Everton ‘amazing opportunity’ for right buyer as 777 Partners takeover continues to fail
Former Everton owner Paul Gregg believes that whoever becomes the club’s next majority shareholder has the chance to create a “new brand” within a few years.
Everton are currently locked in takeover talks between Farhad Moshiri and 777 Partners, but Gregg says that the club’s history and new stadium could help a new owner to take them back to the top.
The Toffees are currently mired in financial fair play penalties with further sanctions potentially on the way, but Gregg said the situation is not too dissimilar from his spell as joint-owner between 1999 and 2006.
Speaking on the Royal Blue podcast, Gregg compared the two: “It was tight on cash back then, and look where it is today. It’s several hundred million, you’re talking about half a billion pounds for somebody to sort it out now.”
On future prospects, the 83-year-old was optimistic. He said: “When you go to the new stadium and look around you just see an amazing opportunity.
“I think with (some) simple management changes and a deep breath, Everton could be a new brand again, and have got a great chance to rebuild.”
New Everton Stadium could have transformative effect
Everton relocating from Goodison Park to a modernised, state-of-the-art facility has been mooted for a long time, and whilst Gregg was in place as joint-owner alongside the late Bill Kenwright, plans were put in place for a move to Kings Dock which never came to fruition.
20 years on, the club are set to move into their new home on Bramley-Moore Dock, but there’s still plenty of issues to address before playing their first game there in 2025.
The most pressing of which is who will fund the ground’s completion, given that 777 Partners, Moshiri’s preferred new owners of the club, have failed to complete their takeover despite ongoing talks for the past eight months.
Further complicating those matters is the fact that 777 have loaned £158million to the club in order to fund the stadium‘s completion, and that money can only be converted into club assets if they become majority shareholders.
Otherwise, it’s just further debt on top of the £89.1million that the club have lost in their most recent set of accounts, but there is a silver lining on the horizon when the stadium is finally ready.
Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium set them back over £1billion before opening in 2019, but has since fast-tracked Spurs to the top of matchday revenue charts in both the Premier League and Europe as a whole.
The Bramley-Moore Dock stadium may leave a big hole in Everton’s pockets initially, but as Gregg says, filling it week in, week out and generating more money for the club should result in that financial burden beginning to ease.
In other Everton news, a competitive auction twist has emerged amid a recent takeover development with Farhad Moshiri looking to sell.
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