Liverpool Takeover Thread

If they make us successful then in the future they should be able to sell us on at a profit.

Understood but lets face it the amount of money it will take to make you successfull enough against clubs that are throwing money away takes the investment so high I can't see how they ever break even and that's without sorting out the ground.

Fans seem to think someone should come into a club pay 300 million and not take any of that 55 million operating profit away.

Question, how much of that would the liverpool fans on here be happy of say 55 million profit a year being taken away by the owners?
 
True answer: After he's sorted the club, squad, stadium etc. Hopefully make us successful again (puts flame suit on), then he can take what he wants. On the understanding that if/when money is required again in the future, then he's there to provide it.
 

H&G bought Liverpool for ~£220m, improved it commercially without investing a penny of their money and within a year they had an offer to buy the club for £500m.

While I agree that mixing football and business is a tricky cocktail to get right, there are still ways where investors can make significant returns.

No fans will ever accept owners taking money directly out of the club. The only attraction I can see to investors is increasing the value of the clubs.
 
True answer: After he's sorted the club, squad, stadium etc. Hopefully make us successful again (puts flame suit on), then he can take what he wants. On the understanding that if/when money is required again in the future, then he's there to provide it.

So when you look at the length of time the deal for Arsenals ground is and the money available, you are saying they can basically not take money again in their lifetimes?

That's not a dig at you becoming successfull again just a realistic estimate of how long it would take to be financially stable again after a new ground and building a squad. So they pump in 300 million to start and they are not expected to take anything from operating profits and still have to pump in more money than the 55 profit for players and wages.

Seems like madness to me. :D
 
Question, how much of that would the liverpool fans on here be happy of say 55 million profit a year being taken away by the owners?

In theory they'll look to increase our profitability which should allow a balance between allowing them to take a dividend and a reasonable amount of investment into the club.

I have no issue with them wanting to make a return on their investment as long as they are willing to invest in our future. Both can be achieved.

I'm not expecting City or Chelsea style squad investment but I do expect stadium capacity to be increased - new stadium or redeveloped Anfield.
 
H&G bought Liverpool for ~£220m, improved it commercially without investing a penny of their money and within a year they had an offer to buy the club for £500m.

While I agree that mixing football and business is a tricky cocktail to get right, there are still ways where investors can make significant returns.

No fans will ever accept owners taking money directly out of the club. The only attraction I can see to investors is increasing the value of the clubs.

Don't get me wrong I understand totally why H&G are wrong for football, it shouldn't be allowed to happen and I'm glad it's been resolved but I fail to see the business model for buying the club or even my own club when the fans won't tolerate you taking a share each year. Basically they will never get any money back.

I cant see them making the figures work even in increase in club value when you consider how much they have put in and will have to continue to put in.
 
Obviously a new ground = more profit. Im sure a percentage of that will be side-lined and untouchable (Like what Arsenal did) to make sure the stadium is paid off within X years. It basically pays for itself, eventually.
Arsenal make about £37 mill a year more from gate sales alone then Liverpool at Anfield. We make about ~£50-55 mill currently, with a new stadium that could be ~£80 mill or so. Take £25 mill away a year to pay for the stadium? probably too much but even then..we'r still back to what we used to earn, so we lose nothing financially. Once its paid off however .. :) who's to say that those £25 mill per year couldnt go into the owners pocket? (And lets not forget he will be making money from the brand in other ways, ie: tv rev on his own subscription channel back home) it would still leave us lots of cash to spend on transfers etc.
 
In theory they'll look to increase our profitability which should allow a balance between allowing them to take a dividend and a reasonable amount of investment into the club.

I have no issue with them wanting to make a return on their investment as long as they are willing to invest in our future. Both can be achieved.

I'm not expecting City or Chelsea style squad investment but I do expect stadium capacity to be increased - new stadium or redeveloped Anfield.

Fair enough, realistic aims. I just don't see how it's financially achieveable :)

Especially when you look at the stupid amounts of money we get ripped off in this country for stadiums. :(
 

I don't really understand why people talk about investing in the stadium development as a bad thing :confused:

Within the first season of moving into their new ground, the extra revenue Arsenal were making from it was more than enough to meet it's loan repayments and leave a sizable amount left over. And then of course you've got the massive increase in value of the club because of the new stadium.

Providing there's the demand in tickets to justify a new stadium then it will more than pay for itself.
 
Don't get me wrong I understand totally why H&G are wrong for football, it shouldn't be allowed to happen and I'm glad it's been resolved but I fail to see the business model for buying the club or even my own club when the fans won't tolerate you taking a share each year. Basically they will never get any money back.

I cant see them making the figures work even in increase in club value when you consider how much they have put in and will have to continue to put in.

I was actually using H&G as an example as proof you can make money. As I said, within a year they could have walked away with huge profit from just fine tuning the club.

Their downfall was greed and RBS refusing to keep financing them.

edit: Even now the general feeling is that £300m was cheap for Liverpool and the only reason for the price not being higher was that bidders had H&G over a barrel because of the deadline to repay RBS.
 
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Obviously a new ground = more profit. Im sure a percentage of that will be side-lined and untouchable (Like what Arsenal did) to make sure the stadium is paid off within X years. It basically pays for itself, eventually.
Arsenal make about £37 mill a year more from gate sales alone then Liverpool at Anfield. We make about ~£50-55 mill currently, with a new stadium that could be ~£80 mill or so. Take £25 mill away a year to pay for the stadium? probably too much but even then..we'r still back to what we used to earn, so we lose nothing financially. Once its paid off however .. :) who's to say that those £25 mill per year couldnt go into the owners pocket? (And lets not forget he will be making money from the brand in other ways, ie: tv rev on his own subscription channel back home) it would still leave us lots of cash to spend on transfers etc.

Again fair points :)

The trouble being as soon as you were not top of the league and the owners took 25 million the fans would want them out. When you look how long it would take to start getting that 25 million, there surely has to be better ways to invest in business with a lot less aggro and death threats when they take 25 million in 30 years time :D
 
There probably is :) no wait, there defiantly is :p
But if you can spare the money, want the challenge etc. Hell this guy has a chance to make himself a hero at liverpool.
If you expect to be around long term, why the hell not?
You need to be sensible though, if you borrow huge amounts, from multiple continents to fund your expanding 'empire' aka: Hicks, and it comes crashing down... then its game over.

-edit-

Also, as Baz said - good owners know when to get out. Hicks had a chance to make quite a big profit reasonably soon after buying the club, and a smaller profit not long after that. But he decided he knew best, decided the club was worth over a billion USD. And paid the price.


From RAWK:
If you spent a net of £150m on players in three years how come our net spend over the last two was zero? That means we had a net spend of £150m in your first year. Did I miss that?

Would love to ask Hicks that.
 
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The full Hicks interview after the ads on SSN.

Looks like Tommy 'blow me **** face' Hicks Jr will be making a cameo appearance. Wonder if he gets asked about his email :p
 
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