Committee Culture,Media & Sport. (1 Viewer)

fernandopartridge said:

Comparing a £570m hole in a pension scheme with a club struggling at football. Come off it.

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It's not comparing a hole in a pension scheme to CCFC though is it. It's about football governance as a whole. The suggestion that SISU are called in to face questions is a small part of a bigger picture.

Irish Sky Blue said:

Firstly I don't think Joy would enjoy the publicity both from a personal and from a Sisu point of view. (Fisher might enjoy the publicity). Secondly, if the right questions are asked I think it would be an uncomfortable session for them.
Portsmouth are running their club at break even. They have hope and ambition. Every decision they make is for the good of the club. Sisu say they are doing the same here when in fact they are running us into the ground.

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But they have a get at if they were called to any sort of hearing on football in general. The chances of achieving at Championship level or above are minuscule without being prepared to risk huge losses. That is one of the major things that needs fixing in the game.

Portsmouth illustrate the point. Running at break even (the first few years of their business plan actually allowed for 7 figure losses) they are struggling to get out of L2 and have openly said L1 is the highest level they could compete at without outside investment.

chiefdave said:

But they have a get at if they were called to any sort of hearing on football in general. The chances of achieving at Championship level or above are minuscule without being prepared to risk huge losses. That is one of the major things that needs fixing in the game.

Portsmouth illustrate the point. Running at break even (the first few years of their business plan actually allowed for 7 figure losses) they are struggling to get out of L2 and have openly said L1 is the highest level they could compete at without outside investment.

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but they own their own ground, are slowly building other revenue streams and have a big presence in the community. I'd love City to be like that, this isn't all about getting to the premiership for me this is about securing our future and reconnecting the club, the city and the fans.

clint van damme said:

but they own their own ground, are slowly building other revenue streams and have a big presence in the community. I'd love City to be like that, this isn't all about getting to the premiership for me this is about securing our future and reconnecting the club, the city and the fans.

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Of course its far better than the situation we're in but any government action will be covering football as a whole. You can't say that clubs like us and Pompey, potentially getting 20K in L1, not being able to compete in the division above is an acceptable state of affairs.

skybluetony176 said:

It's not comparing a hole in a pension scheme to CCFC though is it. It's about football governance as a whole. The suggestion that SISU are called in to face questions is a small part of a bigger picture.

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SISU have got nothing to do with football governance, they don't make the rules. The FA and FL do.

Do you think the Football League and FA should be up before the DCMS Committee? Greg Clark reckons they need reforming

chiefdave said:

But they have a get at if they were called to any sort of hearing on football in general. The chances of achieving at Championship level or above are minuscule without being prepared to risk huge losses. That is one of the major things that needs fixing in the game.

Portsmouth illustrate the point. Running at break even (the first few years of their business plan actually allowed for 7 figure losses) they are struggling to get out of L2 and have openly said L1 is the highest level they could compete at without outside investment.

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League position is only one of the issues with Sisu. There are so many things that they have done that have harmed the club. There is no guarantee that Portsmouth will keep the model of ownership they have now. It has stabilised their club and allowed their fans to hope.They are in the play off positions at the moment and have a chance of promotion. But more importantly they are owned by people who care. Perhaps a price for anyone coming in to buy their club will be that they ask for guaranteed fan involvement on the board. I would certainly have their model over ours any day even if there is a ceiling to how far they can go. I agree that football as a whole is a mess. That doesn't excuse what individual owners do.

fernandopartridge said:

SISU have got nothing to do with football governance, they don't make the rules. The FA and FL do.

Do you think the Football League and FA should be up before the DCMS Committee? Greg Clark reckons they need reforming

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Football governance has a lot to do with SISU though. They're a perfect example of how football governance is failing. Why shouldn't Joy be called to parliament to prove this? Why shouldn't Joy be called to parliament to explain our ownership model for example? Who actually owns us? Is it her, is it Dermot, is it SISU, is it ARVO, is it Wynacre, is it non of them and actually it's some nameless investors, who are these investors, do they pass FPP tests? How does that fit into FPP test? Why can't they be asked to explain their plans for a new stadium and why they kept being repeatedly caught out with FOI requests? Why did the FL seem to keep buying it?

