You really are one obsessed individual!

Out of interest, would you describe any individual who borrows money against his property as having been bailed out? Or any individual who has retired and no kids who does an equity release deal with his house as having been bailed out?

Just because someone chooses to realise a capital sum against a property asset does not mean it is a bailout.

The whole problem is that if you refuse to accept the RFL saw this as a big opportunity on its own account, then you end up concluding it had to have been a bailout. Which means you choose to believe that the RFL press release was a lie. The thing is, some people will choose to believe what they want to believe. I choose to believe that this deal saved the Bulls from the clutches of a Steve Parkin and gave the RFL a large legacy strategic site for the future for almost certainly far less than any comparable option.

Why would they be bothered about Steve Parkin ( whoever he is ) if they are not in any financial trouble, I assume he is the ' predator ' ?

Adeybull, I don't know much about this Parkin fella but I don't see how the RFL buying the Odsal lease stops him from carrying out his plans. It makes it more difficult for him, granted, but doesn't actually prevent him if he is intent on doing it.

What is stopping him buying the Bulls and still moving them to Valley Parade ? If he did then the RFL would be left with a hole in the ground with no tenant and would most likely surrender the lease anyway. Same outcome for Parkin, just a little bit more difficult than the direct route.

I suspect you'd say that the capital from the sale makes the Bulls more financially secure, but on the flip side if shareholders wanted to sell then now would be the best time to realise best value from their shares.

Or am I missing something ?

No, but clearly because people do business deal that aren't 'bail outs' or 'scams' this doesnt have to be one of those.
Thats your false dichotomy.

because you dont need to be in financial trouble to be susceptible to predators

If that is the case, then surely having money is no protection either ?

Yes.

The predators only wanted the Bulls so they could get hold of the Odsal site and redevelop it. They wanted that to pay for buying Bradford City and Valley Parade. They were seemingly only interested in the soccer, and seemingly were satisfied they could cut a deal with the council over buying Odsal. The club saw a very very poor future under that setup. The problem for the club was that they lacked the resources to pay for development at Odsal and also to withstand any major cost shocks. The collapse of the OSV project together with the inability to get retail planning consent meant Bulls could not risk staying at Odsal but the only alternatives meant selling the club and consigning it to a very mediocre future.

So what do you do? Find an alternative. Which is what they did.

Incidentally, none of this would have been necessary had the Bulls been able to develop Odsal in partnership with a retail development like pretty well EVERYONE ELSE! That we could not was due entirely to the LAST time Bradford City was in the crap and there were plans to save it using Bulls again as the sacrificial lamb.

As I understand it, the predators expected to be given the club pretty well for free by the shareholders.

Now Odsal is safely parked with the RFL, the club is of no interest to the predators and is safe from them. The proof will be that you will not hear any more from them now.

Are you totally bloody deaf?

It was not the money that sodding well mattered to secure protection from the predators. It was putting Odsal out of their reach whilst still providing Bulls with a home.

Look him up. He's got a long list of failed attempts at buying sports clubs usually when they're in trouble.

Sorry, but this still doesn't add up.

Why would the shareholders sell out "pretty well for free". Who are these people? If it were me I wouldn't sell shares in a rugby club to a "predator" but if for some reason I were intent on selling, if I knew that the buyer was going to make a lot of money out of the deal or needed the shares as part of a bigger scheme, there's no way I'd sell up for next to nothing!

I'm afraid that as I've said before on this thread, unless the RFL publish a full and frank account of the reasons for and terms of this deal, it is going to attract criticism and suspicion.

And then there is the issue of what the RFL is going to do in the future with the site.

And then there is the issue of how the RFL is going to deal with the serious conflict of interest it now has.

Not good. Not good at all.

Does all seem very weird, surely Bulls could have got an agreement of a 100 year lease of the ground or something from the council, that would have safeguarded the future of their tenancy and prevented redevelopment. Wish the RFL had been as generous when Rovers were going into admin and the vulture Lloyd tried to buy the ground and us and close us down! Apart from conflict of interest you also have to question if the rent charged for usage is covering the upkeep of a ground like Odsal, if not then I would imagine not many clubs will be happy that RFL money is paying to upkeep one clubs ground.

The best analogy I can think of for the predatory threat the Bulls were under would be something like Manchester Utd being bought by the Glazers. To buy the club they took huge loans out which were secured against the club's assets which means that Man Utd now have huge debits because of this.

The main gist about the people trying to buy the Bulls is that they had no real interest in the club but wanted to move the Bulls out and down to VP so that they could get their hands on the land Odsal is built on to use for redevelopment to make a profit to be used to buy Bradford City.

Now, as the Bulls sold the lease hold to the RFL, that plan can no longer happen.

So all they had to do is say " No "

Maybe the board felt larger shareholders may not be so strong.

So the BOD of Bradford are not the majority shareholders?