Coventry City will return to the Ricoh Arena after the club’s owners agreed a two-year rent deal with the stadium’s operators to end their calamitous groundshare at Northampton. Details have been kept confidential by owners Sisu and Arena Coventry Limited (ACL), but the club will have no offices or shop at the Ricoh, nor any presence apart from the matches played there, under the temporary arrangement. They will receive a share of food and drink income on matchdays.
City’s first match back in the stadium built for them by Coventry City Council and opened in 2005 will be against Gillingham on Friday 5 September. The return was welcomed by all parties, particularly supporters, including the Sky Blue Trust, who have campaigned relentlessly for the club to play in Coventry and overwhelmingly declined to watch matches at Northampton.
Sisu agreed the return after talks with ACL, which is jointly owned by the council and the Alan Edward Higgs charity, following Sisu’s comprehensive defeat in a high court action in July. The judge, Mr Justice Hickinbottom, found that the hedge fund owners had from April 2012 deliberately withheld the rent they were legally obliged to pay ACL at the Ricoh, in order to drive ACL into financial difficulties and buy a share in the stadium operation cheaply. Despite that, the hedge fund itself launched the legal action, claiming the council had acted improperly when refinancing ACL in January 2013, a claim which was comprehensively defeated.
Sisu then faced another season playing at Northampton Town’s Sixfields stadium, where the average attendance for their League One matches last season was 2,570, the Football League’s fourth lowest, above only Accrington Stanley, Dagenham & Redbridge and Morecambe, all in League Two.
City’s development director, Steve Waggott, who negotiated the return to the Ricoh with the assistance of Shaun Harvey, the Football League’s chief executive, said they linked the talks to £470,000 Sisu owed to ACL, which had to be paid by 14 August. Waggott said the club will be paying a “competitive rent” and will “share” income generated on matchdays.
Waggott explained that “the figures don’t lie” in terms of fans “disconnected” by the Northampton move and money lost, and said he is now looking for “positivity” in building the club’s future. He confirmed, however, that Sisu have appealed against the high court judgment.
There's just enough in all of this to please everyone, no great drama about the future arrangements sounds like just the kind of a stadium bowl rent for 20 or so days that any one of us could go and do. Might not rule out ACL still hosting WBA reserves & Juniors etc and whyever not. I'd like to see the shop open on a match day in a "pop up style" in the same spirit as the caravan at Sixfields for merchandise etc as the footfall and demand will be there on the matchdays, we shall see. Encouragingly, if this works for all parties perhaps there can be a move toward more turnkey solutions in time, the inevitable and obvious point being Otium ultimately owning ACL then taking it from there. Could be the point at which Sisu would be ready to sell up if we were trading competitively but lacking that investment capital for a premiership promotion push - best leave that for another mug.
Appreciative of David Conn's efforts, he's done more than any other I can think of in national journalism to keep the issue fresh over the past 18 months.