Randy Lerner purchased Aston Villa on August 14th 2006 for £62.6 million and has since pumped north of £300 million into the club, both on the pitch and off.
Lerner buying the club sent waves through the fan base as we all believed this new ear was about to start for our claret and blue heroes. What none of us anticipated is the kind of era that has been presented to us and now, Lerner has decided his reign should come to an end,
“I owe it to Villa to move on, and look for fresh, invigorated leadership, if in my heart I feel I can no longer do the job.”
the only issue is findin a new owner to tame these lions.
Lerners original asking price was steep and shocked a lot of us at £250 million, but a club with such heritage and presence in the footballing world is potentially worth that amount regardless of finishing 16th in the league again, right? Wrong. The lack of progress intiated a reasonable price drop to the tune of £200 million. Sadly, all interest collapsed with the summer arriving and season restarting.
To Lerners credit, he came out and postponed all dealings (or lack of) to do with the sale and resumed his passion for the club. Not only did he fund Lamberts 6 million spending spree but he also found a new CEO and has allowed contract negotitations to continue. We are still awaiting some player signatures on this front! Now to more recent news or rumours. The asking price has been slashed again, and this time it is down to a whopping £100 million. Comforted by the handsome sale of the Browns, Lerner must really want the club of his back!
Now all of this is speculative and rumoured, but it does raise an interesting question. How much is Aston Villa worth? A lot of money and time has been invested ensuring that we became a debt free club. We had exiles and a mass clear out and turning everything upside down after the MON days which left us spilling at the sides and licking our paws at the bottom. Lambert slashed wages and initated a new game plan that is now being followed by game plan version 2… I digress, the point is that we are a club with a lot to say and I believe we still have a lot to offer the world.
So how much are we worth? What are your expectations from the next owner?
My answers
I honestly think that AVFC is worth around £100 million, or I would like to think this, but that figure is a complete guess based on information coming from the club and it’s history. Having brought it for just above 60 and pumping the amount into it that Lerner has, he has put it on a good path, business wise. He is also losing a heck of a lot if this is his true asking price, but like I mentioned above, the sale of the Browns is a comfy sum to help ease the loss.
Going forward I see us having much more investment as I believe Lerner wouldn’t sell us to an uncaring owner. He has been very vocal about leaving us in the right hands, and i’d like to continue to trust those words. The first transfer window will be a big one, and there will once again be the excitement of supporting a club with money.
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Hard to value a football club, as I know they lose terrible amounts of money, but surely our players, ground and Bodymore Heath are worth more than £100m. Maybe Lerner is a man of his word and is waiting for the right person to take over the helm – lets hope so!
I reckon £100 million is around the scrap value of the VP stadium, site and players. If a purchaser were to liquidate all those assets and develop the site himself he should recoup £100 million. Therefore he would be left with Bodymoor Heath at no cost. I assume nothing has been mortgaged.
By comparison Lerner sold Cleveland Browns as a going concern in 2012 for a little over 1 Billion USD.
On the other hand if a purchaser seeks to buy in to the publicity and brand that an EPL club represents, what other clubs are available and at what cost? Spurs, fancifully, were touted at £1 billion but that seems to have been shot down. United, City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool are not for sale – Newcastle, Everton and Sunderland are of similar stature, the others too small. I cannot see the last three being offered for less money, so on that reckoning the asking price is reasonable, if not cheap.
where has he spent the money,since mon left milner sale bought bent,young downing covered mac leish year plus half of lamberts buys so thats 5 years off not much spend,did deadly not leave money for 1 season buys as well,with all the money he has spent our squad is not worth even half when he took over
JV…mon bought in Young & Downing mate, they were both there with Milner…..get the facts straight.
I’d like the right person to pay ten lollypops for us.
Have you all noticed Oohah thrown a wobbly? With all his outspoken sad comments he’s an asset to the site, he makes people respond, Oohah get back on, some people know you, this guy does, you are a Villa fan. Oh Giddy sends his regards lads, beer strong in Germany and by all accounts so are the women. Back soon.
Sorry, but I think the site is better without his irrational rants. Funny, and playing devil’s advocate is one thing. As is blinkered optimism.
Things have been getting a bit daft recently…Sorry OohAh…Them jets need a-cooling!
