This rent row

[Burf]

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/covent ... -32925361/

[billythefish]

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/coventry-city-fc/coventry-city-fc-news/2013/03/05/ricoh-arena-owners-double-profits-92746-32925361/

Yeah saw that - well if they have doubled the profits then there really is no need to pay them!

[bolix]

This is quite interesting http://www.financialfairplay.co.uk/

Yes, started reading it until I found out it runs to a billion pages!!
To save me the time looking is there a section devoted to sisu logic, you know the drill, goes a bit like this:

Give Bell a contract to 2015, don't pay MK £150,000 which would have preserved championship status or transfer fee.

Could have added about twenty other curiosities but one day somebody should write a book:
"CCFC, Tragedy, Farce or both?"

[The Yid]

Or just rinse and repeat what Steve Waggott said last night at the fans forum....

[AD]

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/coventry-city-fc/coventry-city-fc-news/2013/03/05/ricoh-arena-owners-double-profits-92746-32925361/

Yeah saw that - well if they have doubled the profits then there really is no need to pay them!

But that will still include the 'revenue' from the rent SISU owe them. That'll just be down as a debtor.

£7.8m turnover, £1.2m rent from the club with the odd smattering of food sales added in. That's 15% of turnover generated from the club despite the stadium bowl taking up over half of the actual development. Still believe the Ricoh is entirely reliant on the football club?

£1m profit (from a business Fisher is adamant is failing, so sort of puts a question mark over the validity of everything else he says), rent reduced by either £1m or £800k depending on whose side you believe and that seems like a fair deal on offer doesn't it - ACL running practically on breakeven?

[bolix]

Fisher will say whatever he's paid to say.
Fact is ACL would be better off without ccfc.
They could open up to far more lucrative revenue streams.......they have tried to accommodate the basket case of a club because the "perception" is that they "owe" the club.
Nothing could be further from the truth....they owe the club jack shit.

[The Englander]

I wonder if SBT membership is in the thousands yet, as it seems most/all other Trusts are? My guess is, if only eleven people turned up for their meeting, they're thousands short of thousands of members....

[Joe]

The SBT are about as useless as a half fit Sebastian Olszar.

[The Yid]

Fisher will say whatever he's paid to say.
Fact is ACL would be better off without ccfc.
They could open up to far more lucrative revenue streams.......they have tried to accommodate the basket case of a club because the "perception" is that they "owe" the club.
Nothing could be further from the truth....they owe the club jack shit.

Apart from the fact they owe their very existence to the club. Christ you couldn't make it up.

If you listened to CWR this morning you may have heard the football finance expert from Salford University talking about the situation. He said that it was insane from the start to separate the clubs main revenue sources - and would only lead to where we are. Now that sterling idea cans from the Council and Higgs through the creation of ACL, whilst having the club bent over a barrell. Remember Higgs getting a £50m stake for £4m??

Now plenty of people have criticised SISU for not understanding football - where was the 'understanding football' in that fucking decision?

I couldn't give a shit anymore about who's fault it is, what I want is a solution to get through this and have a club that can hold its own financially and on the pitch.
You however clearly are more interested in supporting the interests of ACL, and think that their survival is more important than that of CCFC.

Perhaps you and AD can have your own ACL messageboard and you can carry the love in on to your hearts content.

[Burf]

Rumours abound that Tim Fisher has now left too ... ?
End game approaching ?

[The Yid]

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/coventry-city-fc/coventry-city-fc-news/2013/03/05/ricoh-arena-owners-double-profits-92746-32925361/

Yeah saw that - well if they have doubled the profits then there really is no need to pay them!

But that will still include the 'revenue' from the rent SISU owe them. That'll just be down as a debtor.

£7.8m turnover, £1.2m rent from the club with the odd smattering of food sales added in. That's 15% of turnover generated from the club despite the stadium bowl taking up over half of the actual development. Still believe the Ricoh is entirely reliant on the football club?

