It’s a bipolar existence being a Birmingham City fan sometimes. On the pitch things look much improved and on Saturday the team scored five goals in the league for the first time in nearly six years in a thumping 5-0 win over Luton. Off the pitch, the rumour mill is in overdrive with whispers of financial meltdown doing the rounds in a vacuum of information.
Birmingham City have confirmed in a brief announcement that work on the Tilton and Kop stands has not been completed in time for any part to be open for the opening two home games of the season.
With the football season pretty much over, I wanted to turn my attention back to the ownership of Birmingham City. Although the departure of Ren Xuandong from his roles as CEO and Director of the club has been welcomed almost universally by Blues fans, I think there are still some reservations over how the ownership of the club will run the club going forward.
If you’d have told me in the wake of the three-nil humping handed to Blues by Bristol City back in March that Blues would be mathematically safe with two games to go, I’d have laughed. Yet a 2-1 comeback win against fellow strugglers Derby County has done just that, putting Blues in a nosebleed 16th place to boot.
The accounts for Birmingham City Football Club plc and it’s UK parent Birmingham City plc became live on the Companies House website on Tuesday. Although we’ve already seen general information on how the club has fared financially from segmented parts of the Birmingham Sports Holdings accounts, these accounts give us a good chance to understand the specific issues the club is facing.
“Financial Armageddon” screamed the headline. Ten clubs under a transfer embargo with the EFL, of which Birmingham City was one. The article from the Daily Mail appears to have gone, but the backlash hasn’t, with Coventry City, Luton Town and Cardiff City all issuing statements refuting the story. Was it all just a storm in a teacup or is there more to read into this?
Birmingham Sports Holdings announced to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday afternoon that it had agreed to sell off its remaining 75% stake in Birmingham City Stadium Ltd. The sale passes St Andrew’s Stadium into the hands of a British Virgin Islands investment vehicle – and further muddies the water of how the club is run.
What’s in a name? Quite a lot if you judge the buzz on some Blues Facebook groups recently. News and pictures that Birmingham City have removed the former sign outside Wast Hills proclaiming the “Trillion Trophy Training Ground” has been met with thoughts that the club is being sold. Unfortunately for them, it’s not the case.
Birmingham Sports Holdings announced their interim accounts to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Friday. The unaudited figures confirmed that the listed company made a profit of HK$75.924M (just over £7m) for the six-month period to December 31, 2020, which represents a huge change from their normal loss-making performance.
Two consecutive days of share price rises have pushed the stock market capitalisation of Birmingham Sports Holdings to £378M as of close of play on Friday. It seems an insanely high figure for a company which makes the majority of its revenue via Blues. In today’s piece I’ve taken a deep dive into just what else BSH does to try to make some sense of what is happening.
