One thing that I've missed in my post above (that's what you get for doing stuff in a hurry at work) is that we were precluded by the terms of the lease from seeking a stadium naming rights partner, which is the normal way a club would look to fund a significant part of the costs of building a new stadium. However, the impact of that is more than offset by the money that Sport England and MCC were prepared to cough up for the stadium.
As a result, the club received a GBP 112 million stadium that it couldn't have hoped to finance on its own. The move came at a cost, but, with respect, any move to a new stadium would come at a cost. In 2006, Arsenal, who were a much more marketable proposition then than City were a few years previously, did a combined shirt sponsorship and naming rights deal to bring in GBP 100 million over 15 years, receiving a substantial chunk up front. Say, generously, City could have brought in half that up front. We'd have needed to borrow a further GBP 90 million to pay for the stadium and the fit out.
The way the deal was structured, we borrowed GBP 30 million for the fit out and have been paying annual rent which worked out at GBP 12 million over the first seven years. The intention was originally to look for external investment to pay off the stadium move costs and provide money for players so that we could go to Eastlands looking like a potential force. However, even without that and the need instead to borrow the fit out costs, it should just about have been viable for the club. (We then failed to make the most of the move to the new stadium, unfortunately, for the first few seasons, but that's another story).
Selling naming rights and borrowing the thick end of a nine figure sum was never going to be viable. We were able to move into a stadium that normally could only have been financed via such methods on significantly more advantageous terms. That's the bottom line.
EDIT - Just a further thought or two, though it's probably repetitious. We do probably agree, largely, Gary. It's a question of emphasis: we didn't get the stadium for nothing, but we did get it on terms that would never have been replicated in the commercial world, without which we'd still have been at Maine Road. (Look at the problems Everton have had moving).
Ultimately, that fact leaves it open to attack from those seeking to look at whether it stacks up in purely commercial terms. However, I should stress (as I have so far failed to) that the deal was audited independently and passed as having met legal requirements in terms of private companies benefitting from lottery and other public funding.
In any case, my argument with the likes of David Conn, who've been critical of this deal, that it has to be looked at as a regeneration project in which the Council invested to create conditions that would stimulate investment in East Manchester. Conn seems to me to be rather dismissive of plans for the collar site, whereas I believe it, and the rest of the plans in the Eastlands Regeneration Framework, will be facilitated (not necessarily all paid for) by ADUG and will be a terrific benefit to East Manchester in the long run. We'll see, I suppose.
I should also stress that I'm not, despite the thread in which I write, commenting on Conn's current book. I haven't read it. I'm talking about his Guardian pieces in relation to City over the past year.
I do have a lot of respect for him and his writing. He's done a lot to focus on wrongdoing at a number of clubs, especially in the lower leagues when there's been little other media attention on some of the goings on. His previous books have contained much that was genuinely illuminating.
However, I do think that an obsession with a particular model of club ownership that couldn't realistically be implemented on a significant scale in top level English football as things currently stand. And, though I incline to the left politically, I do think he's a bit of a bleeding heart liberal, far too inclined to voice dissatisfaction with matters for which he is completely unable to provide a solution.
I suspect that, were I to read his book, I would find parts of it very good, but would be extremely irritated by the large chunks that, I suppose, evidence the above traits. The Kindle version costs GBP 10.70 so I'd need to be motivated if I were to buy it, and there are plenty of books (City-related and otherwise) I feel motivated to check out ahead of it.