SISU are the very epitome of the failing in football governance. It makes perfect sense for SISU to be there to help understand the failings.

skybluetony176 said:

It's not comparing a hole in a pension scheme to CCFC though is it. It's about football governance as a whole. The suggestion that SISU are called in to face questions is a small part of a bigger picture.

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Sisu have nothing to do with football governance. They act within the rules and remit of governing bodies.

skybluetony176 said:

Football governance has a lot to do with SISU though. They're a perfect example of how football governance is failing. Why shouldn't Joy be called to parliament to prove this? Why shouldn't Joy be called to parliament to explain our ownership model for example? Who actually owns us? Is it her, is it Dermot, is it SISU, is it ARVO, is it Wynacre, is it non of them and actually it's some nameless investors, who are these investors, do they pass FPP tests? How does that fit into FPP test? Why can't they be asked to explain their plans for a new stadium and why they kept being repeatedly caught out with FOI requests? Why did the FL seem to keep buying it?

SISU are the very epitome of the failing in football governance. It makes perfect sense for SISU to be there to help understand the failings.

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See above - they have nothing to do with setting up rules on appropriate owners. Your asking the end user not the law maker.

Three and a half years on, I am still confused as to how a company that has the same people at senior level making the decisions in the running of the club as the previous company that put the club into administration, can be seen by the Football League as 'Fit and proper'

Grendel said:

They act within the rules and remit of governing bodies.

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How do you know? They're guidelines anyway, not rules. If the committee is going to understand what is going on they need to look at it from every angle.

Is there any particular reason you're so abrasive to the suggestion that SISU are held to account by a body who can publicly ask the difficult questions?

Surely if you're going to judge football governance you need to closely examine a cause of the failings of it. We are a failing of it.

Grendel said:

See above - they have nothing to do with setting up rules on appropriate owners. Your asking the end user not the law maker.

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No. You're examining the effect of the cause. Why would you have an issue with that?

skybluetony176 said:

How do you know? They're guidelines anyway, not rules. If the committee is going to understand what is going on they need to look at it from every angle.

Is there any particular reason you're so abrasive to the suggestion that SISU are held to account by a body who can publicly ask the difficult questions?

Surely if you're going to judge football governance you need to closely examine a cause of the failings of it. We are a failing of it.

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I'm hardly abrasive - just rational and objective.

How are the club an example of failure of football governance?

What difficult questions are these people going to ask?

It's just posturing by Cunningham. Why doesn't he ask his mate in the house why this has happened.

Grendel said:

I'm hardly abrasive - just rational and objective.

How are the club an example of failure of football governance?

What difficult questions are these people going to ask?

It's just posturing by Cunningham. Why doesn't he ask his mate in the house why this has happened.

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Would you like to see SISU put before a parliamentary committee?

Grendel said:

How are the club an example of failure of football governance?

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I can't work out if this is supposed to be a serious question or not from a CCFC fan.

skybluetony176 said:

Would you like to see SISU put before a parliamentary committee?

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Couldn't care less to be honest. if it costs any parliamentary time or tax payers money then probably not

skybluetony176 said:

I can't work out if this is supposed to be a serious question or not from a CCFC fan.

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Unlike FP you fail to understand what the issue is.

Grendel said:

Couldn't care less to be honest. if it costs any parliamentary time or tax payers money then probably not

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Yet you championed the JR that cost CCC in time, energy and money. Funny you didn't have an issue with that cost to a public body but draw a line when one of the other parties responsible in our decline could be held to account. It's almost as if you want to load the blame on one particular party without the other ever being held to question. The old grendull duality rearing it's head again.

Grendel said:

Unlike FP you fail to understand what the issue is.

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You made the statement not me. Of course we're an example of failure in football governance. As is Blackpool, Leyton, Leeds, Portsmouth (repeatedly), MK Dons, Charlton, Blackburn, Northampton etc. etc.

skybluetony176 said:

You made the statement not me. Of course we're an example of failure in football governance. As is Blackpool, Leyton, Leeds, Portsmouth (repeatedly), MK Dons, Charlton, Blackburn, Northampton etc. etc.

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So you don't bring in the people who operate in guidelines do you - you bring in the law makers.

The oystens are possibly an exception and could be made an example of

skybluetony176 said:

Yet you championed the JR that cost CCC in time, energy and money. Funny you didn't have an issue with that cost to a public body but draw a line when one of the other parties responsible in our decline could be held to account. It's almost as if you want to load the blame on one particular party without the other ever being held to question. The old grendull duality rearing it's head again.

