So its the Shels model? Could be worse, they didn't promise a fancy new 20k stadium on a green field with hotels and additional revenue streams.
It does clarify stuff a bit. They're looking for short term return from European success as expected. It's an interesting one. They seem to have the connections and funds to bring in a higher quality player. The real question will be how long will they wait for success, if they have to. Bad start to the season, what would happen with Kenny? Will Kenny be OK with the Ceo making the call on players? What will they do if they get knocked out of Europe early this year and don't win the league? Obviously if they bring in a few players, win the league this year, and continue to strengthen we could be looking at short term domination for them. It's never worked in the league before, but there's no specific reason is couldn't. If these guys are patient
We don't know yet where the money is coming from. If it is borrowed money, it is the Shel's model.
If it is from the 2016 Europa League prize money, it is something new. Rovers did invest their Europa League money in their subsequent budgets. However, the amount was much less.
I would have been more concerned if they promised everything, new stadium, massive budget etc. However, that doesn't mean I am still not concerned or nervous.
If it's the Europa League Prize money being spent then it begs the question why the flip do Dundalk need these new "investors"
Were they incapable of spending money? Such is the rarity with which an Irish club finds itself with some?
"If we spend a couple of million a year more than anyone else in the league we should be dominant and have a decent cut off Europe" isn't exactly groundbreaking thinking. I would have thought it bloody obvious.
I wouldn't worry about it being borrowed money , with the LOI history I don't think you will find banks looking to loan money and with no Stadium(Tolka, Dalyer , Miltown) there is no assets to borrow against.
The likelihood is the previous owners have taken the cash out (good luck to them they deserve it) and the new boys are funding a bigger budget and the CEO will try to develop the corporate side. ..............I wonder do the yanks realise how strong the GAA and Rugby are , as we all know the LOI is a tough sell.
I'm not sure they care. The money is in Europe, not in filling oriel.
I wonder if the phrase "football people" was used at all during their pitch to explain who's involved in the club ?
Even if it was, these aren't people who are interested in football. They're interested in making relatively easy money, and have spied a potential opportunity to do so in Irish football.
If it doesn't deliver to the speed or extent to which they'd hoped, it is highly likely that they'll attempt to walk away. Given that there isn't exactly a queue of people looking to buy Irish clubs, the risk is that they literally just cut their losses and walk away, without anyone else picking up the reins of the club.
All the potential issues raised in this thread - a focus entirely on Europe, no stadium investment - appear to have been bang-on with the strategy being pursued. Because it's the obvious way to go if you're just in it for the cash. I can see Dundalk doing well out of this for a while but can't see if ending too positively if I'm honest.
with the Champions route to the Europa League (through the champions league) you are guaranteed two rounds at least .
If you win the first qualifying round of the CL and lose in the second you go straight to the 3rd qualifying round of the Europa league
win second lose 3rd you are into play off round#
win third lose fourth you go straight to group stages
Basically if you win two matches in Europe in the CL you are a play off round away from Group stages of EL.
All big ifs obviously but winning the league now guarantees two rounds of Europe at least, we should be winning the first qualifying rounds more years then not so winning the league can likely give 3 euro rounds most years.......
The trick is to WIN THE LEAGUE other wise you get 1 round guaranteed and have to win 4 rounds to get to the group stages...
That's exactly it. This season the prize money has nearly doubled from UEFA. Cork will bank approx 800k between the CL tie and parachuting into the EL round then if they lose the CL qualifier. So lose both ties and you're still around 800k better off in the bank, go a round or two further in either the CL or the EL and you're quids in. It's harder to get to the group stages for the smaller league like ours so UEFA pumped the money up as a way of making it up to the smaller leagues to keep them sweet.
It's not as if the stand in Oriel was going to be demolished the day after they took over, as much as some were demanding it, that's not how the world works. Capital grant application for the next round isn't until nearly this time next year. As I thought would happen remedial stuff will get done this season; the puddle on the way to the shed, they said they'd see what can be done in the away end and are looking at temp stands for our EL qualifiers if needed so we can play them in Oriel.
