CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by BWFC_Insane » Wed Jul 14, 2021 10:24 pm

Gudnib wrote:
Wed Jul 14, 2021 10:18 pm
Where should we start, Worthy? The Unibol might sound like toilet disinfectant but its still quite impressive. Well I think it is anyway. According to Sam Allardyce in his book, the Reebok was a £100 million stadium when he arrived in 1999. Now according to FV, its only worth £3million.

And according to Marc Iles when it was first called the Unibol, the building of the Reebok was funded by Gordon Hargreaves. Where he got that idea from heaven only knows. The most Gordon Hargreaves ever put in was c. £50K to help fund the purchase of David Lee from Southampton in 1992.

Maybe we could start by having a good look at what the administrators had to say. That's where I'd start.
I’m sensing you might be a crank. Sam Allardyce describing the stadium as a ‘£100m stadium’ is not a valuation.

It might have value if someone wanted to buy it to run a new sports team out of it but the likelihood of that scenario means well there isn’t a market. Beyond that it’s value is pretty low since as far as I know the convenants on the land are restrictive enough to mean it’s not worth it.

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by bw@bw » Wed Jul 14, 2021 10:58 pm

Being old fashioned in my accountancy, I tend to see some of these Intangible assets as being a way of making a Balance Sheet look solvent when there are not enough tangible assets.


I'm guessing, but some of the Intellectual property might lie in the rights to the name Bolton Wanderers, and to be able to license images and logos on to any number of media and products.
Whether that comes anywhere near the £10million is another matter.
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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Dave Sutton's barnet » Wed Jul 14, 2021 11:05 pm

Sam says a lot of things. Not all of them are free from hyperbole.

As for Hargreaves, wasn’t it his company that built the stadium?

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Gudnib » Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:28 am

Dave Sutton's barnet wrote:
Wed Jul 14, 2021 11:05 pm
Sam says a lot of things. Not all of them are free from hyperbole.

As for Hargreaves, wasn’t it his company that built the stadium?
Sam said quite a few things in his book that stretched credibility but the most obvious was his claim that the Reebok was a £100million stadium and the club had £45million debt when he arrived in 1999. Had that been the case, £55million of equity would have arisen from somewhere but the truth was that neither claim was remotely accurate.

The total liabilities of the Burnden Leisure Group stood at £25.5million with the stadium having cost £30million by 1999. Just over £500K of this had been paid to William Hargreaves Ltd where Gordon Hargreaves was the majority shareholder.

Marc Iles' claim that Hargreaves funded the building of the Reebok is equally abject nonsense and one is left wondering what other drivel had been circulating in the corridors of the Bolton News that this hogwash should be put into print at the time when the clock was ticking down on the final deadline for the club to find c.£5million to repay a debt owed to Blumarble, already two and a half years overdue.

But 1999 wasn't the end of the spending on the Reebok neither was it the end of the borrowing to finance it. By the time, Sam left in 2007 spending on the stadium and hotel was over £50million with expenditure on player acquisitions topping another £24million.

But back to where we are now. These 2020 accounts are telling us that FV has agreed to spend £28.5million to acquire the assets of the club and hotel, of which £12.5million is for tangible assets (land, buildings and equipment etc.) with the other £16million booked down on the balance sheet to the virtual nothingness of goodwill and intellectual property which is to be amortised over ten and fifty years respectively.

There's more work to be done to figure out where £8million of this has actually been paid out and whether the £7.3million spent on administration includes any payments to the Administrators or not.
Last edited by Gudnib on Thu Jul 15, 2021 9:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by BWFC_Insane » Thu Jul 15, 2021 9:12 am

Gudnib wrote:
Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:28 am
Dave Sutton's barnet wrote:
Wed Jul 14, 2021 11:05 pm
Sam says a lot of things. Not all of them are free from hyperbole.

As for Hargreaves, wasn’t it his company that built the stadium?
Sam said quite a few things in his book that stretched credibility but the most obvious was his claim that the Reebok was a £100million stadium and the club had £45million debt when he arrived in 1999. Had that been the case, £55million of equity would have arisen from somewhere but the truth was that neither claim was remotely accurate.

