New West Ham United owners David Sullivan and David Gold have revealed that West Ham United are ion debt to the tune of £110m. Which begs the question: Why did they buy West Ham?
“It makes no commercial sense to buy this club,” said Sullivan after laying out the scale of West Ham’s borrowing. If there was any other club in this situation, then we would not be buying it. We bought this as supporters, not from a business point of view.”
CB Holdings, who retain the other 50% ownership in the club, had said the Hammers had debts of £38m, but Sullivan disputes that number.
“In simplistic terms, £50m is owed to banks and £40m to other clubs… West Ham are not owed a single penny by other clubs because when they’ve sold players, they’ve discounted the debt with the banks,” We’ll have to find new money.”
Gold and Sullivan will now go on a dog and pony show and try and get some rich people to buy a part of West Ham for £10-20m each and that money will be used to pay off debts. If that doesn’t happen, regardless of what the new owners say, West Ham will be forced to sell players to pay the £40m that is owed to other clubs for players that West Ham has already bought. That is one one of the problems that Portsmouth is facing, in that they had not paid other teams for players that they had bought.
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