. Look at the lowest priced clubs and for the most part, where are they in the table?
    image

    Also, we would have one of the smaller stadiums. Combine the two, our match day revenue would be among the lowest in the PL.
    https://worldfootball.net/attendance/eng-premier-league-2017-2018/1/

    Which means we would struggle to stay in it. Clubs with low gate receipts typically go down sooner rather than later, which is why Palace and other clubs are desperate to increase their capacity and if necessary, attract a different kind of crowd. The ability to get 35,000+ for every match and charge tourist prices for many of them is not a luxury anymore, it's required.

    This is why that although I agree there is big potential here, what we really need to reach that potential (and keep it) in my opinion is an owner willing to spend £150-250M like Tony Bloom did on Brighton.

    Getting out of the Championship now requires clubs to lose the max allowable each year and often more the last year. If it were to take even just 4 years, that's £50M. If it takes seven, that's £90M. Unlike L1, the Championship has 3 new clubs every year getting parachute payments that are twice more than CAFC's entire turnover would be in that division. And often 4-8 clubs at any one time getting some form of parachutes. It's hell to get out of the Championship. Wolves lost £50-60M just the last two seasons to get out, breaching rules. Some think that is now the only way to get out, as there will always be a few clubs each year willing to role the dice. How to compete?

    The Valley by all accounts needs upgrades. Getting approvals, plans, plans approved, construction, cost overruns, etc.... at least another £75M over a decade and maybe£100M. Everton decided it would cost less per seat to just build a new stadium than re-develop Goodison due to proximity of houses and streets and the difficulty of approving one stand change at a time, plus the lost revenue each year a stand is under construction, which cannot be tolerated.

    Palace are renovating theirs. Arsenal have a newer one. Chelsea has approval for one. Shahid Khan is going to buy Wembley and yeah, he is eventually going to be tempted to move there. Palace is getting £100M to re-develop Selhurst and you just know the real price will be £150M+ by the end. West Ham now get attendances of 56,000 now, even in a crap stadium. You may all love the Valley, but it is not going to cut the mustard in the PL, as is.

    The training ground facilities themselves are not quality PL level, even if the pitches are. The proposed new building is at best "okay" for the PL and it is not under construction yet. Even MLS teams have facilities now that dwarf those of CAFC. Wolves spent £55M to get theirs to Category One and that was a few years ago. I think we need another £30M+ to get it to a level that will attract international talent. We won't survive in the PL without such an ability.

    So...... if we don't get an owner who can spend this kind of money without cringing, I think we have very long, hard road ahead. As in a generation or more. More smaller clubs will get sold to rich owners in that period who won't bat an eyelash at spending what is necessary to get to the PL.

    This is what worries me about the Aussies now. They seem scared by the £15M gap between their offer and Roland's wishes. If they can't deal with that, then how will they deal with the inevitable costs to get us to the PL? And even more... to stay there more than 1-2 seasons?



    yet bournemouth have a top gate of just under 12,000 and they seem to be getting on ok?

    didnt we previously have approval for extending the Valley (pre dowie) to 40,000. that would be more than sufficient imo
    No.

    That is called "selectivity bias." You find the one club with a low gate that has made it 5 years and then "project" that as evidence. It is not logical and in fact, is contrary to the evidence.

    It's like when someone says "Wow, its 40C out today, which proves global warming cannot be true." Same thing.

    Let's not forget that Bournemouth's owner is a billionaire. And that he spent more than FFP allowed to get promoted and got fined millions for it. So even your one example actually proves MY point.

    Clubs can make the PL without a super rich owner. And without overspending. And with low gate income. It's called "luck." But they don't stay there long. The way to get there and stay there is to have very rich owners willing to overspend and then make sure you are at least in the middle of attendances.

    ok Burnley, Stoke, Watford as another example. its more than just a gate. luck and form play a massive part of it. aside from the top 7, pretty much every club are battling relegation in the PL.

    or we could just look at this the average premiership attendance for the past 10 years. all under 40,000.

    i here you but very much disagree.
  • Rumour I am hearing is it's done. Signed and sealed to be announced tomorrow.

    Sadly after 3 nights of less than 3 hours sleep on the trot it could be voices in my head.
This discussion has been closed.

Roland Out Forever!