Huddersfield Town - £8.2m loss

Of course owning a ground involves paying some money, but of course, the owners on day 1 said they wished to do this and have reiterated this several times since. But still don't own it.

I recall the floodlights being changed in the late 80's which would make them around 30 years old, while the lights on the East Stand are newer still, and wasn't there some change in recent years to make them up to date for live games in the championship?

The level of rent seems pretty nominal when you consider just how much they are getting in terms of facilities, land, external buildings, car parking space and office space. Looking at some of the more recent rental agreements with Reading, Villa, Wednesday and Derby probably highlight that even more.

 

Current ground rental (19/20) for BFC is £192k, prior year was £162k. I believe the payment is linked to our league status.

This appears in the accounts as a non-cancellable operating lease.

The last few accounts left to file for the championship are, Derby, Wednesday (no surprises there!) Coventry, Watford and Blackburn.

 

I stand corrected.

What is the maintenance costs on the ground? It was in the accounts last time.

Coventry will be an interesting one - no ground costs.

 

Released 9 senior players. Jordan Rhodes reportedly £11k per week. Would not damage em I suppose. As long as they get the overall wage bill down to a reasonable amount.

 

Floodlights - so the structures were changed? I didn’t know that. I thought the metal structure has always been the same since ‘62. Obviously the lights themselves have been changed over time.

The lights on the stands are supplementary - to cover blocked light the new stands created. If the pylons were removed, they wouldn’t be upto the task. Additional ones were added behind the goalines, the other season, purely for the goalline tech cameras fixed to the West Stand.

Yeah, the rent for the amount of land you get is decent. But in terms of revenue it’s limited, and without significant investment to increase revenue streams, you’re just buying land.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see the club and Oakwell reunited again. But I can also see other business reasons not to. As I said earlier, the East Stand executive level is a lost/limited opportunity in its current layout. It needs extending. I don’t think a new West Stand would be big enough to accommodate it either.

In some respects, money aside, you could demolish and rebuild Oakwell in the same place and increase non-Matchday revenue etc. Similar to White Hart Lane.

 

The floodlights were changed using some of the £300,000 we got for John Beresford's move to Pompey. Seem to recall the ones before were a bit taller.

 

Presumably they pay rent which help Birmingham's accounts!

 

That's right.

As these are lower, and newer lights, it was quite blinding at first getting used to them.

JD in his book, always committed to something infrastructure wise to be improved each year. That year we sold beresford funded those new floodlights.

 

You are correct. The current owner Phil Hodgkinson doesn't have a pot to piss in. Funding his buyout via the parachute money. They've not been paying much in transfer fees, they're either loans or free transfers.

 

They have one more year of parachute payments.

If a club only has only one season in the Premier League, it gets two seasons of payments.

If it's more than one season, it's three seasons of payments.

The figure drops each time, though - I think their final tranche is 'only' £15million or so, whereas the first was over £40million.

 

Thought so. So is the loan payment to Hoyle in liue of the outstanding parachute payment?

 

Any pics of the old ones?

I forgot about the Beresford part. I remember now.

Not sure I’ve seen pics of the originals before.

 

Frightening thought on the original floodlights, I can remember the first match under them. A friendly with high score, 6-5 or something, several famous players involved, anyone have any further information?

 

Yes, I think it was the close season before 89/90, but someone else can confirm.

As for revenue, its down to the club/ owners/ council to create events that generate revenue and leverage it if they see that as a strategy. In the last 18 months, scope for doing so has been pretty much nil, but we have huge amounts of land and the ground is very close to a train station. I don't think the ground ownership or ground itself is the reason for lack of use.

A mix of lack of vision, intent, resource and maybe even market forces is more likely. I've seen events in allsorts of places, from Trafalgar Square in London to Park Square in Bristol, so I don't see why (pre covid and post covid) events could not be geared up in the ground, on the car park, or on the queens ground if the intent and demand was there.

 

My feeling on this matter is that if it was easy, practicable or profitable to do, then the club would have done it. So let me try to think of reasons why it may not have been done.

My guess is that local residents might have something to say about outside events. They put up with crowds and noise for most of the winter in the knowledge that at least they will have a break in the summer. The club would need council permission for this sort of event, and I believe that permission would not be granted because of local residents objections.

Remember also that it is not just turnover that is important. It is net profit. In order to to get to net profit, you deduct all costs directly associated with the event (e.g. the cost of the attracting and the staffing of the event). The club also bears the risk that no-one will turn up, and in a business where they have no experience, those risks are multiplied. Finally, if the club has to make capital expenditure, that capital has to be found, possibly by denying it to another part of the business that needs it. That expenditure must be set against net profit when calculating the overall benefit.

To summarise, I am happy if the club does not take risks with things that it does not understand.

 

Don't disagree, market forces seems to me the biggest stumbling block. Given residents live next to a football ground thats been there for 100 years plus, I suspect objections could be pleaded with less success. And if there was money in it, you'd think a council at times of cuts may well wish to leverage a partially owned asset.

 

I think that if we got a different ex wednesday player who once won something that time to appear every week, we'd sell out the ground, queens ground and monk bretton for the next 72 years

 

The fun fair’s down their at the moment in the car park, so it is doable. But I agree, to extent there must be limitations.

I guess the other issue is that the Metrodome next door has big indoor facilities of a small arena too - and they do it well to be fair.

And any decent music event which will attract decent numbers, won’t be held in Barnsley.

Like I say, a lot of land, with little revenue generated after the Matchday is finished.

 

Lincoln City are looking at moving for exactly same reason. They cannot make Sincil Bank commercially viable due to being in the middle of housing.