How Much Do You Think It Would Cost To Buy The Club?

Not sure how many of you are like me but when I was a child I dreamt of playing football for Watford (I had less than zero chance of this, I could only make the bench of my school team!). Then I dreamt of being manager of Watford (again, zero chance). Now I dream of becoming the owner / chairman.

So question is, how much do you reckon the Pozzos would sell up for? And once bought, how much debt would need to be paid off? And lastly how much money left after those two things to be able to make us proper promotion candidates and sustainable in the Prem?

Basically, how big is the Euromillions win I'm going to have need to be?

 

Just for clarity - I was joking when I mentioned on the SB about crowdfunding buying the club.

 

Yeah I’ve asked that as well. Wondering what the total figures would look like. How big a win to make the dream come true!

 

Years ago I always dreamt that if I won the lottery I’d buy Watford or a stake in it at least.

These days realistically you need to be a billionaire if you have any ambition to be a sustainable top flight club. If you still wanted to maintain Watford as a championship club I still think it would personally cost a good few million quid every year just to try and stay still.

 

Vlad Putin, we need you! Or MBS.

 

I’ll buy in providing I get use of a parking spot.

 

When we were in the PL the club was valued at around 300m wasn't it? Obviously relegation and Covid will have had a significant impact on that. The Sheffield Wednesday owner is asking for £25m for Sheffield Wednesday but they have significantly less assets (and most likely more debt that won't be covered by parachute payments). I'd say anywhere from 90m-150m

 

If I owned the club first thing I'd do is sack all the uglies and get a team of swoonsome hunks in.

Who would care if we got a frightful beating every week if the players looked like they stepped right off the pages of GQ magazine?

Full house every week, and a low wage bill. Win-win.

 

We know who would be first out of the door

 

If around half of said swoonsome hunks could sing, we could supplement our income through boyband chart offerings too.

Flawless plan.

 

£90-100m. You're kidding, right ?
Our assets don't cover our loans so net assets are worth nothing, probably negative.
As a business there is little prospect of making money unless you get lucky with promotion to the prem again but there are plenty of owners in the champ holding on and hoping and they will have bigger budgets than us once our parachute payments stop and we have cleared our debts with player sales.
The only real value is not in playing assets and potential CF and profits but in "owning a "London-based"championship club that might one day get back to the prem"...though equally might go down to div 1.
We are worth what someone is prepared to pay and that shouldn't be much in these covid times. Maybe £20m purchase price but with the ongoing need to fund future losses until we reach break even and have the likes of Hodson and ****inson playing for us again. However if there are queues of potential buyers creating competion between lots of rich Saudi/Far East businessmen then who knows.....
Just imagine breaking the bank to buy the club and then having to fund Troy and Andre's pay for the next x months/years.....

 

Yeah, the only thing going for us is our proximity to London. That is what swung it for Gino as well as a few other things.

Ultimately any mega rich billionaires will look to buy clubs (largely irrespective of division, but preferably championship) based on the size of their fan base and stadium capacity.

It will be far easier to scale up in the future with a bigger fan base and when it comes to that we’re way down the list of potential clubs for a billionaire to be buying.

 

The quickest way to become a millionaire is to be a billionaire and buy Watford football club.

How the red helmet ever managed it I have no idea as it appears he never had a pot to piss in.

 

Bassini 'bought' the club for £440,000 according to media reports. the Pozzo takeover was put at £500,000 (but obviously with circa £10m debts in the background that were inherited and cleared). In September 2018 there was a report in the Times that Pozzo turned down £125m for a 35.7% stake from Prolific Media Holdings which would have valued the club at a mind-boggling £350m.

 

Yeah, he messed up with that. We were a solidified Prem team, flying high for our standards.

Now with relegation, debt etc. I would imagine someone could buy the club for about £100mil but would probably have to take on about another £100mil of debt.

That’s why we’re not attractive. The debt is killing us. According to the transfermarkt website, they value the club around £79mil.

So for a complete takeover, it’s probably going to set you back about £200mil.

 

From a business point of view, as I said at the time, they were very foolish not to sell us when we we were an established prem club, but presumably they thought they could push on and take us to "the next level" and push the value even higher. We will never again be "an established premier league club" so they have effectively lost hundreds of £ms. If we do go up, we will come straight back down.