You are just summising with these values. Turnover of £7.8m with profit of 1.1m. So their outgoings are 6.7m

Now if we were to assume for a second that the 1.2m rent covers mortgage payments for the stadium and utility costs alone - so no profit at all from the club, that is a value of 6.6m turnover with an outgoing of 5.5m.

Considering we have now taken out mortgage payments, utility costs for the football aspect -whatever they are doing to make revenue is low margin. Does this mean that a lot more of the revenue than you think come from low margin products such as food/drink? What other things would produce such low margins?

Then what about stadium sponsorship... that money from Ricoh will have gone to ACL - so that would go from the balance sheet with no football club in the stadium. Then the rental from the Casino firm - which will also include them covering their utility uses.

We don't have actual values to talk about, but headline numbers can be easily be manipulated to tell a very different story from the actual truth.

I think the real truth is that both CCFC and ACL need each other to have any long term prospects of survival.

[haggis]

Rumours abound that Tim Fisher has now left too ... ?
End game approaching ?

Stop reading sky blues talk!

[Burf]

? What's Sky Blues Talk ?

[bidford_tom]

ACL are about to appoint new bankers (HSBC), part of the move includes refinancing the council bailout, their business plan is currently made up without CCFC as tenants and their business plan stands up.

They have in their cash flow projections half the money that the club owe.

[bolix]

Yid, calm down, everybody's allowed a say.

As much as anyone I want this club to survive.
What is clear (to me at any rate) ccfc cannot improve under sisu.
Things are slightly better this year because they have been so unbelievably shit for the last four.
During that time they have alienated themselves from the city and community, divided the fan base got us relegated due to being unutterably shit at running a football club. Too late they realised that they had to actually get themselves into a better bargaining position when any goodwill that might have been due went down the shitter ages ago.
They have lost all credibility with the people who they most needed to cultivate: fans first and Council and ACL second.
I was glad when they "saved" the club.....but because they are inept in this department why would I want them to continue in any shape or form?

You don't agree, fair enough, but I would prefer to rip it up and start over.

I've felt this way for two or three years now and the crap that I see, hear and read only confirms this.

Another thing; this, "but there's nobody else" I don't believe it. Why? cos they (sisu) said it.

They're utterly toxic, febrile, pen pushing, lying ****. Others say it ACL's fault!!?? That they are killing the club If they had wanted to do that they could have done so (legally) some time ago. They have compromised massively when they did not have to. THey are not responsible for the mismanagement of the club....but it appears that because sisu have mismanaged the club that ACL have to come up with a plan to extricate them and the club from the mire. This is not how the world works.
I have accepted that the rent and F&B deal injures the club and needed to be rectified but sisu should have sorted this out years ago. Yes, the previous bastards are partly to blame for this but that was even more reason for sisu to get along with those they had to negotiate with. The opposite has happened.

In all of this I just fail to understand why sisu have kept going for so long.....why would they continue to throw good money after bad? By clinging on they just show up how hopeless they are.....more lies, empty threats, boardroom posturing......talk of F&B ffs. its total bullshit, they're a busted flush and should fuck off.

[AD]

Fisher will say whatever he's paid to say.
Fact is ACL would be better off without ccfc.
They could open up to far more lucrative revenue streams.......they have tried to accommodate the basket case of a club because the "perception" is that they "owe" the club.
Nothing could be further from the truth....they owe the club jack shit.

Apart from the fact they owe their very existence to the club. Christ you couldn't make it up.

If you listened to CWR this morning you may have heard the football finance expert from Salford University talking about the situation. He said that it was insane from the start to separate the clubs main revenue sources - and would only lead to where we are. Now that sterling idea cans from the Council and Higgs through the creation of ACL, whilst having the club bent over a barrell. Remember Higgs getting a £50m stake for £4m??

Now plenty of people have criticised SISU for not understanding football - where was the 'understanding football' in that fucking decision?

I couldn't give a shit anymore about who's fault it is, what I want is a solution to get through this and have a club that can hold its own financially and on the pitch.
You however clearly are more interested in supporting the interests of ACL, and think that their survival is more important than that of CCFC.

Perhaps you and AD can have your own ACL messageboard and you can carry the love in on to your hearts content.

