For Everton, 2023 will see them take another significant step towards realising the vision for a new stadium.
The 52,888 capacity Everton Stadium at Bramley Moore Dock has risen up from the ground in 2022 alongside the River Mersey, the project set to be completed in time for the 2024/25 season.
For the club it will be a milestone that will allow them the opportunity to explore new avenues of growth that should better enable them to try and close the gap on some of their rivals. To leave Goodison Park will be a wrench for many but in order for the club to be able to compete in the modern landscape it is a move of necessity.
The project, something that has been at the top of the list for club owner Farhad Moshiri, will cost some £500m, with a portion of that funding to arrive from the Blues' majority shareholder himself. But while there have been notable successes on the financing front in terms of securing fixed costs from Laing O'Rourke, the company undertaking the construction work, something that has given some greater cost certainty around the project in the face of economic headwinds and geo-political issues such as the price of steel rising due to the Russia invasion of Ukraine back in February, there remains a large bulk of the financing for the project still to be found.
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The club have been on the lookout for investment for the remainder of the project for some time, engaging US banks MUFG and JP Morgan back in January 2020 to help secure the funding for the project. The ECHO was told by US financial sources with knowledge of the situation recently that there were interested parties and that some discussions had taken place, and continue to take place with regards to securing finance.
But in terms of investment into the football club to free up capital to complete the project, there have been interested parties who have shown their hand more publicly already.
A consortium featuring former Manchester United CEO Peter Kenyon, oil magnate John Thornton and US/Polish real estate tycoon Maciek Kaminski had entered into an exclusivity period with Moshiri back in June, the consortia seeking the takeover of the football club having initially been interested in taking a minority stake.
Since then the group, using the Las Vegas-registered vehicle of KAM Sports LLC, has seen both Kenyon and Thornton leave the project, with Kaminski and his son, Matthew, continuing with their push for investment into European football. That arrived last week when KAM Sports acquired the controlling stake in Greek Super League side Panetolikos, while Kaminski was linked with talks over investment in Spanish giants Atletico Madrid after being pictured heading into the Wanda Metropolitano to meet with Atletico's majority shareholder and CEO, Miguel Angel Gil Marin, a long-time friend and business associate of Kenyon. The ECHO has been told that any talk of Kaminski investing in the Spanish club is purely speculative, the news first reported by Spanish media outlet Vozpopuli.
Kaminski does, however, retain an interest in Everton, sources have confirmed, although there is understood to have been something of a pivot back towards a minority stake rather than a full takeover, with Moshiri, as stated in an open letter to fans following the ending of takeover talks with KAM Sports LLC, remaining committed to being the majority shareholder at Everton moving forward. He is, as was outlined in the letter to fans, open to investment if the right deal arrives, though.
Another name to be linked back in October was that of LAMF Global Ventures Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that had been launched in late 2021 by Los Angeles entertainment executives Simon Horsman and Jeff Soros, nephew of the US financial titan and noted philanthropist, George Soros.
The SPAC raised more than $200m at its initial public offering (IPO), with its market cap currently standing at $357m currently.
It was formed with the intention of landing investment in the sports or media space and it was initially reported by Bloomberg that preliminary discussions had taken place with LAMF and Everton, although the ECHO understands that the interest never reached any high level discussion and they are now not a name that is likely to be in the frame moving forward.
There is a clock ticking for LAMF, with SPACs often having to find a target within 24 months or be forced to hand the money committed by investors back. During 2020 and 2021 there was a boom in the SPAC market during the pandemic, with the financial instrument gaining much support from investors as sports valuations continued to rise and sport showed itself resilient to economic pressures.
But their opacity didn't lend itself particularly well to sports team ownership and the relationship with fans, while tightening rules, rising interest rates and a weakening stock market all saw the initial buoyancy around the market disappear within an 18-month window. A number of sports-targeted SPACS have been ended in 2022 having been unable to find a desired investment target or have decided it better to cut and run with the market on the decline.
The lack of SPACs to have successfully invested in sports team is also telling, with European football having welcomed very little in terms of investment. Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group had been in talks with RedBall Acquisition in 2020 before a decision was taken to abandon that plan and instead privately welcome RedBird Capital Partners as 11 per cent stakeholders as opposed to being at the whims of the stock market. That deal closed for $750m in March 2021.
Everton sources say that the club are comfortable with their financing options, and there are more talks slated, with 2023 likely to be when the search for the remaining funding kicks in.
Moshiri was pictured in Doha earlier this month meeting with Qatari businessman Sheikh Dr. Khalid bin Thani bin Abdullah Al Thani during the Argentina and Netherlands clash at the Lusail Stadium. That meeting is understood not to have been related to investment in the football club or any takeover activity.
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