Coventry City, Highfield Road (5 Viewers)

[SWFC]

Morning all,

Having spent time in Coventry in the mid nineties, I visited Highfield Road many times, not just for games between our sides, and been to the Ricoh a couple of times. We were/are just having another (we have a few!), Coventry City discussion on our forum and wondered if you could clear a few things up.

Why did you leave Highfield Road? (Loved the place)
Is the Ricoh owned by the council and you rent it?
Do you just get to keep the gate money and nothing else?
Is Highfield Road now another housing estate?
And basically, what is going on down there?

As you may understand, we can empathise with your situation to a certain degree, had it not been for Milan stepping in (The 'Saviour', but we shall see) when he did we might not even be still here. One more court case and that would have been it for us. Somehow he managed to agree with the bank to write of millions of debt.
I remember in the eighties and nineties our games, hardly ever the first choice for Match of the Day, but how I would have them back now!
Hope things begin to improve for you sooner rather than later. There is nothing worse, being in that division and the away team coming for a point, bringing half a minibus of fans and the following week ahving to go to bloody Crawley!

If youre interested this is the link to the current Coventry City topic:

http://www.owlstalk.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/179318-coventry/

All the best.

 

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[1nilandwe...]

1) I don't know.
2) Probably. I don't know any more.
3) I reckon.
4) Yes
5) I don't know.

[Elaboration here].

Nice to meet you. Kind regards. You are way nicer than the Blades.

 

[CovKingChris]

I remember reading that if we didn't leave Highfield Road, and then sell the Ricoh, we would have gone in to admin and possibly liquidation a long time ago.

 

[Deleted member 4232]

Stadium sold and Ricoh purchased as a pipe dream. Was for premier league crowds.

The Ricoh has come to the ownership of the council by majority and by part the Alan Higgs Trust.

We do not as a football club, receive any slice of the food/drink purchases, music events, or casino income. The council and trust do. We get gate, after steward wage and running costs, a 9k unit gate doesn't make the pocket bulge.

Yes, there is housing on the old ground.

What's going on? A great club is bleeding out.

 

[chiefdave]

Why did you leave Highfield Road? (Loved the place)

The theory was (which sounded quote good at the time) that Highfield Road only generated revenue on matchday and was pretty much empty every other day of the year. The idea was to move to a new ground with hotels, conference centre etc which would generate money for the club. At one point I seem to remember there was talk, at least from our chairman, about it being the new national stadium.

Along the way, and I'm not sure anyone knows how or why really, the money for the project disappeared and we had to be bailed out by the council. Don't think there was much option as we'd already sold Highfield Road and couldn't afford to build the new stadium.

Ricoh is a decent enough stadium as new grounds go and does get things like the Olympics, concerts etc. For people coming from outside of Cov it's easier to get to but with limited, and expensive, parking, poor bus service and no train station despite being next to the trainline there's lots of ready made excuses for people not to go. Of course by the time we moved in we were already relegated and in a major downward spiral.

Is the Ricoh owned by the council and you rent it?

Ground is owned by the council and there is a company called ACL who own the lease to run it. ACL is 50% council and 50% Higgs Trust, a local charity who helped bail us out. We pay around £1.2m a year in rent. We have an option to buy the Higgs Trust half for around £10m but can't afford it and the council have a veto and don't want our current owners to get their hands on it.

Do you just get to keep the gate money and nothing else?

We get ticket money and as we rent the shop we get to keep money from sales of merchandise but apart from that not a penny. We don't see any money that is made on matchdays from parking, beer etc let alone money made from other events.

Is Highfield Road now another housing estate?

Certainly is.

And basically, what is going on down there?

We'd all like to know that. The short version is our chairman in the Premier decided to "give it a punt". With that and the cost of the Ricoh project we ended up with huge debts and it's been downhill since then. SISU own us now, they came in when we were supposedly 20 mins from admin and we hoped they were our saviours but it's been a disaster. Could write a whole book on the mistakes they've made but to sum it up they thought they could pump a bit of money in, take us up to the prem and get a nice return and sell us on to someone else but instead have ended up with a club losing huge amounts every month, ever lower crowds and league 1 football. They don't know football and have but some real clowns in charge. The boardroom team we have in now (which includes the owner of SISU who is now 'hands on') talk a good game but clearly it isn't working.

Very depressing time to be a Coventry fan and there's no light at the end of the tunnel. Everytime you think it can't get any worse it does and at this rate next season we'll be in League 2.

