Wasps/Worcester

Land around Swanley is essentially under planning for housing. I presume the delusional owner of Wasps has decided housing is a better income source than a hotel! I will be objecting to this as much as i can!

The delusion does include a hotel.

Personally, I do not see a hotel as a way of paying for a stadium, many barely pay for the building of the hotel.

It is very hard to find out how much profit - if any - the Coventry hotel and conference space made.

Excluding the profit from transfers, they still lost £700,000 in the year to 2022.

In 2018, so before covid, they lost £4m

If you are investing £100m, Group Mk's asset value, you need to make a lot of money to get more than sticking it in a the bank, investment fund.

Crumbs

That'll teach me for trying to do that on my phone!

Nonetheless the MK model is the easiest way to see a hotel, stadium, sports club set up.

Worcester Warriors' administrators Begbies Traynor say they are still owed £1.2m if prospective new owners Atlas are to finalise their purchase. The latest interim 'progress report' issued by Begbies Traynor shows that Atlas missed a self-imposed deadline to complete the deal earlier this month. Atlas were last month given more time to finalise the buying of the troubled ex-Premiership club. They are now under the control of Chris Holland, who also owns Wasps. Holland, who this week announced a plan to move Wasps to Kent, took over last month as Atlas majority shareholder. When Atlas were announced as new Warriors owners in May, having paid £2m to complete the purchase of WRFC Trading Limited, they were required to pay another £1m by 9 October. But they did not meet that deadline and one of Holland's companies, Loxwood Holdings, now own the 97% holding of WRFC Trading by default as original Atlas owners Jim O'Toole and James Sandford had failed to repay a loan by the due date of 28 May. The latest Begbies Traynor report also confirms that the administrators fee is fixed at £1.8m. In the 13 months since being appointed to run affairs from Sixways in September 2022 following the collapse of the previous ownership, the cost of their work done could actually have risen to £3.4m. "Our fees have been fixed by time costs subject to our fees estimate of £1.8m," said a Begbies spokesman. "If our time costs exceed this amount then we have to seek revised fee approval from the relevant body of creditors." The report also highlights the continuing problems in trying to find a suitable buyer for Warriors - and confirms that all the bidders who sought Rugby Football Union (RFU) approval to play in the Championship this season were "unable to satisfy its requirements". Begbies says that in accordance with the RFU's 'change of control' requirements, any purchaser of the club is required to satisfy all 'rugby creditors' within 28 days of being issued a licence to play in the appropriate league, unless otherwise agreed - but these rugby creditors were determined by the RFU. The RFU have said whoever buys the club needs to pay the rugby creditors they had flagged - players, staff and Premiership rivals Gloucester, who were chasing compensation as a result of the cancellation of the first game after Warriors went bust. However, Begbies say this does not line up with who their legal creditors are. "The concept of rugby creditors does not exist under the Act and, in fact, is fundamentally at odds with certain insolvency principles," the report said. "In particular, we have a statutory duty to distribute the realisations of the Company's assets in a manner that is prescribed in the Act." "The RFU's requirement for the incoming purchaser to pay rugby creditors ahead of other creditors is inconsistent with this payment regime." The report also reveals how the legacy of Covid is hanging over the Warriors. The company applied for 'business interruption' money from their insurers to try and claw back some cash for the loss of all those games during the pandemic, but it was rejected by the insurers. As things stand, following the shock collapse of Warriors' separately funded womens team last week, the only Worcester sides playing on the artificial surface at Sixways this season are football teams - non-league ninth-tier outfit Worcester Raiders, from the Hellenic League, and Worcester City Women, who play in the West Midlands Regional League.

Yes, I get that having spent some time recently looking at insolvency legislation (not for my Club!). That requires all creditors to be treated equally, as Begbies Traynor have said. So the administrator can raise funds to provide some comfort to all creditors but my argument is that if Mr Holland wants to resurrect either Wasps or Worcester, or both, then he should be required to settle the rugby creditors before getting a licence to play.

Don't worry we have the RFU to look after the interests of the community clubs don't we?

And therein lies much of the problem.

There is no interest in lower level rugby, so there is no coverage, so there is no interest, so there is no coverage.

Meanwhile, the football pools ensured that the classified Soccer results were read out, so everyone had heard of Accrington Stanley.

GIllingham FC at level 4 gets 6,000 fans. Blackheath at level 3 struggles to get 1,000.