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Peter Kenyon takeover


Anorthernsoul
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The oddest part to me is I think it’s likely he was stupid enough to buy it as an investment but despite it being crystal clear what a shite investment it is he’s held it for a decade.

 

The PL money and the inflated prices are a bubble imo, it won’t continue especially with other leagues pushing to compete (such as La Liga doing the game in the US bullshit). This is why he should sell up soon. 

 

There’s also the advertising/self promoting angle, which I agree is another motivating factor but as Alex and others have said while it helped in the short term I think it’s detrimental now as his various flaws are being exposed and it’s hitting his business negatively. For example it’ll be far harder for him to turn HoF round now than it would have years ago as he has a public reputation for selling tat, cheapening brands out, etc. SportsDirect have lost a lot of the premium gear, the shoes generally are the tatty bottom tier shoes of the brands, whereas JD manouvered and has targetted the growing athleisure trend by selling the high end sports wear and seem to have blocked Ashley from that market. His moves to try and squeeze the producers and distributors when it looked like JD was dead and buried have most likely pissed them off to such a level it’ll be difficult to repair those relationships now they have real alternatives to sell the high end gear to. 

 

With regard to the advertising I think the average return on an index fund tracking the FTSE or DOW is about 7% - 8% a year over his ownership. If he’d sunk £250m into that it’s around £18m a year I’d think, which would buy a fair whack of advertising I would think if you were just targeting the hoardings and if he had left it in and let it compound he’d have a return that he couldn’t imagine owning NUFC. Aye, granted that is hindsight but he could be in a hedge fund with that level of investment where he’d be almost guaranteed that level of return barring a large crash (which would have effected football club and tv rights as well anyway). I only bring up the idea of the index fund to show how straight forward it would have been for him to make far and away better returns with that level of capital, he could have hoovered up real estate or businesses after the crash or other investments along those ideas. 

 

TLDR; I’ve no fucking clue why he still owns NUFC, time to sell up bitch tits. 

Edited by Howay
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I'd imagine the free advertising is probably paying him quite well as he's got a foot in the door in the American market. Last year S.D. bought Bob's Stores & Eastern Mountain Sports (50 shops) US analysts claim its a starter pack. Now given SJP is on American TV every fortnight with the sineage as far as the eye can see i'd imagine S.D. are doing some canny business on the back of that. Also I wouldn't be surprised if the thinking behind the signings of Ki & Muto was to try & dip a toe in the Asian markets.

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Agree about the TV rights too. Even if the bubble doesn't burst, so to speak, there aren't exactly new markets to be exploited as the PL has surely reached saturation levels. The only places where it possibly hasn't are those where they prefer their own domestic leagues and that is unlikely change in any case.

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1 hour ago, trooper said:

I'd imagine the free advertising is probably paying him quite well as he's got a foot in the door in the American market. Last year S.D. bought Bob's Stores & Eastern Mountain Sports (50 shops) US analysts claim its a starter pack. Now given SJP is on American TV every fortnight with the sineage as far as the eye can see i'd imagine S.D. are doing some canny business on the back of that. Also I wouldn't be surprised if the thinking behind the signings of Ki & Muto was to try & dip a toe in the Asian markets.

He could have bought those two companies without having any ownership of Newcastle. As I say he could also buy signage many places, probably at far higher profile clubs, if he wasn’t hoying money into NUFC. Bobs stores is fucking shite btw, they’re dingy and since the tramp bought them their inventory is nose diving quality wise as Lonsdale etc have come right in. 

SD won’t do much US business off the signage, they have no presence here besides the Bob store ownership which doesn’t have SD branding, and I can’t see many buying from SD’s site then paying the international shipping plus waiting longer when they could just buy from a US store. Maybe if/when he rebrands but even then there are definitely more impactful ways as opposed to owning a club that is struggling to keep its head above water in the league, it’s not exactly something the US market will be pining to watch then they get every single other PL match. 

 

@Alex Agreed on the PL being at saturation, I can’t remember but wasn’t this deal a little lower than the last one? At least domestically? 

Edited by Howay
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52 minutes ago, Alex said:

I think Sky payed a bit less but the overall deal went up due to the likes of Amazon getting in on the act.

Sounds right, I just remembered the initial tranches being slightly lower which was before Amazon. 

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8 hours ago, Alex said:

Sorry, I've been away for a few days so didn't get a proper chance to reply. I guess most of the owners of the other clubs (if not all of them) are ambitious and trying to get success as much as anything. Whether that's getting as high up the league as possible, getting into Europe, getting into the CL, winning a trophy or whatever. Given Ashley isn't interested in anything bar staying in the league and also taking into account what appears to motivate him generally, then it's probably safe to assume he's in it for the money. I agree with you that making a profit at a Premier League club is very difficult but that would just support my initial point which was, in essence, his hanging onto the club doesn't make much sense from a financial pov. One thing I would ask though is, if you did want to make money - what would you do? Without wishing to put words into your mouth I would guess that you and I would probably have similar views. You would look to maximise match day revenue, you would look to employ an experienced and capable chief executive, you would try and make the academy the best in the region and one of the best in the country and you would invest in getting the coaches that would make this possible. Additionally you would probably try and have a scouting network both at home and, particularly abroad which helped to insure you had an excellent chance of picking up emerging talent. All of those things would require investment but the potential returns, if you did it right, would far outweigh that. Yet, some 10 years into his ownership Ashley has done none of these things and shows no intention of doing so. So, from a financial point of view, again (to me) the way he approaches things makes no fucking sense.
 