 

[Jack Griffin]

Why did you leave Highfield Road? (Loved the place) - The incumbent board had grandiose plans, which have resulted in our current predicament.
Is the Ricoh owned by the council and you rent it? - It is owned 50/50 by the Council and a charity called the Alan Higgs Trust, it is managed by a company called Arena Company Limited (ACL). CCFC are contracted to pay a rent, which effectively covers repayments for a £20M loan the Council had to negotiate when the CCFC board spent all its money & could not pay for completing the stadium. Rent is around £1M p.a.
Do you just get to keep the gate money and nothing else? - The net flow of cash is negative, the club has been losing money for ages. The club gets nothing for catering/beer sold on matchdays, there is a contract between ACL & (I think) Compass to deliver that.
Is Highfield Road now another housing estate? - Yes
And basically, what is going on down there? - No idea

 

[SWFC]

Thank you for the informative replies.

Sounds a complete nightmare of events, and as usual caused by those at the top hoping to make a quick buck off the back of it.
I really hope you get yourselves sorted, unfortunately in situations like this, as chiefdave said, just when you think it can't get any worse, it most certainly does!

I know things look ok for us at the moment but we are only Milans handshake away from a Saudi/Kuwaiti/Thai/et al buyer to make a similar kind of mess.

 

[ccfc92]

Something to ponder...

If money was no problem, is it possible to re-build Highfield Road? As in all the red tape and the new estate and all that?

 

[Sick Boy]

I thought that we now got a percentage of the food and drink sales?

 

[theprince]

If the full truthful facts are ever written IMO it will make shocking reading, most of you know bits but piecing it all together is another thing. I know one thing for certain there are people who left Coventry City football club a lot wealthier than when they came in.

 

[Macca]

That's my dream, a billionaire who buys all those houses, flattens the place and starts again

 

[ccfc92]

That's my dream, a billionaire who buys all those houses, flattens the place and starts again

If we all chip in a tenner

.... We will have £90,000 :facepalm:

 

[theprince]

Something to ponder...

If money was no problem, is it possible to re-build Highfield Road? As in all the red tape and the new estate and all that?

No, not a chance and where ? Never get planning permission for a start. The only possible site is the old GEC works at Copsewood, maybe Courtaulds but some twat put a canal in the way. If i suddenly became a Bill Gates and bought the club I would definitely re-build the Ricoh and make it look like a proper football stadium, tiered stands behind each goal, lower roof if possible and that lovely wiff of cigar smoke wafting about.

 

[ccfc92]

No, not a chance and where ? Never get planning permission for a start. The only possible site is the old GEC works at Copsewood, maybe Courtaulds but some twat put a canal in the way. If i suddenly became a Bill Gates and bought the club I would definitely re-build the Ricoh and make it look like a proper football stadium, tiered stands behind each goal, lower roof if possible and that lovely wiff of cigar smoke wafting about.

Thats what I meant, as in the new housing, could you get rid and re-build the stadium on the old HR site?

 

[kdrinkell]

Highfield road was sold because we were moving into the Ricoh,the funds made from the sale are a mystery but the chairman at the time Bryan Richardson went to the high court to get a confidentiality clause put in so nobody will know who got what....I think thats the top and bottom of it isn't it ?
A bit like you renting a house and selling the firker underneath the landlords nose.

 

[theprince]

It needs a mega rich fan who can afford to lose to put what happened, how, when and by whom in the newspapers and try and coax a law suit. There's no confidentiality agreements in court, well unless you are the South Yorkshire Police, Sheffield Council and various Government departments

 

[Sba180]

and what would the greedy bastard council do with an empty ricoh then? lets build

 

[Sick Boy]

Highfield road was sold because we were moving into the Ricoh,the funds made from the sale are a mystery but the chairman at the time Bryan Richardson went to the high court to get a confidentiality clause put in so nobody will know who got what....I think thats the top and bottom of it isn't it ?
A bit like you renting a house and selling the firker underneath the landlords nose.

I bet SISU made him do it!!!!

 

[Sutty]

Why did you leave Highfield Road? (Loved the place) - Bryan Richardson, chairman at the time, decided we needed a stadium with a pitch that rolled away, that hovered six inches off the ground and held 48 billion people. We sold Highfield Rd.
Is the Ricoh owned by the council and you rent it? - Slightly more complicated but essentially, yes.
Do you just get to keep the gate money and nothing else? - Pretty much. Club shop sales we keep but parking, food and drink money etc. goes to the stadium company.
Is Highfield Road now another housing estate? - Sadly yes.
And basically, what is going on down there? - Fifteen years of poor decisions coming home to roost.

 

[chiefdave]

Something to ponder...

If money was no problem, is it possible to re-build Highfield Road? As in all the red tape and the new estate and all that?

if we're in fantasy land the best bet for a city centre ground would prob be to develop the Butts. I think there's only 1 stand that holds 4K, if you built up the other 3 sides you should be able to get a 10-15K ground. Could plan in a similar way to Brighton so that as and when needed it's easy to extend the ground. Never going to happen tho, more likely we'll be in L2 and playing in a half empty Butts!