Salford Red Devils in talks with Premier League club over stadium use

Salford Red Devils face collapse as Managing Director Paul King recently put it. He explained after the club’s damning statement of the local council that the club “would die” if the situation wasn’t remedied.

This is because the club’s tenancy agreement with the stadium is due to expire in December and the council have taken no action to resolve the situation around the stadium and the club’s tenancy.

If the situation persists, they could lose their Super League status for 2025 due to IMG’s minimum standards and this would likely see the club liquidate due to the fact they would struggle financially without the £1.3 million central distribution funding.

Speaking on BBC Radio Manchester, Managing Director King explained the severity of the situation:

“Yeah, it’s serious across multiple levels really. I think one is obviously we have different funding pots, the match funding that can generate up to up to £2 million, the standard mark, and they are utterly reliant upon having heads of terms at the new stadium.

“We also have a commercial partner opportunity that is also entirely dependent upon reaching that heads of terms point before we can actually get the ball rolling; that’s quite a significant sum of money, so that’s difficult for us on a commercial basis.

“We can’t access food and beverage incomes and all that kind of thing until such time as we’ve got those heads of terms; so that’s difficult. On the other hand, we’re also in breach of Rugby League protocols as of the 1st of December. That would cost us a point of our IMG grading if that position is maintained until the end of 2024, then clearly in 2025 we’ll drop out of Super League.

“We’ll lose our distributions of 1.31 million; we’ll revert to about £50,000 below level, and we couldn’t function at that level with the part-time.”

He also revealed conversations with three different stadiums including with Manchester City over the Etihad complex:

“We’re having a conversation with Manchester City Council around the Etihad complex. There’s Bury, and we’ve put the feelers out in the general direction of Stockport; and without wishing to be rude to any of those people, it’s not Salford. We’re Salford Red Devils for a reason, our fan base is primarily in and around the city of Salford and it feels a little bit of a death now if we were to move outside of the city.

“We’re desperate to represent the city that we’re representing really well, we have done consistently for quite some time now and we’re just hoping that we’re recognised on the local authority level.”