A competitive team on the pitch leads to european football, european football leads to quids in from UEFA as mentioned above which, along with capital sports grants, can then be put into sustainable development of facilities. Tbf, I think it's fairly realistic approach from the new owners.
When you own 25% of Bournemouth, 800k is peanuts though.
The key is to win the league though.
I don't think Kenny will survive not winning the league.
The fact one of the new owners bought a team in Gibraltar would suggest dominating a small league in order to make a quick buck In Europe is the goal.
While I am not reassured by most of what I heard last night, at least they were upfront about their intentions and priorities.
It is not necessary to look to Bournemouth or Gibraltar for any answers- simply watch the Q & A on YouTube
None.
This looks like a big pressure cooker brewing up for Kenny.
When you own 25% of Bournemouth you're not making the decisions, have nothing to do with the running of the club and are purely getting relative peanuts in dividends on your ROI. Plus our new owners don't own 25% of Bournemouth. As far as I'm aware and can make out given the information out there, it's a a consortium seperate to Peak6 that has 2 people from that in it, along with several others including that Fred fella who used to be an agent who looks like he hasn't started shaving yet and his mate young Lando Calrissian whose name I can't think of who were at the meeting on Sunday.
https://www.insidermedia.com/insider...eague-windfall
The latest figures from 15/16 I could find have Bournemouth only posting a pre tax profit of £3.4m, if Bournemouth paid a dividend, and there's no info that they did I could find at first glance, Peak6 would have gotten feck all in the grand scheme of things given the pre tax profit mentioned there. So theoretically they'd make more with full ownership of us plus having full control over the club and the decision making/ investment/ business side of things to do what they want getting revenue from other sources for example increased commercial activity, player sales etc. Whether they'll be asset stripping the club (the Casey's will always have the land) who knows but given their history and credentials that doesn't seem a likely path, could well be of course but time will tell.
Of the people involved we know about only Jordan and Mike whose now chairman of the board of the club are with Peak6. Peak6,who did put some investment in to back the bid, but from what's been said/ I've heard and what has been reported correctly in the media, Peak6 themselves don't have an ownership stake themselves as a company. The lads in the consortium are the stakeholders & put their own funds together either through venture capital from Peak6 and elsewhere, their own funds, robbed a bank for all we know etc.
We're not going to be having Ronaldo up front with Messi tbf. Martin Connolly said we're now able to aim for a slightly higher standard of player and have better contacts abroad for getting players in etc and all that jazz. The budget for this season is similar to the last few seasons, probably slightly higher and due to the few bob we banked previously we can offer 2/3 year deals now, of which the cost of salary etc would be amortised over the lifetime of the players contract. That then potentially leads to us not losing our best feckin players for nothing every winter. As the lads themselves said it helps SK then that he doesn't have to build a new team every close season and gives that extra bit of stability on the pitch where there's progression and not wholesale changes to the spine of the team every year. They were never going to knock the main stand the day after they took over, never mind within the first few months/ year, despite what people were hoping would happen.
As I mentioned above on the misconceptions about BIG MONEY re: Peak6/ Bournemouth etc generally and also potentially future transfer fees, European money being massively increased yet again for the qualifying rounds, never mind making the group stage (which of course is the goal again). Even without making the group stage a tidy profit should in theory be turned by the club and the same can be said for any of the 4 clubs that get into Europe each year from the league.
What they said at the meeting was that basically without a decent team on the pitch competing for the league/ in Europe to draw the crowds in there's no point having a white elephant sitting there which is spot on to be fair & medium/ long term they'll look at what can be done. They did say they'll try and get Oriel sorted with temp stand so we can do the EL qualifiers in the town short term and sort the puddle! Capital Sports Grants applications for this year closed so it'll be this time next year anyway before the club could apply for funding (never mind get a planning application in, the notice period of a few months for that, get approval, draw down of monies, and breaking ground and getting the build done) and any business man or people worth their salt would be absolutely insane to not apply for capital funding for any improvements when the option is there.
