Quote: DGM "Interesting thread.
It's not so much about ownership IMO, but about control of the asset. We don't need to own the KC to make best use of it, but we needed a lease agreement which afforded us that greater degree control, and we haven't got it.
The ridiculous decision from the council to give control of the stadium to the SMC and the malevolent despots inheriting it obviously hasn't helped at all.
Most commercial leases are repair and insure agreements, meaning we'd pay a base rent and be responsible for maintenance, but would also be able use the stadium however we wished & to create those additional income streams. Currently as I understand it, we pay based on gate receipts (which I believe was based on pre-2003 expected crowd levels), but no guarantee that the quality of the stadium will be maintained.
There's also issues with the SMC financially. The current SMC losses are fairly recent, and I'd be pretty interested to see why. One issue I was told of involved the SMC's ability to borrow against the stadium, the interest on the loan repayments contributing to those recent losses.
It's all a bit of a mess really. Hopefully (assuming Wilf is correct), 2027 gives a chance for all stakeholders to renegotiate the terms as we wont be getting a new stadium anytime soon.'"
Good stuff!! As you say an interesting thread and you sum things up perfectly for it is all a bit of a mess.
On the history to the SMC tenure The situation the Council found themselves in when the Stadium was completed was a strange one really. The place was built using some of the money that was received from the sale of the Councils shares in KCom and was just one of a host of quality of life capital projects across the City including putting double glazing in thousands of Council houses etc.
In year two of the build the Council went out to tender to try and get a national Stadium Management Company to run the venue but for whatever reason (including the size of the place, the allied facilities around it and the stipulations that the authority put on about the two local teams having user rights for an extended period; 50 years ) none were forthcoming. The Authority couldn't take on the responsibility for running the Stadium themselves because that would have had to be funded through revenue allocations and not from the Capital funds. Local Government revenue estimates were stretched as it was back then, the political complexion of the authority had changed for the first time for years as well and the authority didn't believe it would be ethical to run the stadium with its escalating maintenance costs year on year, if it had to do it at the expense of social services, housing, education etc. which were much higher priorities for the new administration at the Guildhall.
The Officers of the authority then approached the two clubs. Adam Pearson was running Hull City and Shane Richardson was our Chief Executive. Richo had no interest in taking it on and so Adam reluctantly agreed to take it on and was seen as a bit of a saviour at the time. We were in danger of having a brand new stadium with no one to run it. Adam agreed with certain stipulations he believed would protect his interests. He was a football man and didn't want to be left running the Stadium if he had moved on and sold Hull City to say buy another club so he agreed to take it on providing it was linked to the owners of Hull City rather than him as an individual. The authority expected the SMC to take on every aspect of maintenance health and safety, capital and revenue improvements and upkeep of the stadium and in exchange for that its understandable that the management company was given sovereignty over how they raised their income to do this from the two tenants. In any case as everyone who was involved were decent and honourable folks at the time all seemed well.
The Council were short sighted and probably gave up more than they should have done at the time but they were pretty much in a bad situation. This wasn't ideal but with no other options forthcoming at the time and the stadium almost completed, the authority reluctantly agreed They should have been more vigilant on the terms and conditions of the arrangement and the control they retained but they were in a hole and saw this arrangement as the only way out of it.
that was back in 2001/2 and things will have changed a bit since then but I think it went pretty much like that not ideal but at the time but they were difficult times.