ACL exists because THE CLUB asked for it, going cap in hand to be bailed out.

And had the club been run properly in the first place before SISU took over ACL wouldn't have needed to exist at all! As I've said, the council didn't want to get involved. Do you think right now they wouldn't prefer it if this entire sorry farce didn't exist and they didn't have to deal with it at all? Now, that is not SISU's doing, but it sure as hell isn't the councils or Higgs. When SISU took over they could have renegotiated the rent, or bought the stadium outright using the pre-agreed formula at a time when their relationship with all concerned wasn't completely untenable. But they didn't.

And look at other stadium disputes like Mansfield and Northwich with private landlords - they got locked out of the stadium and equipment removed to cover debts. Livingston were put in admin by their council for unpaid rent. Yet after more than a year and a £1m debt ours still haven't taken any of those steps, which any right minded, let alone vindictive, organisation would have done. ACL are doing everything they can to preserve the club, but they are not willing to do the same for SISU.

Do you think it right that a public body and a charity should suffer massive losses, leading to a loss of provision of services for hundreds of thousands of people, so a private equity fund owned and financed by millionaires can have more cash, some of which would be spent on giving some very rich young men even more wealth for not doing their job properly? In that respect it's not that different from the bank bailouts.

I don't think the future of ACL is more important than CCFC. However, I do think the provision of services, housing, benefits for the disabled/elderly/infirm are way more important than the future of CCFC. The needs of hundreds of thousands take way more precedence over the pastime of tens of thousands of footy fans. And if SISU win that is ultimately what will be lost.

I agree, and always have done, that having the stadium and club separate is a recipe for disaster, but you have this assumption that SISU would put the arena under the club's ownership - why? The club already has four or five companies/holding companies etc holding various parts of the debt/losses for financial reasons.

As far as I can see there are two potential outcomes, one dependent on SISU intending to keep control of the club and make a go of it, the other to cut and run to stem their losses.

Scenario One: They intend to stay

Do you think it makes financial sense to take a business with a massive asset value and making a profit and lump it in with one making continual losses of a much larger scale and huge debts, almost eternally under threat of admin/liquidation and thus actually give its creditors something worth winding the club up for? Especially at a time when HMRC seems determined to send at least one club down.

If SISU got hold of the arena it would almost certainly (if common sense prevailed) be put under the ownership of its own company to protect it from the losses of the club - essentially ACL with SISU at the helm instead of Higgs CCC. Maybe they'd use the income for the club, but it'd still only be a sticking plaster over the gushing artery that is CCFC's outgoings. At best it'd give the club another years cash before it ran short again and we're in dire need of a cash injection, at which time I certainly wouldn't think it unimaginable that they'd mortgage it to within an inch of its life to get some cash in to help the cashflow.

Scenario Two: They intend to leave

CCFC's main creditor is SISU. At this moment in time CCFC hasn't got any money/assets, so if they want to leave they have to write off the lot. But if the club get the stadium, it has an asset worth selling to recover their losses. SISU put the club into admin, stadium is sold to another private company as an entertainment venue, proceeds are given to SISU as the main creditor. SISU walk away with some cash, CCFC are put out of business (or at best are sold as a separate concern to some mug, who then has to negotiate a rent with the new landlord (one who wouldn't have a vested interest in the ongoing existence of the club) which would either lead to a pretty hefty rental given what they could charge for other events, or the club finding a new place to play.

With the FFP rules the club needs as much revenue as possible to afford higher wages, but the rent is a cost and therefore has no impact whatsoever on what wages we can afford. The revenue comes from the ticket sales, and the club already gets those. At this level of football we get some of the highest attendances and therefore should have among the highest revenues and money available for wages. If we're struggling to meet the FFP criteria whilst others aren't, this just shows our wages must be massively higher than most teams in this division, yet we're not at the top of the division. So the players are either underperforming, overpaid for their ability or both.

[AD]

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/coventry-city-fc/coventry-city-fc-news/2013/03/05/ricoh-arena-owners-double-profits-92746-32925361/

Yeah saw that - well if they have doubled the profits then there really is no need to pay them!