It may sound like I'm cheerleading but I'm not, just there's a hell of a lot of generalities being spouted that are baseless/ misconceptions that are down to a lack of knowledge etc to be fair and a reasoned debate on all sides of the conversation is welcomed. I, of course, have big reservations on how this is going to go but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt initially but I'll 100% call BS on any BS that goes on. From what has gone on so far there's been little to none of that. So far!
As a former member of the Trust I, along with others, will be keeping a close eye on things and there's already things being looked at to revive that as a potential phoenix fund and I'll be involved in that again but we never had the numbers, nor the interest generally to to be able to do a Cork/ Rovers, even when the club was on it's knees before Andy & Paul came in.
Last edited by colonelwest; 06/02/2018 at 9:07 AM.
That's probably fair alright. I'd add that you can't entirely go off profit to judge an investment; there may be consultancy fees earned, for example.
That said, the Gibraltar link is weird. Are they planning on bankrolling a load of Spaniards in to get European success? A team needs a certain level of base income for an investment to make sense; you'd have to imagine a Gibraltar club don't have that.
The Rosenberg model is the attractive exit point for them, and you have to imagine some club is going to achieve it at some stage with the money washing around the game these days. The stone around the neck at the moment is the singular apathy of the FAI, and their big debts.
You'd have to imagine there's an element of looking to arrange and capitalise on transfer fees too - bring in a foreign player, let him shine in Europe, flog him on - although the LoI has an awful record in that regard.
The quick buck will only be achieved if Dundalk make the EL group stages, and just how often is that likely to happen given we have had only two teams so far to have made it? And not to mention a total return of 4 points from the 12 games when the two teams got there, so even if a team makes it again it in the short term, a better quality squad will be required and remember there is a huge win bonus of 350k I think for each game.
CL is where the money is of course, but even though we were only a game away from that in 2016, the starting point now is a round more and much higher ranked teams will be joining on your route. I think even the EL will have higher ranked teams pre group stage compared to before, so its going to be very difficult for any Irish side to make it, and not just Dundalk.
It was a little disappointing though not to hear them speak of any redevelopment other than 'gradual improvements and including the away end' but at the same time, I`d rather hear that than pure b/s of promising the sun moon and stars and delivering nothing.
One of the owners suggested re-investing future earned Euro monies into the ground, but the priority was made clear, improving the squad further and same on the day to day admin running of the club.
Last edited by oriel; 06/02/2018 at 12:26 PM.
#DundalkFC - First Irish club to win an away game in Europe (1963), first Irish club to win points in a group stage in Europe (2016).
I did a bit of digging on my lunch in work there and from what I could find one of the consortium involved with our takeover went halvers on that Gibraltar club end of last year. From the below it seems to be a bit of a Glenn Hoddle Academy thing where they'll be taking lads who get released from the UK/ Spanish & their own league in over there, develop them and potentially move them on. I'd say that has little or no impact on ourselves. They play in the Gibraltaran (?) second division so they're not even in the Spanish league as well.
https://www.europapointfc.com/news/B...uropa-Point-FC
Rosenborg are the model alright, as has been said for Irish clubs for years. If, and it's a big if, we get to that stage over the next few years they could well just keep ticking over and not sell up as that level is probably as high as an Irish club can get barring doing a Leicester. Would have loved to have been a fly on the wall of our new owners meeting yesterday with Frank and Irene. I doubt given the US business mentality they suffer fools and all that. I'd be hopeful if it is all on the level and works out that it'd be a boost to the league as a whole as they'd definitely be pushing for increased tv rights, prize money, development across the league to make it a more commercially attractive prospect. Depends of course on whether they get the usual FAI response or not though. If it goes ok you never know, could possibly see similar happen to other clubs in the league which would only help improve the league as whole.
Could all end up going down in flames and it's hard as LOI fans to not immediately always expect the worst case scenario as we're all well used to it at this stage but initially so far with this for us there's hopefully a good chance it doesn't all go tits up.
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