Court Case / Move from Oakwell - Further BFCST Update

Surely solicitor DD shudl be able to highlight them easy. i remember when i bought our house we found out about a NCB covenant and also something called chancery repair where the local church could come cap in hand for money to repair the church. We had to take insurance cover over it in case it happens. Wasnt expensive. Surely they can do the same?

 

Except they haven't been paid that money yet? And presumably at the point it was agreed they assumed it would be paid?

 

Still waiting for Doyles book to be written! This is just another chapter. What a mess.

 

It's worth remembering that the "80%ers" only bought the club. At that point the contract likely said an option to buy the 50% of the ground exists.

They wouldnt have needed to explore anything beyond that until they went to start that purchase.

Then all the legal searches come out.

It doesn't absolve them responsibility of agreed payments to date However.

 

Sorry if I’ve missed it but does anybody know for sure what the restrictive covenant says ? I’m still at a complete loss to understand why the consortium wanted to buy us in the first place other than to develop the land with the trade off being we’d have a new stadium on the edge of town built on an old muck stack to offset the fans ire. If the RC prevents a change in land use they’ve dropped a fundamental ballack.

 

Point taken. I wasn't suggesting that it wasn't a negotiated agreement between the two. Ultimately, it's an expected value calculation taken at the time, which turns a zero or £6m figure (with whatever probablility was attached to it at the time) into a certain £3.5m. Hindsight shows that it saved the owners money (hence it appearing on my list) but, in fairness, it had the potential when agreed to have been an additional £3.5m cost for them.

 

Assumptions.

 

Woukd you really not check what the option to buy the ground entailed beforehand? Did they not use lawyers when they purchased the club?

 

Do we play at a ground that is so run down that nobody actually wants to own it or pay for it's upkeep?

 

If it takes around a million for the upkeep of Oakwell then wow!!! You would have to be taken on a guided tour of the ground to see where the money is spent, because it's not at all obvious by looking around at a home game. I can't believe The Club think more money is to be made by paying cheaper rent but expecting fans to travel outside of the county, then just paying what they do currently for Oakwell.

 

We play at Swillsboro!?

 

One way or another the covenant has obviously not been revealed.
James Cryne seems to think it’s insignificant - so was he aware of it before the sale of the club?
If I was part of the BFCIG I’d be seething.
After saying that - the problem looks like it’s an easy enough one to solve - the covenant needs to be manoeuvred around.

 

I can't believe it costs £1million to run Oakwell. Here's a new question.
What if the owners of Oakwell, locked the Football Club out of the stadium, as other stadium owners have done in the past?
Anything is possible, I do feel like slapping all those involved in this nonsense until they start negotiating properly and behave sensibly.

 

We were 2nd in the league in March though, so seemingly more benefit to the 80% owners , especially if they suggested it?

 

Ok, My theory goes.....

Back in the year 2000 and odd, we went into administration. Doyle bought the club,
He talked about sweating the assets and using a portion of the car park for building houses.

Now let's just say, this "3rd Party" who it is reported as and in Statements, has some kind of right of say and purchase to the ground, outside of the council, Cryne and our current owners.

Im going to guess that this restrictive covenant is that Doyle retained a right of refusal to buy such land in the event on a future sale.

The Cryne's say they have no problem selling (its documented)
The owners wanted to buy (its documented)
The Council have not been approached (its documented, although their share was not part of the purchase of what the owners wanted (for now))
A "3rd Party" exists in the right to purchase (its documented)

So, as part of the current ownership, they had a contract to buy, and in that, it said along the lines of, have dibs on the Cryne's 50% share of the ground at a probably agreed amount. Again, as I have alluded to, it is likely at this point, all the legal searches and all that wasn't required in detail, because after all, they could have decided not to buy that share. So why spend money on everything on something you may not buy. But have something in contractual terms that allows them to go onto buy that 50% stake in the ground.

Anyway, now they do, the legal eagles are now doing their work and these are now showing this "3rd Party" coming out of the woodwork. Thats not to say, that the 3rd party wish to exercise that right, but, who knows.....

The club (80%) now are possibly saying that the amount they agreed to pay, shouldn't be as such, because they were not aware of the 3rd party right to refusal to buy the land in future sales, as such, they are paying for something that they won't get (or potentially get) the full use of, if the 3rd party invokes their right to buy the portion of the car park.....

However, in terms of agreed payments, they should honour the agreed structural payments of the club, unless of course the payments of this, are in some way, linked to the costs or future costs of the purchase of the ground.

Feasible?

 

Not really. I'm no business woman but if I bought a business with a chance to buy more later I would check it all out legally, not just rely on the seller telling me there would be no problems when I wanted to buy more.

 

Are you suggesting the 3rd party might be Doyle ?

 

One additional point worth making is that while the option to purchase Oakwell is one that the owners can choose to progress or not, there's still the obligation on them to provide somewhere for matches to be played.

Whilst we're all now fairly certain their actions are a misguided hardball tactic to force a change in their terms (given it's very obvious adverse impact on the fanbase, due to the attachment to Oakwell), I doubt that the logic of ground-sharing would make financial sense, given the obvious loss of revenue from lower attendances and the fact that they're still going to have to pay to lease the facilities used, which would no doubt reflect the additional upkeep costs of supporting additional fixtures. Ultimately, it would probably be a worse financial outcome than continuing to pay maintenance costs on a leased property where you receive full matchday income streams.

If you were looking for a long-term solution that didn't involve purchasing or leasing Oakwell, then the only logical one would be to build your own stadium and relocate to it. Given the upfront investment required for this, and the fact that you'd still have to continue leasing somewhere to play football in the meantime, I doubt that's an option for owners who are reluctant to invest additional money into the club.

If I were the Cryne family / BMBC I'd hold firm on any attempt to renegotiate the terms of the lease, in the knowledge that there are no realistic alternatives available to the club to obtain a better deal (and it's one that has been in place for several years already). It's also completely unrelated to the non-payment of the purchase monies, so I'd also be pressing ahead with recovering those monies which were negotiated by the Crynes in good faith.