I wouldn’t say we have such presence in the footballing world at all at the moment. I’d say we are relatively unknown to be honest. £100m Is about what we are in terms of quality of players, training ground and stadium. We cant make much in terms of revenue from ticket sales, and we don’t have big sponsors fighting to get on our shirt. The only big income is Sky but whoever comes in will need to spend about £60 million plus in one window to have us competitive again and then top that up by £20mil every transfer window for about two years! So £100 million could still look quite expensive to be honest!
He’s probably having a wank fest somewhere after our last 2 results.
Definition of Value; the amount that any one person will pay for any defined commodity at a single moment in time.
Unlike most privately or corporately owned businesses (and I include here American sports franchises) which can be indicatively valued by reference to a multiplier of earnings for the relative investment class, there is absolutely no defined basis on which you can calculate an indicative or comparative value for a football club (irrespective of which league it is in). The fact that all EPL clubs are now in private ownership where, up to five or six years ago there were still some quoted on the AIM market, tells it’s own story about the viability (from a shareholders perspective) of owning such a club.
The majority of EPL clubs are either foreign owned or have majority foreign owners which suggest that Britain either lacks individuals with sufficient wealth OR they have all realised that it’s fools gold!!
So, why own an an EPL club? Rich man’s hobby, ego, tax scheme or some other high finance reason beyond the wit of mortal man – well I have no bl***y idea!
So back to the question – what is the value of Aston Villa and in response I refer you to my opening paragraph. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Even with limited knowledge, I’d say we’re worth £150m at least considering our assets, and the guaranteed income from TV for all EPL teams…
Not arguing with you Bum Bum but that would imply disposal of the assets to provide a return on investment. Even clubs in the CL are operating at a significant and unsustainable loss hence the imposition of the FFP rules which appear to be somewhat flawed. Anyone owning an EPL club with ambition needs very deep pockets.
I agree Hitchens, deep pockets are needed, Villa is not going to produce any sort of cash return on freely transferable, clean money. This explains why the owners of EPL clubs recently arrived or touted as coming are invariably foreign. An English owner would simply lose the money with little tax benefit.
The tax rules of a lot of countries do not tax profits earned outside that country while the cash remains offshore but levy a high percentage, 40 to 55% tax, on the same profits when repatriated. Assume for a moment that there will be equivalent demand to buy an EPL club as there is today 5 or 10 years down the line. If a foreigner has money sitting offshore he could spend it on buying AVFC and avoid paying the tax on repatriation to his home country. While he owns AVFC he can set off some losses. When he sells, the tax regime in his home country may have changed in his favour, or he sets up a company in another country to receive the proceeds of his sale of AVFC. Thus avoiding his home country tax altogether.
If his business would benefit by association with AVFC or the publicity around it he gets other benefits. There are several people for whom Villa at 100 million would be business proposition, even if all the match and TV income was spent on players and running the club.
Thanks OLL; really interesting piece.
I don’t think this is the driver for foreign ownership OLL. Man U make money, as I believe Arsenal have. Chelsea is a vanity project, and probably a way of moving cash out of Russia. Man City is a sovereign wealth fund that is looking to diversify in “brands” to provide future wealth when the oil runs out.
i don’t think the idea that losing money is attractive because it reduces a tax bill has any real foundation. I make £100M here and it is taxable, but if I lose the same amount on another company I don’t pay any tax. How does that make me better off? I would rather pax tax on profits than not pay it by losing money.
The higher profile from owning a recognised brand I do get. However, if Lerner has to drop his price by the amount suggested it is a clear indicator that there isn’t sufficient appetite at what many of us perceive as a reasonable value of our club.
Not that I have any experience of business at this level 🙂
DS, a logical argument and you are right in saying that Manure and Arsenal in particular are run profitably, but I think the tax explanation is quite persuasive from my (limited) experience of business at corporate level. The reality is probably a mix of all those things that have been mentioned – tax efficiency, brand, profile / ego, fashionable for the rich men’s club, moving money etc., etc. I suppose the real question is, how sustainable is foreign ownership of football clubs at the current level of debt and cash outflows? When the bubble bursts as it surely must, where are some of these clubs going to be – Portsmouth and Leeds to name but two!
DS…”when the oil runs out…” you can forget football, the world will be fucked. Villa will be the least of our problems! Lol!!!
