Kladze wrote:Dameerto wrote:There was an article in the press a short time ago saying that the council currently gets the money from anything greater than Maine Road's old capacity, so unless we buy the ground or renegotiate our terms there's no incentive to increase the CoMS capacity for us. (Assuming that article was correct)
IIRC it's a small percentage for every seat sold over 43,000
Someone will correct me if I'm wrong :-)
I think that's about right.....the lease rent was originally negotiated upon the "average" revenue we would be expected to generate per game.
That rent is due from City to the council even if we get no-one showing but clearly our "average" would not be agreed as being the ground capacity for the purposes of those calculations. So there is a "true-up" which is due for gates in excess of a certain level (which I am pretty sure is around the 43k mentioned).
The club then did a separate deal whereby it securitised its ticketing income (i think principally season ticket income) with Bear Stearns in 2000 before we moved to Eastlands.
So essentially a big part of our normal ticketing income (which will be the part factored on the 43,000....or actually i think it might have been factored on Maine Road's capacity actually as that was a level of "sales" we had been able to demonstrate as sustainable to the bank) would go to Bear Stearns to pay the interest on the securitisation bond.
Part of the income would be ours to keep
Part would go to Manchester City Council as "normal" rent and part as "bonus capacity" rent.
I would imagine that the bond would be coming to maturity soon, I think we raised about GBP 40 million (which was promptly spunked by Keegan). Wouldn't imagine that it would have been over a period of much more than 10 years....so hopefully that drain will soon be gone from the accounts
[/center]
[/center]