But that will still include the 'revenue' from the rent SISU owe them. That'll just be down as a debtor.

£7.8m turnover, £1.2m rent from the club with the odd smattering of food sales added in. That's 15% of turnover generated from the club despite the stadium bowl taking up over half of the actual development. Still believe the Ricoh is entirely reliant on the football club?

You are just summising with these values. Turnover of £7.8m with profit of 1.1m. So their outgoings are 6.7m

Now if we were to assume for a second that the 1.2m rent covers mortgage payments for the stadium and utility costs alone - so no profit at all from the club, that is a value of 6.6m turnover with an outgoing of 5.5m.

Considering we have now taken out mortgage payments, utility costs for the football aspect -whatever they are doing to make revenue is low margin. Does this mean that a lot more of the revenue than you think come from low margin products such as food/drink? What other things would produce such low margins?

Then what about stadium sponsorship... that money from Ricoh will have gone to ACL - so that would go from the balance sheet with no football club in the stadium. Then the rental from the Casino firm - which will also include them covering their utility uses.

We don't have actual values to talk about, but headline numbers can be easily be manipulated to tell a very different story from the actual truth.

I think the real truth is that both CCFC and ACL need each other to have any long term prospects of survival.

Why would the casino leave? It opens all through the year, not just on the 23 days a year the club play there. It has patrons from the local area throughout the year, as well as the exhibitions that have nothing whatsover to do with the football. Those happen because of its handy location, not because it's linked to a football team.

Similarly with the sponsorship. How often do you actually see the Ricoh mentioned in non-local press? And when it does it's usually in a negative means due to the rent row. Maybe any publicity is good publicity but if this situation was sorted the stadium wouldn't get mentioned at all except for a passing reference in football reports. Used as a concert venue it'd get just as many column inches. Heard of the LG Arena, O2?

And I don't think c. 15% profit margin is low margin frankly. And I'd expect most of the other income to come from the rental of the other units in the complex. If there was any great deal from the food side of things it'd be mainly catering for the exhibition hall stuff rather than the football games.

And by the way, if you make the same profit but reduce the turnover, as you appear to have done with your argument with taking the rent out the profit margin goes up

[bolix]

With the FFP rules the club needs as much revenue as possible to afford higher wages, but the rent is a cost and therefore has no impact whatsoever on what wages we can afford. The revenue comes from the ticket sales, and the club already gets those. At this level of football we get some of the highest attendances and therefore should have among the highest revenues and money available for wages. If we're struggling to meet the FFP criteria whilst others aren't, this just shows our wages must be massively higher than most teams in this division, yet we're not at the top of the division. So the players are either underperforming, overpaid for their ability or both.

Has anyone in the "ACL are killing our club" camp actually bothered to understand this?

Probably not.

[The Yid]

With the FFP rules the club needs as much revenue as possible to afford higher wages, but the rent is a cost and therefore has no impact whatsoever on what wages we can afford. The revenue comes from the ticket sales, and the club already gets those. At this level of football we get some of the highest attendances and therefore should have among the highest revenues and money available for wages. If we're struggling to meet the FFP criteria whilst others aren't, this just shows our wages must be massively higher than most teams in this division, yet we're not at the top of the division. So the players are either underperforming, overpaid for their ability or both.

Has anyone in the "ACL are killing our club" camp actually bothered to understand this?

Probably not.

Perhaps before you make such an assumption - you should think about what you are quoting.

Where does it say in the FFP rules that ONLY ticket revenue is counted? Commercial revenue is also part of the calculation, and as Tim Fisher has said repeatedly - the club are happy to accept ACL's rent offer, but they want access to the additional revenue streams.

Clubs like Man Utd make a massive amount of their money commercially - this is why clubs are so keen to exploit the Asian market. Now we are not in that same league, but commercial revenue is significant to a club like ours - and we don't get it.

This is a big part of the argument - keep up.

[Des]

? What's Sky Blues Talk ?

It's what happens when you're watching City, the air's usually blue around me, anyway.