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It didn't cost taxpayers anything Tony - don't make things up

Grendel said:

It didn't cost taxpayers anything Tony - don't make things up

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So CCC will get back every cost monetary? The time spent on it? The time lost to other areas of their responsibilities?

Don't accuse me of making stuff up when you're in denial of what defending the JR's required.

They'll having their legal costs recovered. Nothing else.

Grendel said:

So you don't bring in the people who operate in guidelines do you - you bring in the law makers.

The oystens are possibly an exception and could be made an example of

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The Oystons should be called in, I'll agree with you on that. But if you really believe that they're an exception then you're seriously in denial of what's happening to our club and others.

skybluetony176 said:

So CCC will get back every cost monetary? The time spent on it? The time lost to other areas of their responsibilities?

Don't accuse me of making stuff up when you're in denial of what defending the JR's required.

They'll having their legal costs recovered. Nothing else.

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But it's ok to allocate parliamentary time to having a chat with seppella even though it's an issue 99.999% of the pollination do not see as a serious issue - ok

Grendel said:

But it's ok to allocate parliamentary time to having a chat with seppella even though it's an issue 99.999% of the pollination do not see as a serious issue - ok

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Pollination? What do Bee's have to do with this?

Anyway, the parliamentary time is being allocated anyway as it would be a small part of a bigger committee. You seem to be saying that time should be allotted for the Oystons but not Seppala. Why the double standard?

You now apparently know what percentage of the population see if as an issue. When did you undertake that straw poll? What percentage of the Coventry population saw the loan to ACL as a serious issue? Given that the council kept being voted back in? Even when a candidate stood against AL on the issue she got back in. Yet you championed the JR. Again, why the double standard?

You're a bit of a cretin really. You've made out that all parties carry some blame for years now but the truth is that you only want one side held to account.

I don't see any issue with. MP's using the example of SISU and all the other failing Owners of football Clubs to inform themselves and Governing Bodies of failures in the system.
As they intend to legislate anyway, I'm sure they can't change Law etc but I think there's scope to regulate and be absolutely clear on acceptable Ownership structures and no anonymity of Investors etc.

There are many lessons to be learned about bad practise in running a football club from SISU's tenure.
They've lost practically all the good will a club should have from the community it represents.
Their expertise is in asset realisation, administration and debt, it certainly is not football or PR.

It should not just be CCFC, Leyton Orient, Blackpool should also be considered.

Our owners could be asked about a few things......

Last week Coventry City non-executive director Mark Labovitch told The Telegraph that the club had narrowed its search down to two sites and would be in a position to reveal the preferred location for a new stadium within three weeks.

The council, with the Alan Edward Higgs Charity which, as Arena Coventry Limited, jointly run the Ricoh, recently offered Sisu a return rent-free, paying only matchday costs, but Joy Seppala, Sisu's chief executive, has refused even those terms. She is insisting the council should sell Sisu the freehold ownership of the Ricoh Arena, which cost £113m to build; Mark Labovitch, a Sisu director, suggested to the Guardian that Sisu's valuation of the arena could be as low as £4m

Coventry City’s owner Joy Seppala says she is willing to talk with the council over returning to the Ricoh Arena - but only if the club can own it.

In an exclusive interview with the Telegraph, her first with any media organisation, the intensely private Sisu hedge fund manager insisted the club is “not for sale”.

And she emphasised the club under Sisu would never return to the council-owned Ricoh as tenants - even on a temporary basis to enable ownership talks.

Ms Seppala maintained she has already attracted investors to fund the club for years - including the losses from playing poorly attended ‘home’ matches at Northampton, and the costs of building a new stadium in the Coventry area within five years.

Sisu burned through around £36m on players' wages, transfer fees and other losses, which brought them only relegation from the Championship. Asked how pension fund managers and American universities feel about so much of their money being lost on an English football venture, Seppala replied: "There is no timeframe in which one needs to crystallise value. We believe there is immense value creation to happen in the future."

Seppala, who says "I know nothing about football" almost as an expression of objectivity, explained she reviewed the investment two years ago, and decided, five years after buying the club, that their £1.2m annual rent at the Ricoh was "stratospheric" and they had to gain control of matchday income such as food sales and car parking.