The total liabilities of the Burnden Leisure Group stood at £25.5million with the stadium having cost £30million by 1999. Just over £500K of this had been paid to William Hargreaves Ltd where Gordon Hargreaves was the majority shareholder.

Marc Iles' claim that Hargreaves funded the building of the Reebok is equally abject nonsense and one is left wondering what other drivel had been circulating in the corridors of the Bolton News that this hogwash should be put into print at the time when the clock was ticking down on the final deadline for the club to find c.£5million to repay a debt owed to Blumarble, already two and a half years overdue.

But 1999 wasn't the end of the spending on the Reebok neither was it the end of the borrowing to finance it. By the time, Sam left in 2007 spending on the stadium and hotel was over £50million with expenditure on player acquisitions topping another £24million.

But back to where we are now. These 2020 accounts are telling us that FV has agreed to spend £28.5million to acquire the assets of the club, of which £12.5million is for tangible assets (land, buildings and equipment etc.) with the other £16million booked down on the balance sheet to the virtual nothingness of goodwill and intellectual property which is to be amortised over ten and fifty years respectively.

There's more work to be done to figure out where £8million of this has actually been paid out and whether the £7.3million spent on administration includes any payments to the Administrators or not.
Not sure any of this is new. We know that purchasing the club was reliant on taking on some secured creditor debts. And this has been known since well before the admins managed to conclude the deal.

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Gudnib » Thu Jul 15, 2021 9:43 am

What's new is that the total cost to FV has amounted to £28.5million. What's new is that £8million has, by 2020, been spent according to the cashflow statement. What's new is that £10million of intellectual property appears on the balance sheet. Its the first time I've noticed anything like that on a football club balance sheet and I have looked at quite a lot.

And what's also new is that FV still had liabilities on its 2020 balance sheet in excess of £30million.

I've prepared a spreadsheet of all the clubs competing in League 2 in 2020/21. Bolton, though not in League 2 until 2020/21 had the second largest deficit in 2019/20 exceeded only by Salford. Maybe Salford's owners can afford it.

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Bruce Rioja » Thu Jul 15, 2021 11:14 am

Dave Sutton's barnet wrote:
Wed Jul 14, 2021 11:05 pm

As for Hargreaves, wasn’t it his company that built the stadium?
Without it ever having gone out to tender, I understand.
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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by BWFC_Insane » Thu Jul 15, 2021 12:29 pm

Gudnib wrote:
Thu Jul 15, 2021 9:43 am
What's new is that the total cost to FV has amounted to £28.5million. What's new is that £8million has, by 2020, been spent according to the cashflow statement. What's new is that £10million of intellectual property appears on the balance sheet. Its the first time I've noticed anything like that on a football club balance sheet and I have looked at quite a lot.

And what's also new is that FV still had liabilities on its 2020 balance sheet in excess of £30million.

I've prepared a spreadsheet of all the clubs competing in League 2 in 2020/21. Bolton, though not in League 2 until 2020/21 had the second largest deficit in 2019/20 exceeded only by Salford. Maybe Salford's owners can afford it.
Not much of that is new. The amount of debt was known for a while. It’s why we were a hard sell. Around £30M was pretty widely known to be ‘true cost’.

I listened to Kieran Maguire on the LoV podcast recently and my limited knowledge of the situation seemed to concur with his view. The level of debt is not surprising not necessarily a concern but certainly something to watch. There isn’t enough information to know on some of the loads now problematic or otherwise they might be, but a basic assumption can be that most are likely to be rearranged rather than repaid. And the losses sustained considering the circumstances seem pretty reasonable.

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Worthy4England » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:16 pm

Gudnib wrote:
Wed Jul 14, 2021 10:18 pm
Where should we start, Worthy? The Unibol might sound like toilet disinfectant but its still quite impressive. Well I think it is anyway. According to Sam Allardyce in his book, the Reebok was a £100 million stadium when he arrived in 1999. Now according to FV, its only worth £3million.

