Newcastle United owners secure a huge bargain after 'superb piece of negotiating'
Newcastle United's owners secured a 'huge bargain' by buying the club for £305m.
That is the view of football finance expert Kieran Maguire after a group backed by individuals in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia signed an exclusivity agreement to buy a 45% stake in Crystal Palace. The price is such that Crystal Palace, as a club, are valued at more than what Newcastle were when the Magpies were taken over in 2021.
"It looks as if there has been an offer accepted probably in the region of £150m to £160m," Maguire told the Price of Football. "It could be a little bit higher.
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"That would value Palace at around about the £400m mark in total which, based on my figures, is probably about there. If someone was getting a controlling stake, they might be willing to pay a little bit more.
"Bournemouth went for £120m a couple of years ago but Bournemouth, at the time, were at the wrong part of the Premier League. Newcastle went for £305m and that's increasingly looking like a huge bargain. It's unusual for Mike Ashley to sell at too low a price or it could have been a superb piece of negotiating by Amanda Staveley, but we have certainly seen an increase in the value of the cost of football clubs in the last couple of years."
It is worth noting that Newcastle's owners have pumped in additional sums since the takeover, after inheriting a stripped back asset in deep relegation trouble, but the value of the club has since soared. In fact, Adam Sommerfeld, a managing partner at Certus Capital Partners, who were involved in multiple takeover bids during the Ashley era, previously told ChronicleLive that 'general industry perception' values Newcastle at a figure above £800m.