That's not dissimilar to the point I was making really but the headline figure of £135m doesn't take into account the debt he took on and the stadium repayments which needed to be made immediately. Bearing those in mind, does the figure the club is now worth (in actuality, rather than in the owner's dreams) represent a decent return on his investment? I think it was @Howay who said he'd have been better off with a FTSE tracker let alone the sort of hedge funds he could've had access to with the levels of cash we're dealing with. You talk about the trend continuing for the next 10 years but what has the trend been? We've gone down twice due to his falings as an owner. If he doesn't sell and Benitez goes, then would you bet against another relegation in the foreseeable? And what then? If you look at the money in the Championship and how competive it is now then would you fancy us to bounce straight back with an inferior manager? Also, if it's not the case now then it certainly will be the case soon that a good Championship striker is likely to set you back something in excess of our record signing (which, as we all know, pre-dates the current owner anyway). You also mention that he's looking for a figure in excess of what the club would appear to be worth so as not to bruise his ego. While that may be the case, on what planet is a prospective buyer going to pay £100m over the odds just to provide Ashley with a profit he doesn't deserve? Again, none of this makes a great deal of sense.

I would argue you would just take a look at what other clubs in the league make from billboard advertising at the ground and base your estimate on that. Either way it can't make financial sense to own the club and sink hundreds of millions into just for that. As for the association with the brand, it appears to be a prett toxic one. Also, he's still pretty reclusive and and seemingly pretty thin-skinned in regards to any criticism. Even if it was just for the exposure it's not very good value for money.

I think we had a similar discussion before and I would reiterate that (bearing in mind how difficult he is to read and how perplexing some of his decisions are then I don't discount your reasoning. I.e. they may well be the reasons why he continues to own the club. But if they are, they're fucking ludicrous iyam.

 

Fair enough

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In the first couple of years he owned us and plastered billboards everywhere the sports direct shares went from about 75p to £9. Might be unconnected, might not be. The ship has long since sailed mind and it's crashed back down now 

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Surely Ashley initially bought the club as a vanity project, only when he discovered how fundamentally unsuited he is to club ownership did he shift tactic. I'm convinced it's only ego that's keeping him at the club; he wants paying for his mistakes.

 

Using SJP as a massive billboard for his tat is a simple and effective marketing strategy with no end in sight. He won't need to negotiate placing with land owners, there's no time limit on them, it's on tv every other weekend. I'm convinced he'll want to keep them up for a period after the sale of the club.

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It's the new TV deal that makes him think he can push the price up - I'd say it's more opportunism than anything else. The longer it goes without selling, the more he'll lower the fee though. Wasn't he at £400m with Staveley originally? Now down to £300m.

 

Fully seriously, he must be fucking sick of us. Surely.

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The size of the TV deal shouldn’t really affect the price of the club greatly in my mind. Yes, turnover increases but we’ve seen that eaten by the increase in wages and transfer fees. Clubs still aren’t making huge profits when run correctly. It also increases the risk that the next TV deal will be smaller and you’re stuck with players on long lucrative contracts but with a reduced income.

But the accepted wisdom is that the bigger the turnover the higher the value.

Edited by ewerk
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I honestly believe he would have been better off owning Rangers outright. They've a larger global following than us (I assume), they're way more likely to get into European competition and therefore get his brand a bigger footprint abroad, plus their fans seem to wear a lot of cheap shit :good: 

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1 hour ago, ewerk said:

The size of the TV deal shouldn’t really affect the price of the club greatly in my mind. Yes, turnover increases but we’ve seen that eaten by the increase in wages and transfer fees. Clubs still aren’t making huge profits when run correctly. It also increases the risk that the next TV deal will be smaller and you’re stuck with players on long lucrative contracts but with a reduced income.

But the accepted wisdom is that the bigger the turnover the higher the value.

Actually if the value of the players goes up then the value of the club goes up so ignore the above nonsense.

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4 minutes ago, ewerk said:

Actually if the value of the players goes up then the value of the club goes up so ignore the above nonsense.

That's one thing I was talking about with my mate the other day in relation to the (presumably) unrealistic asking price Ashley wants. As far as assets go, our playing squad must have one of the lowest values in the league.

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It’s definitely ours or Cardiff. The squad would struggle to match the fee paid for Pogba, ahead of the game against Leicester there was an article listing some of their players with price tags and there must have been half their starting 11 with fees above our record ffs. 

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4 minutes ago, Howay said:

It’s definitely ours or Cardiff. The squad would struggle to match the fee paid for Pogba, ahead of the game against Leicester there was an article listing some of their players with price tags and there must have been half their starting 11 with fees above our record ffs. 

Think most, if not all of the other PL clubs, have a higher record fee and not only that but they've broken that record in recent years (generally the last 2 or 3 seasons ago at the most iirc). Ours is still Michael Owen from 13 years ago.

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1 minute ago, The Fish said:

Think if Benitez does go at the end of the season, Lascelles will too. I'd imagine there'll be a bit of an exodus to be honest.

Do you think teams will be queuing up to sign most of our players?  The likes of Lascelles, Lejeune and Shelvey will most likely be away but I think the likes of Joselu, Atsu, Manquillo, etc won't have a hell of a lot of good options.

Basically there's not much in the squad that I'd be afraid of losing.

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