Town CEO Mark Ashton says improving the training ground and moving the club’s academy to category one will be funded by the new £105 million investment announced earlier this evening.
The Blues revealed that Bright Path Sports Partners, about whom you can read more here, had taken a stake of just over 40 per cent in the club in return for £105 million.
"The money comes in over a period of time to back a plan,” Ashton explained to TownTV. "Let’s manage expectations, it’s not all going on transfer fees and players.
"I think again, we will be competitive in that market, but we have to adhere to Financial Fair Play rules.
"It gives us the stability to take the plan forward. We’ve talked before to supporters about the importance of infrastructure and the first key infrastructure project will be the training ground.
"That will be a multi-million pound investment. We’ve already got the pitches in place, we have a fairly detailed design in place now, we’ll be entering the planning process very shortly and I’d like to be on site this year, putting that training ground plan into place and seeing the buildings coming to fruition.
"That allows us to put new facilities in for the first team, also put better facilities in for our women and ultimately, something that we’ve talked about time and time again is the importance of our academy.
"This new investment, we’ve discussed internally, and part of this investment will be used to take the academy from category two to category one.
"I know it’s something we’ve talked about and I’ve always said, if and when the time is right, we would do that. We’re now committing to that and we will put a timeline in place to move to category one academy status.”
Gamechanger 20 Ltd bought the club from Marcus Evans for £40 million in April 2021 and clearly its value has increased significantly if just over 40 per cent - with the existing owners retaining control - now costs £105 million.
"It’s a lot of money and I’m very pleased to say it’s a valuation that’s climbing,” chairman Mike O’Leary added.
"There are lots of things driving that. We’re selling out the stadium almost every week, whereas three years ago we weren’t. We’re selling replica shirts to large numbers of people. We’re doing very well commercially and our hospitality revenues are climbing too.
"All those things that revenue is going up. And when revenue goes up, the club is worth more than it was before.
"I won’t bore you with the detailed arithmetic of it, but suffice to say that’s really good news, not least the fact we’ve gone up a league and we are knocking on the door of going up another league. That also drives valuation to a higher level.
"And all of that is great news, it means our investors are happy that their investments are worth more than they were and we as a club are doing well. I think it’s all pretty good news.”
Ed Schwartz, the CEO of ORG, the US investment firm which manages funds on behalf of the Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS), which still holds a greater than 50 per cent stake in Gamechanger 20 Ltd, says there will be no further investment for a significant period.
"At this point, we have no intent or need for any additional capital in the near term,” he said. "I would say that this should suffice for a good period of time.
"There are a lot of additional people that want to get involved, but we’re not going to continue to bring in any more capital at this point.”
Regarding the new people coming into the club, he said: "The investors that were introduced to the group and we vetted, including the management, vetted are people that understood our vision.
"What we didn’t want was people who would come in and say, ‘No, that’s not the way to do it, we do it this way in the US’.
"People that would get to know the management team and they would be supportive in helping us to do what we’ve been doing and, frankly, we’ve been quite successful so far. We’re very proud of that.
"We all think we have a lot of work to do to continue with our goals but we wanted to really provide more of the same, more stability, more oxygen, certainly more capital, but not in a way that would take us off course.”
Schwartz was at pains to point out that no money is being taken out of the club by PSPRS.
"One of the things I wanted to emphasis is that ORG on behalf of the pension fund is not taking any money out of this club,” he said. "We have rededicated ourselves to this investment.
"We will still maintain control at 50 per cent ownership. Bright Path and its investors will have 40 per cent and the remainder, which includes the Three Lions, will have 10 per cent of the club. That’s how the ownership now that this is all completed will look.”
Reflecting further on the investment, he added: "It really validates [PSPRS chief investment officer] Mark Steed’s investment thesis. I couldn’t be more proud to do this and do this for Mark Steed, who gave confidence in and my team to help put this together, and Mark [Ashton] and his management team to carry this forward.
"He [Steed] stays out of the way. Yes, he asks questions, yes, we all have to be accountable, but he gives us a support and the oxygen to be able to do what we need to do and have the success that we’ve been able to achieve.
"One of the key things in this whole effort was to make sure that while we’re bringing in this new capital and new investors, we didn’t what was working to change.
"And so it’s going to be more of the same. Mark [Ashton] and his team have rededicated themselves to the club, to the future and we couldn’t be more pleased and more proud at giving them the oxygen, giving them the capital to take this club even further than we’ve been.”