One of the most complex things to understand about Birmingham City is just who owns the club. While the simple answer would be to point to the Hong Kong listed company Birmingham Sports Holdings, the ownership of that company is opaque due to the number of investment vehicles incorporated in the British Virgin Islands who own stakes in the company. Throw into the mix people owning stakes in the club directly and you’ve got a mess.
The second article in my series looking at where Birmingham City have spent money in recent years focuses on St Andrew’s stadium. The stadium has been the centre of news throughout most of the current regime’s tenure due to the sale of the stadium to Birmingham City Stadium Ltd to get around P&S rules; the closure and partial reopening of the Tilton and Kop stands due to structural issues and the ground share deal with Coventry City FC.
Everyone knows that Birmingham City are owned by a company based in Hong Kong, but how much is actually known about them and what they do? In this second refresher article about the powers that be behind the club, I’ve taken a look at Birmingham Sports Holdings.
Birmingham City scratched out a 0-0 draw with Coventry on Tuesday night at the Coventry Building Society Arena in a game that wasn’t one for the purists. In a performance marred by a ref handing out a harsh red card to Ryan Woods for serious foul play it could have been much worse had Coventry bought their shooting boots and only went to show just how thin the Blues squad currently is.
Following some feedback from posts on Facebook and smallheathalliance.com, I thought it would be a good idea to write a series of articles as a refresher on the powers that be at Blues, Birmingham Sports Holdings etc. This first post looks at the current board of Birmingham City FC – who they are, what they do and where they are based.
Following my article on Monday about the rumours surrounding takeovers and owners, I thought now would be a good time to refresh people’s memories about Wang Yaohui (aka the elusive Mr King) and his connections to the entities that officially own the club, the stadium and Birmingham Sports Holdings.
The international break is a tough time for journalists, especially ones covering smaller clubs. With no games to report on column inches have to be filled with other things to get those clicks. This weekend those column inches were filled with a report that Laurence Bassini is “eyeing a Birmingham City takeover”.
In October 2017, it was reported that Birmingham City had entered into a strategic partnership deal with Unio Esportiva Cornella, a team playing in the Spanish third tier. In this first article of a series looking back at the way the current regime have run Blues, I’ve taken a look at what that partnership did for Blues – and at what cost.
Back in August, I’d hoped that by the time of the October international break we’d be close to knowing when the final work on the Kop and Tilton stands would be at St Andrew’s. Yet here we are not even sure that the upper part of the Kop will be open for the visit of Swansea on October 23.
On Thursday Birmingham Sports Holdings announced to shareholders the end of year accounts for the company for the year ending June 30, 2021. The accounts reflect a year where the business has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic with revenues vastly reduced. However, the sale of Jude Bellingham in particular ensured that the company were able to reduce losses to a more manageable level.
