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https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/all-...-city-takeover
Shows that football clubs can and are being sold.
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Wasn’t the stadium valued at about £80million a few months back? Hull going for £30m seems on the cheap side, even for a League 1 club.
Originally Posted by Canton Kev
League 1? They're two points behind us in the Championship.
Decent article from The Athletic, from about a week ago...
The world was a very different place in the spring of 2014. Donald Trump was still hosting The Apprentice, no one had heard of Brexit and TikTok was the sound your clock made.
Some things, though, remain stubbornly unchanged. Hull City are still for up sale, just as they were seven and a half years ago.
They have gone down, up, down, down and up again but no buyers have yet been found for a club that was reaching an FA Cup final in the same month owner Assem Allam first concluded the best way was out.
The asking price has kept on falling — from £120 million in 2016 to £20 million now — but the fresh start sought by the vast majority of supporters is yet to materialise.
No club in English football has been for sale so publicly for so long. Allam initially declared in September 2014 that the Football Association’s decision to block his attempts to rename the club Hull Tigers five months earlier had drawn a line in the sand.
“As a consequence of the FA decision on April 9, I announced on April 10, within 22 hours, that Hull City is for sale,” he revealed in a punchy press conference. “I will give it away. Out means I’m out. Have I ever said anything and gone back on it?”
And still they have yet to find the exit. Prospective owners have come and gone, in some cases buying other English clubs. The Dai family, currently in charge of Reading, came so close in 2016 that farewell notes were written in the days that preceded that takeover’s late collapse. The same year saw Chien Lee have a good sniff before concluding there was better value in buying Barnsley.
Interest has since been fielded from the US, Saudi Arabia, China and South Korea but a divisive regime that is due to bring up 11 years in charge this December is yet to hand over the keys.
There is hope that this season, fresh from lifting the League One title in May, could bring an end to this interminable saga.
Talks with Acun Ilicali, a Turkish TV magnate, have spanned months and led to a £20 million deal being struck in principle. Included in the agreement, it is understood, was a clause that would bring a further, albeit unlikely, £30 million if promotion to the Premier League was won this season. That figure would fall to £20 million should those lofty ambitions be realised in 2022-23 and £10 million if it came in 2023-24.
It has illustrated an ongoing desire from the Allams to finally sell up but there are no guarantees this will be the one deal concluded. Two sources have told The Athletic that Ilicali has asked to buy Hull with deferred payments, something the Allams have not previously entertained.
Neither side has yet shut the door on the possibility of Ilicali taking charge but Allam has previously suggested the next owner of Hull would need to have the resources to rebuild the club as they did when taking ownership in 2010.
“I need the future of the club here because I’m a local man. I don’t want, after all that I’ve done, to see the club not able to survive,” said Allam in 2019. “I could have sold it and got my money, but I refused.”
That a potential investor from the US was shown around the city and the club’s facilities as recently as two weeks ago would indicate the Allam family have kept an open mind but Ilicali has been bullish to this point.
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Hull City chairman Assem Allam put the club up for sale in 2014 (Photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
The 52-year-old, who considers Germany international Mesut Ozil to be a close friend, is a well-known figure in his native Turkey. He has presented and produced the Survivor reality TV series, broadcasting from the Dominican Republic, and has an Instagram following of 13.3 million. His TV8 channel also has the rights to broadcast local versions of Masterchef and The Voice.
Ilicali launched a new online platform, Exxen, last year to rival Netflix in Turkey and immediately flexed his muscles when winning exclusive rights to broadcast the Champions League last month.
His interest in football has been long-standing. An avid follower of Fenerbahce, he has attended World Cup finals and earlier this year saw a proposed takeover of Dutch club Fortuna Sittard fall short. Ilicali had been due to take a majority shareholding from Isitan Gun, a close associate, but by April he had chosen to walk away.
Ilicali’s interest in Hull was first reported in May through the Turkish media and he then spoke openly of his intentions in September. “I’m thinking of buying Hull City in England,” he said. “The other side trusts us. If God permits, my dream will come true. I want to fly the flag of our country in England with the success of Hull City.”
Ilicali wants to succeed where so many others have failed in buying Hull. One well-placed source has suggested as many as a dozen groups have shown genuine interest over the last seven and a half years only to encounter insurmountable obstacles.
The reasons Hull remain for sale are numerous and varied. They have been described as “a moving target” for much of the last decade, with asking prices fluctuating wildly depending on the division the club finds itself in.
“Never forget Assem is a die-hard salesman,” said one source. “If someone is willing to pay the price he wants then he thinks he is selling it too cheap.”
The current market is not helping. A number of other Championship clubs are available for the right price and Hull’s lowly standing, 22nd after a dismal 2-1 defeat at home to Peterborough United on Wednesday night, brings no assurances that this will not be a League One club within the next seven months.
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George Moncur (right) and Richard Smallwood look dejected after losing to Peterborough (Photo: Zac Goodwin/PA Images via Getty Images)
Hull, as has become customary in recent years, were among the first to publish their accounts for the 2020-21 season last month and included were the reminders of how far the club has fallen. Albeit without the crutch of match-day revenue, the total turnover for the 12-month period in League One had dropped to just £6.86 million.
That amounted to less than half of the previous season’s accounts in the Championship and roughly six per cent of their total income for the 2016-17 campaign, their fifth and most recent in the Premier League when revenues came close to £110 million. Debts owed to the Allam family also stood at £39.5 million at the end of June and a monitored loan, taken from the EFL with caveats last season, ensures the club remains under a transfer embargo that badly limited recruitment in the summer.
The return of supporters to the rebranded MKM Stadium, coupled with greater TV revenues in the Championship, have seen financial strength boosted this season but Grant McCann is thought to be working to one of the lowest budgets in the division.
And it has showed. Thirteen games into the season, Hull have won only twice and scored only nine times ahead of travelling to Luton Town this afternoon. Four of those came in an opening-day win away to Preston and on eight occasions they have failed to find the net. Survival has come to look like the only aim for a team that has won promotion out of the Championship three times since 2008.
The abundant mistakes made by the Allam family, such as the proposed name change and the temporary scrapping of concession tickets, have also made it a fractured fan base for any new owner to piece back together.
Expect a feel-good factor akin to the one seen at Newcastle United last week when the Allam family finally opt to sell but a club that once sold out its home on a regular basis attracted just 10,245 for the visit of Peterborough this week.
On that night they chanted for the removal of an ailing McCann. They were calls for a return of popular former manager Steve Bruce.
Changes higher up, however, are the greatest wish.
Ah my mistake. Or I’m just really pessimistic about the rest of the season.
Covid has knocked my sense of time out of whack. I honestly thought we beat an already relegated Hull side last season. Not 2 seasons ago.
Believe me, I understand
Okay, anyone else think this looks dodgy? I give it three years, tops.
interesting quote
Ilicali spoke about his interest in acquiring City in September, saying: "I want to fly the flag of our country in England with the success of Hull City.
"I hope that Hull City will consist of Turkish people, from their coaches to certain players in the future. My goal is to create a team that makes a sound in the world."
Now before anyone starts, I have nothing abasing the Turks, well not strictly true, the Turkish treatment of the Kurds is abysmal
That almost sounds like Scam's idea for a Welsh Cardiff, which as we knew was farcical
...better than none
You've married Jesus
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