The FA Council will meet later this month to vote on the proposal. Supporters Direct are canvassing supporter opinion through this short survey:
https://castrust.org/2018/10/have-your-say-on-the-sale-of-wembley/If you are interested in taking part please do so today if possible as we are not sure how long the survey will remain active.
Comments
Not only should Wembley not be sold to a third party, it should be taken away from FA control and placed in a trust with ALL operating profits being used for grass roots football.
I would rather they sold it, used the money for something useful to grass roots, played the big finals there and a few England games every year.
No semi finals, ever, and take the England team round the country.
a) will allow some England matches and semi finals to be played elsewhere, and;
b) would provide a huge cash boost to the FA which could be spent on a real improvement for grass roots football (remember when everyone thought the English national team were rubbish because we had far fewer qualified coaches than Spain/Germany)
Unfortunately I have very little faith in the FA’s ability to execute on b) and the money will probably be squandered.
I think most football fans would like to see some games played around the country again and want to stop Wembley semi finals devaluing the occasion of reaching a cup final. But the loans and mortgages on Wembley will be cleared off in the next few years and the thing will be a cash cow for life. The music gigs alone at Wembley generate a small fortune. Then it’ll become much more financially palatable to play friendlies and the more meaningless games from the UEFA nations cup of bollox around the country. Play semi finals around the country again and leave Wembley just for Cup Finals and competitive Internationals. This is all achievable while keeping ownership.
Khan isn’t trying to buy this for the benefit of English football, he’s buying it as cash cow for his own private empire, for his own family for generations to come. Why aren’t we keeping it for English footballs generations to come? All this before we even get into the part public funding of the purchase and development of Wembley. Are sport England and the lottery fund going to get a rebate?
Following the mindless MOTD pundits going ummm, errr,,, yeahhh, we’ll we’ve never owned Wembley and the FA can invest the money so I don’t see what the problem is, in my opinion, is FUCKING INSANE.
Keep Wembley and employ Khan’s marketing/ PR companies to generate more cash for ourselves.
It's hardly Lords or Wimbledon is it? It's just a big stadium that is a pain in the arse to get to and from. England games at other grounds always have better atmosphere.
Complete embarrassment - compounded by the fact we are selling to a bloody yank.
Only Grounds that are easy to get too and from are Non-League Grounds, never been to a League game myself where your clear of any traffic / trains within 10 / 20mins of leaving unless your getting a police escort
Not Rugby, NFL, Boxing, show jumping, polo, tug of war, concert's or any non association football events.
The pitch is used like a whore to be used and abused for money.
To sell Wembley is another example of the sorry state of boot sale Britain.
Have no problem with the many boxes being used to pay for the upkeep but the blazers need to go and new vibrate custodians found with a home background.
Keeping Wembley British owned should be sacrosanct.
Ps. Maybe allow the Rugby League Final as long as they take the goal posts down when they finish and mop up all the gravy which spilled over from their chips.
In all seriousness, they should keep, maximise profits and reinvest into grass roots sustainably, sensibly and into the long term rather than take a once only profit, squander it and have to pay rent forever more. They took on the huge development risk and now they have it working might sell which seems odd.
The grass roots may well benefit from the sale but whose grass roots? The premier top six grass roots most probably as they currently hover up most of the youth from the age seven. They will probably think subsiding their clubs is a bloody good idea.
If the FA came out with a detailed costed plan for the proceeds, maybe we might understand why they are so keen to sell. But I remain very sceptical all the time the FA talk in vague terms. I’m sure they must have done the grass roots of football, over the last 120 years, plenty of good but tonight I’m struggling to think past them insuring the big get bigger.
Keep the stadium and fund football from the bottom up, the top is awash with money, they need to be more prudent with it.
It has to be remembered that running and operating Wembley is a commercial enterprise, and I'm sure a private operator could do that better than the FA, as it's not the FA's job to run a large stadium and get in money from concerts, boxing matches etc
Whether I trust the FA to use the money from any sale wisely is another matter...
Khan had offered £600m for the national stadium, with the FA retaining the rights for the Club Wembley hospitality venture, which it valued at £250m-£300m.
"We fully respect his decision," said the FA.
It's pretty much what Levy was doing when talking about moving to the Olympic Stadium. I don't think they had any intentions of moving there but just wanted to make sure that they were given the best local authority support. If Spurs moved out of that area it would be even more of a khazi than it is now.