And according to Marc Iles when it was first called the Unibol, the building of the Reebok was funded by Gordon Hargreaves. Where he got that idea from heaven only knows. The most Gordon Hargreaves ever put in was c. £50K to help fund the purchase of David Lee from Southampton in 1992.

Maybe we could start by having a good look at what the administrators had to say. That's where I'd start.
I think your questions are evolving somewhat. The Reebok when it was built cost around £30m according to the 1997 Account Chairman's Statement, this was recognised as Tangible Fixed Asset in 1998 Accounts at £30m. I have no notion where BSA got £100m from, but he always tried to sell the Club and it wouldn't surprise me if that wasn't part of his sales pitch to prospective players, rather than any sort of "financial statement". It increased in value on the books for a few years to peak at ~£45m with the acquisition of other elements (I assume stuff like "car parks", Academy etc. and remained at around that value until 2016 when we started selling stuff - so the Car Park iirc (or could have been office space or both) went to PBP for £5.5m so it's down to £40m at that point. We sold some other "stuff" in the 2017 Accounts to take it down to £39m. Then of course there's an Admin gap, and at that juncture, the asset is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, you might have £100,000 car but in Admin, you have to take the best offer or liquidate. At this point, there was outstanding charges in favour of Fildraw of £10m (Admin's view) or £17m (Fildraw's view) those charges incorporated more than just the Unibol...So I suspect it's current asset value is what they paid for it, any accountancy shenanigans aside.

When you say look at what the administrators had to say - that's all in their reports - they only total up what you owe and try to get the best deal for creditors that saves the business...otherwise they liquidate. So I'm not sure when you say "that's where I'd start" what it is you're starting? or trying to prove?

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Worthy4England » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:23 pm

Gudnib wrote:
Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:28 am
Dave Sutton's barnet wrote:
Wed Jul 14, 2021 11:05 pm
Sam says a lot of things. Not all of them are free from hyperbole.

As for Hargreaves, wasn’t it his company that built the stadium?
Sam said quite a few things in his book that stretched credibility but the most obvious was his claim that the Reebok was a £100million stadium and the club had £45million debt when he arrived in 1999. Had that been the case, £55million of equity would have arisen from somewhere but the truth was that neither claim was remotely accurate.

The total liabilities of the Burnden Leisure Group stood at £25.5million with the stadium having cost £30million by 1999. Just over £500K of this had been paid to William Hargreaves Ltd where Gordon Hargreaves was the majority shareholder.

Marc Iles' claim that Hargreaves funded the building of the Reebok is equally abject nonsense and one is left wondering what other drivel had been circulating in the corridors of the Bolton News that this hogwash should be put into print at the time when the clock was ticking down on the final deadline for the club to find c.£5million to repay a debt owed to Blumarble, already two and a half years overdue.

But 1999 wasn't the end of the spending on the Reebok neither was it the end of the borrowing to finance it. By the time, Sam left in 2007 spending on the stadium and hotel was over £50million with expenditure on player acquisitions topping another £24million.

But back to where we are now. These 2020 accounts are telling us that FV has agreed to spend £28.5million to acquire the assets of the club and hotel, of which £12.5million is for tangible assets (land, buildings and equipment etc.) with the other £16million booked down on the balance sheet to the virtual nothingness of goodwill and intellectual property which is to be amortised over ten and fifty years respectively.

There's more work to be done to figure out where £8million of this has actually been paid out and whether the £7.3million spent on administration includes any payments to the Administrators or not.
Where do you think the players registrations are accounted for? These are usually in the Intangible Fixed Asset section of the Accounts...

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by BWFC_Insane » Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:35 pm

I’d say as a rule if you have something to say about the financial situation or something in the accounts say it directly. Don’t do the whole internet cryptic thing of asking a thousand questions and then pointing towards other information vaguely.

