Madstad for sale?

[working class hero]

Why would Mr M be thinking of selling the stadium [possibly to London Irish]?

The rumour is that he wants to sell the MAdstad and build another stadium - no idea where though....

Could it be that Thames Valley Royals will rise like a phoenix?

And if Mr M has lost as much as some claim why would he want to build another ground...?

[Royal Monk]

LOL at that rumour in your class room ..... kids eh !

[Samrfc01]

source?

[Row Z Royal]

LOL at that rumour in your class room ..... kids eh !

I didn't realise WCH was a teacher.

[Streets]

There's strange rumours and then there's this.

[Roger the Rabbit]

Can't see LI either having the money or the need to buy it - it's way too big for them.

The idea of building another stadium seems bizarre, you'd need a team to play in it !

if he's struggling to sell the football club then I guess he could look to sell the property to a thrid party but he can;t be short of cash, so what woul dbe the point ? He'd lose a significant asset and be left with a club which costs money to run and would be faced with having to rent a stadium.

Have people claimed JM has lsot any money ? I thought the general consensus had been that he's way up on the deal, although that's based on assets rather than cash and he needs to sell to realise his gains.

Needs a source to have any credibility, and even then it sounds a bizarre rumour

[STAR Voice]

If there's any truth in this rumour, it's probably selling it to a property company to capitalise on the value of it - and then all parties using the stadium pay rent for it. It's a fairly common accountancy exercise, but one which is always alarming.

For most football clubs, historically, the separation of club ownership and ground ownership is usually the first alarm bell to sound - that's what happened at Brighton, at Wrexham, and that's what still causes problems for Palace - Selhurst Park is still owned by Ron Noades, I believe, and Scalley at Gillingham has just done a similar thing - sold Priestfileld to another company (one he owns, too) to clear GFC's debts. None of those are clubs whose ownership situations or financial histories we'd want to replicate!

To a certain extent, though, this would affect us less than at other clubs, because the stadium is already owned by a different company (i.e. not the Football Club) - but a different company within the JM group. So him selling it to an external company might well mean that the Football Club would get worse terms than they do now - they might not be principle tenant but might get equal status with LI.

The "build a new ground" part of this story is very strange - I can't imagine ant circumstance where this would apply. Much of the funding of the MadStad came from Reading Borough Council (i.e. the land for £1 plus a promise to decontaminate it) and the Football Foundation - I can't see any of that external funding being available for a new ground when there's a perfectly good one available. so I think this part is extremely unlikely, and belongs in firmly in the U part of UR&G!

[Roger the Rabbit]

I think several other clubs have the ground and club seperated for other reasons, it means that if the football club gets into financial trouble the ground isn;t at risk of being taken as part of the assets. Chelsea seperated their's out a long while ago and I think others have as well.

If it was a deal of that sort I doubt we'd lose our 'prime' tenants status. I think it is a ocndition of membership of the PL that you have to have primacy of tenancy at your ground. It could be included as a covenant in the sale that RFC had a guarantee of primacy. I can't see it being of benefit to anyone to change this (unless LI were the buyers) as RFC are by far the bigger club and will be generating much more revenue.