News

Companies House reveals Mike Ashley takes out loan against 2020/21 Premier League TV money

Mike Ashley has arranged for Newcastle United to take out a loan.

The news has broken on Tuesday morning via Companies House.

Any changes Newcastle United make as a company, have to be filed at Companies House.

This means the public have access to the documents, though there is some delay before they can be seen.

Tuesday morning (17 September 2019) the latest document became available to the public.

It was filed by Newcastle United on 11 September 2019 and it shows that the club have borrowed an unspecified amount (or arranged a significantly increased overdraft facility) from Barclays Bank.

The loan is secured against both the remaining money to be received by Newcastle for this current 2019/20 season from the Premier League/broadcasting, as well as against the ‘Basic Award Fund’ for the 2020/21 season.

Newcastle will bank tens of millions next season from the Premier League, even if relegated, due to the parachute payments.

It was a 30+ page document at Companies House but these are the (particularly) relevant pages as to how the money will be secured/repaid:

A little bit puzzling this considering Newcastle United stated that there was £61m available to spend this summer plus cash from sale of players, yet there appeared to be at least £30m left unspent…

So the question is, why would Newcastle United be needing to loan money and/or have this additional borrowing facility, when you wouldn’t imagine cashflow would be a problem.

I don’t want to worry anybody but almost exactly a year ago, the club held its last official NUFC Fans Forum (24 September 2018) and via September 2018 fans forum minutes we found out that once the transfer window ended, an unspecified amount of the cash that hadn’t been spent in the summer, was instead taken out of the club by Mike Ashley against his personal ‘loans’ to his own football club.

This was later revealed to be £33m that the owner had taken out of the cashflow.

The club have refused to hold any Fans Forums since last September and indeed have had only two in the past 29 months, as they refuse to engage properly with fans, despite the Premier League rules (what a laugh).

So you have to ask the question, has this new loan/borrowing facility been set up so Mike Ashley can take another massive chunk of money out of the Newcastle United cash flow? It also begs the question, is the boycott, missing 10,000 season ticket holders and falling corporate ticket sales also putting the squeeze on Ashley?

