The English Football Association (FA) has received an offer from Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan to buy the Wembley national soccer stadium for about 600 million pounds. Khan said after the sale the stadium would continue to host England games and major cup finals. Wembley has staged regular-season National Football League games since 2007 and Khan's Florida-based franchise started playing at the 90,000-capacity stadium in 2013, the year Khan bought London soccer club Fulham.
He is expecting to own the stadium in eight to 12 weeks. However, there has not yet been any “formal approval” of the offer. At the same time it has emerged that for the past six months the FA has been advised by Rothschild & Co on the deal being proposed by Khan. There is little chance that a deal will go through on the “eight to 12 week” timescale suggested by Khan.
The FA are nevertheless hopeful that a sale will be agreed but neither have they entered into an exclusivity agreement with Khan and are also yet to work through all the protections that need to be in place over the future use of Wembley for football – including cup finals, England internationals plus Rugby League’s Challenge Cup final. The FA will also demand the retention of the “Wembley” name in future naming rights deal with their own agreement with EE expiring in 2020.
It makes it possible that a counter-offer might be made by another bidder, now that the news is out, but the FA is acutely aware of the size of the opportunity presented by the Khan deal with the proceeds being ploughed back into the grassroots of the sport with 1,500 3G and 4G pitches being built around the country and facilities upgraded. The idea of setting up a trust is to ring-fence the money.
Khan’s offer would also release the FA, whose headquarters would remain at Wembley for the foreseeable future, from the burden of running the stadium – around £10million a year – and the expensive prospect of having to upgrade it. The FA’s pledge to use the money in this way is partly why it is proposing putting the proceeds into a trust and this was explained in a letter to FA councillors from chairman, Greg Clarke which has been released.