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Harry Genshaw » Thu Jul 15, 2021 4:34 pm

BWFC_Insane wrote:
Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:35 pm
I’d say as a rule if you have something to say about the financial situation or something in the accounts say it directly. Don’t do the whole internet cryptic thing of asking a thousand questions and then pointing towards other information vaguely.
Well that was his MO on Wanderers Ways and Bolton Nuts forum. Somehow, our debt is partly Mark Iles fault.
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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Worthy4England » Thu Jul 15, 2021 4:51 pm

Harry Genshaw wrote:
Thu Jul 15, 2021 4:34 pm
BWFC_Insane wrote:
Thu Jul 15, 2021 1:35 pm
I’d say as a rule if you have something to say about the financial situation or something in the accounts say it directly. Don’t do the whole internet cryptic thing of asking a thousand questions and then pointing towards other information vaguely.
Well that was his MO on Wanderers Ways and Bolton Nuts forum. Somehow, our debt is partly Mark Iles fault.
Now you come to mention it, we've been here before...

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by officer_dibble » Thu Jul 15, 2021 9:13 pm

Car parks tend to rank highly in land terms - when you can charge a fee for using them. It’s not like there is much maintenance required.

I was only a youth when the Reebok was built but if Hargreaves was chairman at the time there wasn’t any other company winning that contract, tendered or not!

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Gudnib » Thu Jul 15, 2021 9:39 pm

officer_dibble wrote:
Thu Jul 15, 2021 9:13 pm
Car parks tend to rank highly in land terms - when you can charge a fee for using them. It’s not like there is much maintenance required.

I was only a youth when the Reebok was built but if Hargreaves was chairman at the time there wasn’t any other company winning that contract, tendered or not!
I expect that that may well have been the case but anyone with much experience of building contracts would tell you that the builder you know is likely to be a better bet than the builder you don't know.

£500k on building work was small beer compared to the £3million (plus salary) lashed out on a 'striker' called Holdsworth and probably a lot better value for money.

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Gudnib » Fri Jul 16, 2021 7:09 am

Dave Sutton's barnet wrote:
Wed Jul 14, 2021 11:05 pm
Sam says a lot of things. Not all of them are free from hyperbole.

As for Hargreaves, wasn’t it his company that built the stadium?
Your knowledge of the financial history of BWFC may not be wholly complete, DSB, but your 'Not all of them are free from hyperbole' is a great deal more perceptive than most. Didn't Sam lose his England job because of his inability to refrain from showing off?

Do you also not think that he might have been so consumed by his image of himself that, even when his book was being written, he found it impossible to distinguish between fact and the fiction in his head?

Were you at all aware that Sam purchased 600,000 shares in Burnden Leisure in the name of a nominee which were rendered worthless by the Davies takeover in 2003? Do you think this is where the 'ruthless businessman' came from and that he might have borne a grudge? Unrealistic as they were, there were several others that did.

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Gudnib » Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:15 am

There's more work to be done to figure out where £8million of this has actually been paid out and whether the £7.3million spent on administration includes any payments to the Administrators or not.
[/quote]
Where do you think the players registrations are accounted for? These are usually in the Intangible Fixed Asset section of the Accounts...
[/quote]

You don't say. Has it occurred to you that Gudnib might have been a qualified accountant before you were in nappies?

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Harry Genshaw » Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:35 am

^ This obviously means a lot to you. It must do. GudniB on here, Chris Custodiet on WW, Ten bobsworth on the Bolton Nuts forum. All your posts follow the same format before you slip into insults or become patronising. Well done you. You got there a lot earlier this time.
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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Gudnib » Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:58 am

Harry Genshaw wrote:
Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:35 am
^ This obviously means a lot to you. It must do. GudniB on here, Chris Custodiet on WW, Ten bobsworth on the Bolton Nuts forum. All your posts follow the same format before you slip into insults or become patronising. Well done you. You got there a lot earlier this time.
Gudnib has the patience of a saint but even saints can only put up with a limited amount of bullshit.

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Re: CLUB BUSINESS/SUNDRIES ETC.

Post by Prufrock » Fri Jul 16, 2021 9:59 am

What a weird prick.

Anyway, anyone who thinks Big Sam's "£100m stadium" is anything different in quality to the countless folk who've signed here over the past few years and talked about a "premier league training ground" is batty. It wasn't a valuation, it was a turn of phrase.
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