"Sisu in talks to buy half-share in Ricoh Arena"

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Coventry City fans are appealing to all sides in make-or-break talks to secure the future of their football club.

Top level talks held behind closed doors on Thursday evening have been hailed as ‘promising’, as the club and Coventry City Council each issued separate statements.

Both refused to divulge details but the Coventry Telegraph understands the talks hinge on club owners Sisu being allowed to buy a half-share in the Ricoh Arena – paving the way for Coventry City to have a share in revenue generated by the sale of food and drink, car parking revenues and other income generated by the massive conference and concert venue.

Now fans are urging club bosses and the Ricoh’s owners to come to some agreement in the crunch talks – amid rising uncertainty over the Sky Blues’ future in League One.

Both sides have been forced together after the club withheld two months rent in protest at what they see as an unaffordable £1.2 million annual tenancy agreement.

“There’s everything hanging on these talks,” Jan Mokrzycki, former leader of the Save Our City protest group, said.

“We’re all just hoping sense will prevail and they come to some kind of arrangement.

“The fact that (Sisu’s CEO) Joy Seppala is now involved is a good sign as it seems to show Sisu are now taking Coventry City seriously.

“We’ve obviously become a bigger issue for Sisu. If talks break down and everyone takes their toys home, that’s when you’ve got to worry.

“We don’t want 11 kids playing at War Memorial Park as AFC Coventry.”

Joy Seppala and the club’s chief executive Tim Fisher were joined at the Council House by representatives from the city council and the Alan Higgs Trust charity, which both own 50 per cent of the Ricoh.

Representatives from the two co-owners make up ACL.

The club remains under transfer embargo until it files its accounts. City say they cannot do so until they agree next year’s budget – of which rent and revenue are major issues.

Council leader John Mutton said: “I felt it was a very positive meeting and avenues are now being explored which hopefully will lead to a brighter future for the club and a more profitable future for the Ricoh Arena.

“These discussions are ongoing but I’ve asked the football club to keep fans informed.”

The club’s statement said: “All parties described today’s talks as highly transparent, constructive and encouraging.

“The club presented detailed plans and budgets for stabilising its immediate future in League One together with an outline proposal of how the club and Ricoh Arena could be more closely aligned with a view to growing and developing both the club and the stadium business.

“Further meetings between all parties are set to take place over the course of the next month.”

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Coventry City in talks to get a share of their Ricoh Arena home

Coventry City are in talks over a deal which could see them finally get shared ownership of their Ricoh Arena home - seven years after they moved in.

They pay £1.2m a year to the joint owners - a local charity called the Higgs Trust and Coventry City Council.

Following relegation to League One, the Sky Blues want to renegotiate the deal and the Higgs Trust are keen to talk.

"We're not a long-term investor. We'd love to be out," Higgs spokesman Peter Knatchbull-Huggeson told BBC Sport.

"It was never an intention of the charity to stay in."

The Higgs Trust bought Coventry City's half-share in the stadium following the club's relegation from the Premier League back in 2001 - four years before the Sky Blues actually left Highfield Road to move into their new home.

"What we wanted was to get the thing moving, get it built and start the regeneration," Knatchbull-Huggeson told BBC Coventry & Warwickshire.

"But we're not a long-term investor. We've got other projects we'd like to develop in Coventry.

"The stage we're at at the moment is that people will be going off and doing due diligence, which takes roughly 30 days," added Knatchbull-Huggeson, who also expects Coventry City Council will one day want to sell its share of the Ricoh.

"The city council are a longer-term custodian," he added. "But, again, their sole mission is to get regeneration.

"When they've got a partner that can take that on then I assume they will go out.

"It isn't the business of either of us to be running a stadium like that."

Knatchbull-Huggeson is also hopeful, after years of off-field financial woes and on-field frustration, that Coventry might be able to reverse the decline which means the Sky Blues will start next season in the third tier of English football for the first time since 1964.

But, with relegation, comes a significant fall in revenue. Even if the club's better players wanted to play in League One, the pressure to drive down the wage bill could force the 1987 FA Cup winners - who are still under a transfer embargo for not filing their accounts - to cash in.

Their position is not helped by the fact that, as tenants, they do no make any money from matchday food and drink sales, or the lucrative concerts and conferences which are held at the Ricoh Arena complex.

With Uefa's Financial Fair Play rules on the near horizon, limiting clubs' spending to a proportion of turnover, the Sisu group which owns Coventry are desperate to secure at least a half-share of the stadium and its revenues.

