Hull City in Premiership

Quote: Mrs Barista "This is how I see it, although I'm no expert on the detail of the contract.

The SMC's role is to act as custodian of the council's community asset for the benefit of the tenants and the public of Hull. Whilst some people have slated the council for the asset not turning a profit, that's a bit stupid IMO. The SMC's role is to optimise usage of the facility and maintain it to a good standard, not to earn money from it. Other assets like museums and galleries aren't famous for massive dividends, they're for the benefit of the community

Obviously appointing one of the tenants also as controller of the SMC creates a monumental conflict of interest. From what I can gather (i could be wrong, but there appears to be little evidence of this) there appears to be no council governance of the arrangement to ensure other tenants are treated equitably by the Allams in their dual role. There have been instances cited in the past of new charges being introduced to FC for display of club signage. Presumably these variations of contract are permissible within its original terms. The Allams could say both tenants pay these charges by raising an invoice from the SMC to City but at the end of the day as owners of both they're no worse off but we are. You get my drift. It sucks, but the Allams hold all the shares and therefore cards if we've not got protection under the SMC deal for variation of contract and the council are unwilling to offer us any intervention.

So, if City want to relocate, how would that work? The SMC still has an obligation to maintain the asset to an appropriate standard. Without City at the stadium, that leaves us to pay the SMC for the upkeep. If our contract is relatively fixed at £600k per annum, the question is who pays the balance of costs, assuming that it's more than this to run ground maintenance, ticketing, facilities, offices etc? The Allams in their lovely vast new home won't want to subsidise us, so they'd probably seek to either increase our rental payments or scrimp on maintenance costs etc. The question theN would be whether the council has the appetite or ability to defend our position. I doubt it.

It's a big statement by the Allams that there's no future for City at the KC. Had the extension plans gone ahead on the stadium as they wanted, with a free asset to mortgage against and provision of a huge supermarket and boutiques for culturally and intellectually impoverished folk like me (i.e. women) to distract ourselves with, I could at least see that there could be a hard commercial justification for it, albeit dressed up in "sporting gift plans" garb to distract even more vacuous folk than women. I'm talking about local journalists BTW. But to build a 35,000 facility costing probably north of £80m with no stadium to leverage borrowing against and no certainty of achieving uplifts in gates, arguably putting them at risk by re-locating, and insecure Premiership tenure, seems a bit unlikely. Could it be silly posturing? You decide.

In all probability, I'd guess the plan is to continue to push the terms of arrangement until we reach the point that Hull Wasps recently did at the Bonus Arena and had to relocate to Ennerdale. I'm going to see in the SMC accounts whether the SMC controls the Bonus Arena. The Wasps chairman said their proposed charges to remain there were going to double year on year without negotiation, hence forcing them out, but I'm pretty sure any sincere sporting philanthropist wouldn't create that situation so there must be a different controller of this venue.'"

This post is one of the reasons why La Barista is your finest poster.