 

What about AJ, he could afford it, but I think he's an Arsenal fan or something like that. There is of course another problem if he bought us, because he's big mates with TD, so we would never get rid of him

 

@The undeniable truth is loaded. He's your man.

 

Thank God

 

Maybe a consortium of AJ, EJ, GH & VJ, plenty of dosh between that lot, could be a plan

 

I am prepared to put my hand in my pocket if others are interested in joining a special purpose vehicle ?
Initial bid, £37.20 for 33% of the business (or £200.00 for the lot as long as the current owner gifts TD & AG to Udinese pre-acquisition).

 

I'd be willing to part with a fiver for Gray. Could use a scarecrow down the allotment.

 

And if someone is prepared to pay £90m - £100m?

 

There’s a lot of assumptions spoken as fact in this. Maybe they didn’t sell because they enjoyed running the club and didn’t want to stop?

If we go up, it’s not at all guaranteed we would come straight back down. Just like it’s not guaranteed we won’t ever be established again in the PL. Perhaps it’s your reasoned opinion but it’s verging on hyperbole too. No offence intended.

 

Good. I hope those hundreds of lost millions keep that **** awake at night.

 

Nobody has a clue do they though really?

 

According to brand finance in 2018 the club ‘brand’ (without assets although it looks like revenue is part of it ) was worth about £140m

I couldn’t find a more recent one where they said the value but apparently since relegation it dropped 20% from what it was before relegation - so ‘Watford FC’ the brand I’d guess is £80m-120m

https://brandfinance.com/press-rele...-neck-as-worlds-most-valuable-football-brands

 

So a shrewd buyer would buy the club, stadium etc and dump the name? Sort of the reverse of what's happening on the high street right now.

 

I am a professional accountant, but due to keeping work life and pleasure separate I always refuse to look into Watford FC's accounts, at least in detail. However, right now accountancy is probably more enjoyable than watching this Watford team so maybe I will look.

I am no football finance expert, but it seems to me if one wants to invest into a football club and hope to make gains from that investment, investing in a club in the Championship with growth potential is the best way to go. Like the Pozzos did with us. But now we are far less attractive owing to what our balance sheet apparently looks like.

 

A live example is Burnley. A club that had no debt & no outstanding transfer payments plus £40m in the bank.

They were bought for c £185m. They have a ground capacity same as us but clearly a lot further away from the bright lights of London for "potential" but they are in the PL so have got a lot more revenue coming their way.

The purchaser used all of Burnleys cash put in £15m of their own capital and took out a high interest rate loan for the rest secured against the ground, the players (transfer market value £136m by way of comparison ) and PL TV money

As you say we are loaded with debt and outstanding transfer fees and all assets-ground, players and parachute money already pledged to secure that debt. Why anyone would pay £100m to buy into that situation and have to settle or become responsible for those debts. Plus what if we don't go up and parachute money falls again next season

I wonder what is the potential-we only ever made a profit by selling players-Ighalo, Richarlison. All the PL TV money, gate receipts and commercial income went on wages and other expenses with a little left for player purchases as we had to borrow to fund new players. Not exactly a money making machine unless you have a model-maybe like Brentford at the moment. Why pay Gino for our broken model/championship status?

I suggest the club has minimal value now and Gino might have to pay someone to take it on not receive payment.

 

I guess like a lot of things you need excess cash to be able to make it a worthwhile investment. You could buy up a dilapidated run down house that needed £100k of work to make it attractive. You could then rent it out and earn a monthly income as well as having the value of the asset that you could in theory cash in at any point. Either way you need actual cash on top of what the house actually cost to realise that. Without having cash beyond just the price to buy it you can’t make any money out of it.

Anybody who buys Watford or pretty much any other Championship club will need to invest funds beyond just buying the club, they’ll need to invest money every season to get them promoted and maintain premier league status. Long term the value of the asset may increase beyond what they spend on the club in total, but they’ll need to constantly invest to make sure that happens.

Basically it might be worth it for somebody to buy Watford, but they’ll need a significant amount of cash beyond whatever the purchase price actually is to turn us into a valuable asset.

 

If you want to buy an English Football club there aren’t that many available in the Premier League. I would say we are one of the more attractive Championship clubs to buy, because of our recent history on the Premier League. That decays as each season out of Premier League increases.

I expect anyone seriously interested today, would need to refinance the debt and pay Gino £tens of millions. How much depends on how keen they are to buy and how interested Gino is in selling.