Knatchbull-Huggeson said: "How could I describe the management of the football club? I think best not to because of the laws of libel and so on. And anyway I expect I'd get edited out or bleeped.

"But I think that says enough about the management of the football club that now is the best time that something could happen.

"I think it's clear that they have acknowledged that they have failed over the first few years of their ownership.

"I think they've had a very cold shower and begun to understand that they need to run it more sensibly.

"And I think the people they have got now are the most sensible people I've seen at the football club in the last 20 years."

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'Show us the money Sisu', says John Mutton over Ricoh talks

COVENTRY council leader John Mutton has issued a public appeal for Sky Blues owners Sisu to “show us the colour of your money” in Ricoh stadium part-ownership talks.

He said further lengthy talks at the Council House yesterday were “positive” – but added any deal was a long way off, given huge potential “show-stoppers”.

It is despite the Sky Blues’ hopes a deal can be struck soon, which might enable the deficit-hit club’s accounts to be signed off, the Football League’s player transfer embargo to be lifted, and a clear business plan for next season starting in August, following relegation to Division One.

The talks came as the Alan Edward Higgs Charity publicly expressed its desire to sell its half stake in Arena Coventry Limited, in which Coventry City Council holds the other 50 per cent of shares.

But any agreement between the Higgs charity and Sisu would need to be approved by the council, which owns the freehold to the stadium and land around it.

Coun Mutton told the Telegraph Sisu were a long way off offering a deal to satisfy the council’s requirements of investment in the football club and Ricoh, and the development of surrounding land for job creation – which was all “inextricably linked”.

Yesterday’s two-and-a-half hour talks took place between council representatives Coun Mutton, deputy council leader George Duggins, chief executive Martin Reeves and finance director Chris West; Sisu’s Joy Seppala and an unnamed events management company she brought to the table for the first time; Sky Blues’ chief executive Tim Fisher and Paul Barber; and Higgs charity’s Peter Knatchbull-Hugessen and Paul Harris.

Coun Mutton said: “There are huge obstacles to the way forward and there are some potential show-stoppers, which are not necessarily in the council’s control.

“We will want to make certain any additional revenue that may be generated through the Ricoh Arena primarily goes into the football club, not to pay off Sisu’s investors. We want to see some investment in the football club.

“I don’t think we’re that much closer to putting a package together that’s in everybody’s interests. There is a lot of work to be done.”

He said another potential showstopper was “whether Sisu and the Higgs charity could come to an agreement over price”.

Coun Mutton continued: “We’ve re-iterated the potential show-stoppers and asked questions.

“We’re saying if, and it’s a big ‘if’, they do become part owners this would be the only way they could go forward, because there is nowhere near sufficient profit from the Ricoh Arena to bail out the losses of the football club.”

Asked about talks over investment in hotels and leisure facilites to regenerate land around the stadium – to create jobs and in the longer term support the Ricoh and football club’s finances – he said: “I would want to see the colour of their money.

“There was talk of a deal being incremental. I said I want back-to-back contracts – they can’t buy into the Ricoh on the promise something in the future would be done. We need to protect taxpayers’ property and money.

“Sisu say they recognise the importance of having hotels built, and that the figures they have put together, which they didn’t disclose to us, include an amount for building hotels.

“The implications of what they’re saying leads me to believe finance is available. How much remains to be seen.

“If they want to buy out existing loans (a £15million mortgage is owed to Yorkshire Bank), and the Higgs charity shares (previously estimated at £10million based on a formula) there needs to be finance available, as well as for the football club and regeneration.”

He added: “While I’ve seen a number of options I haven’t seen a firm business case which shows adequate levels of resources will go into the football club to be competitive next season.”

The football club is losing millions a year, and has lost half its income automatically by this year’s relegation to English football’s third tier, including in lost TV revenue.

Of the new presence in talks of a major events management company, Coun Mutton said Sisu and the council were “looking at bringing in additional expertise to maximise returns for the Ricoh Arena.”

He added: “They’d be helping to run the Ricoh Arena, and bring other events in, including concerts.”

As reported in the Telegraph this week, Coun Mutton expressed concern about ongoing low profits for the Ricoh – expected by some to be around £1million this year – in the absence of hotels around the stadium to support more conference bookings.

Ricoh chief executive Daniel Gidney hit back in yesterday’s paper by pointing to expected higher ACL profits than last year’s £470,000, £5million in new investment including extra hotel beds later this year, and attracting the Olympics, rock giants Coldplay and the 2015 Rugby World Cup.