DS There are other reasons for buying I agree. I think Abramovich sees Chelsea as making him too big a name to be quietly assassinated as some of his fellow oligarchs have been.. The Glazers amazingly were allowed to buy United with the club’s own money. City’s owners have an upstart rival airline. ETIHAD is now as well known as Emirates. Emirates are on the way to recoup their financing of the new Arsenal stadium with the brand publicity.
My earlier post did not suggest the owner lost money. Say a Yank has 100M profit offshore from his business which he could use for a project in US. If he brings it to US the IRS taxes him 40M leaving 60M. If he buys Villa – straight away he can use Villa as collateral for a loan of say 80M with US banks and therefore have 80M in US to spend on his project instead of 60M.
Consider Lerner paid £63 mill for the Villa, then Fung Wong the crook paid £82(?) mill for the shit.
We all know the former was a very fair price, even though I believe there was a condition where Lerner had to put £30 mill in.
And we all know the latter was just a joke.
Hence at the time, I’d have said £80 mill was a fair price for Villa, with no clauses.
It was boom time for the economy remember.
So now we’re having it tough economically.
You’d immediately think that the value hasn’t gone up much, which is fair enough.
But let’s think about a few things here.
Without research and timelines we were paying what sort of money? for players how long ago? The likes of Dublin and Merson weren’t cheap at around the £5 mill mark.
How much was JPA? £9.5 mill?
And while their wages weren’t massive by today’s standards, they weren’t cheap either.
And still we were only a couple of mill in debt under Ellis, who, as much as I disliked his lack of ambition, would never have really bankrupted the club, imo.
The EPL has come on MILES since then, money-wise.
We’ve had Sky money increased once since then, quite sizeably from memory, BEFORE the EXTRA £30 mill a year from the latest deal!
I know I keep harping on about this, but it seems some of you are choosing to ignore this fact.
Let me explain it again, for clarity.
A very modest outlay of £10-15 mill a season would not have bankrupted the club, before the latest deal. It would have let the club stand still (interest apart) imo.
How much have we averaged over the last couple of seasons? £15 mill? Maybe a bit more.
So, quite simply, the EXTRA £30 mill a year is all bonus money, which Lerner is recouping!
Which means if you were to lay out £100 mill for the club and maintained the current sort of spending, you could get your money back in just over 3 years.
Of course, a new owner would be expected to invest some, say a whopping £10 mill extra, to make £25 mill a year (it’s hard times, after all).
The new owner would still be trousering £20 mill a year.
The long and short is, I think the £100 million figure would be the sale of the century and is total rubbish.
It’s a good job bank lending is much tougher now,
Imagine some crappy consortium offering a leveraged buyout, with the interest the club would have to pay, coupled with the money they’d be paying themselves.
As much as I’m not keen on Lerner, I truly don’t believe he’d let the club go to those kind of sharks.
Hence I see no sale anytime soon.
And it won’t be at £100 mill.
Feel free to tear my fag packet figures apart, someone.
Badger your figures seem to imply that at an investment of £15M a year in players would have shown a break even position. The published accounts show otherwise. It may well be that at £100M the club would be a steal. An owner making £15-20M a year would be in a good position tax wise due to the accumulated losses of the last few years. Of course, this begs the question why (nearly) all the other clubs aren’t making money.
As for a leveraged buyout. At the rate of return you suggest (3-5 years) I don’t think it would be hard to raise the money. You are talking a headline 20%-33% return which most VC groups would snap your hand off for.
Quite simply the numbers don’t add up.
Badger; Villa’s published accounts would suggest otherwise as would RL’s recent debt for equity swop which was definitely to improve his tax position following any sale. The question remains as to who or whom were responsible for the rather cavalier way in which the club were run during MON’s reign? I have no idea how RL stands personally in terms of losses but recent articles would suggest he wants out of incurring any further downside. As to his overall sales strategy, I believe his due diligence over a ‘fit and proper person’ to buy our club will stand up to more scrutiny than that carried out by the EPL!
Its worth watching the Tom Fox interview, I personally do not think Rand is going anywhere which is the reason Tom Fox joined us…… Have to say very refreshing interview shows a bit of clarity and vision, something I think we have all been looking forward to !!
“An owner making £15-20M a year would be in a good position tax wise due to the accumulated losses of the last few years.”
DSVilla,
That’s exactly my point and it’s why I think there is no chance whatsoever that Lerner will sell at £100 million.
Hitchens,
Do not believe the books in the short term.
Even I can fiddle, sorry offset, those and I know next to nothing about it!