Negotiations were held with ACL and the Higgs charity, but no deal was done, then in March 2012, Sisu simply stopped paying the rent. Sisu's failure to "honour its obligations", as the club's administrator later described it, put ACL under severe financial pressure. The council, to stabilise the position, borrowed money to pay off ACL's mortgage, effectively becoming ACL's banker itself, and earning a little profit from the interest payments.

Sisu actually sued the council, arguing it had acted illegally, a judicial review claim thrown out by Mr Justice Males in July. The judge said Sisu "had caused rent to be withheld as a means of exerting pressure [on ACL] in their commercial negotiations".

Tim Fisher, working for Sisu as the club's chief executive, discussing the acrimonious detail, told a London supporters club meeting in July: "SISU is a distressed debt fund and therefore batters people in court."

The council leader, Ann Lucas, has said that although they want City back, she will not allow "paralysis" to continue. The suggestion is that if Sisu maintains its refusal, in the new year ACL will seriously consider a Ricoh Arena future without Coventry's football club.

The plans have been developed by leading sports stadia architects AFLS+P, which has worked on new grounds for the likes of Brighton & Hove Albion and Rotherham United, as well as with European giants such as Chelsea and Barcelona.

The ground will be built in modular phases so that the club can move in as soon as possible but then could be expanded in stages.

The initial phase will create a 12,500-seater stadium which will ultimately rise to potentially 23,000-seats.


Check out our home page here to view more exclusive images of the new stadium!


The Sky Blues are now working with property consultancy CBRE to secure their preferred site for the new ground.


Tim Fisher, chief executive of Coventry City Football Club, said: “We are very pleased and excited to be able to share these initial images with supporters as, ultimately, we want this to be a home the fans can be proud of.


“A great deal of time, effort and investment has gone into bringing the plans to this stage and it has been a real team effort to develop the technical aspects of the stadium.


“We’ve come a long, long way in a very short space of time as we only reconstituted the club in August and are now announcing our plans for the new stadium.






“I understand that the key question on everybody’s lips is: where is it going to be? We are working very hard with CBRE to purchase our preferred site and we will, of course, keep supporters informed when that happens.


“At that stage, we can then start to plot a timeline of applying for permission, time it takes to build and when we could open.


“There is still a huge amount of effort required and I would urge supporters to make full use of the Stadium Forum that has been set up because that way their views can help to shape the thinking of how we make this a home for the club and its fans.”


Steve Waggott, Coventry City’s development director, said stadium ownership was vital to the future of the club.


He said: “There are several ingredients for creating a sustainable and successful club and owning your own ground is one of the main ingredients.


“A football club needs to squeeze every penny it possibly can out of its stadium both on matchdays and non matchdays in order to be able to invest on the pitch.


“Owning our own stadium as well as investing in our Academy and youth development are the key to the long-term future of the club.


“Of course, the first team is the day-to-day priority because what they do in 90 minutes determines our next 90 hours of business.


“But this is about the long term sustainability of the club and is also about creating a home for the supporters of Coventry City Football Club.


“You only have to look elsewhere in football to see that this the only model for clubs moving forward.


“Rotherham have just moved to a stadium they own, Brentford are doing likewise because they see how the non-matchday revenues can be invested to give them the best possible chance of becoming a Championship club – and then staying there.


“It’s about so much more than just a football stadium that is used 25 times a year, it’s about creating a place that generates activity and income and becomes a facility for the whole community.


“The value to the community should not be underestimated and we intend for this to be a real hub for local area.”

Mr Fisher told the meeting 60 acres would be needed in total, with the possibility of having separate 30-acre sites for each project.

Under questioning from some sceptical fans hostile to club owners Sisu/Otium, Tim Fisher and hired property consultants CBRE insisted negotiations with landowners continued - and were genuine.

He added “plan B” of returning to the council-owned Ricoh Arena could only happen with a stadium sale to bring in vital club revenue from the stadium, not with club returning as tenants

Mr Fisher stressed the option was only a back-up and that club officials preferred a potential ground share with Coventry Rugby Club at Butts Park Arena


Coventry City officials say they are keen to meet with a high-profile MP who has offered to mediate in the Ricoh Arena dispute.



CCFC chairman Tim Fisher and technical director and interim first-team manager Mark Venus have sought to arrange a meeting with Damian Collins MP, the chairman of the Parliamentary select committee for sport.

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Then there is the Butts saga, that's another chapter about a new stadium with no foundation.