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Bastion looking for Securitisation Funder
for new stadium projects in UK

Bastion Stadium Solutions (UK) Limited has successfully sold-out it’s first 1,000 seat “Premier Club” at the new Kingston Communications Stadium at Hull and in the process raised close to £5m in revenue for the KC Stadium management company.

The Bastion business club concept, builds upon the impressive work that Bastion achieved at the Colonial Stadium in Melbourne Australia, where over £38m ($100m Australian) was raised as a securitised capital sum upon opening.

Bastion Stadium Solutions UK is a specialist research, sales and marketing company who engineer new revenue streams for sporting and stadia organisations. This is achieved through the sale of business club memberships under Bastion's exclusive Premier Club model.

The successful delivery of a fully subscribed business club provides organisations the luxury of a fully utilised corporate hospitality resource for a five year period allowing a maximised monthly income flow, or if preferred, an upfront securitised lump sum through the sale of the revenue stream to an established funder

“We started on the Hull project in October 2001; when we conducted a market research feasibility study into the demand and market for corporate and business offerings at the new stadium” Project Director and Bastion UK Managing Director Ken Sharp said.

“Our sales team commenced early in 2002, delivering our promise of new revenue from new customers when the stadium opened in December 2002.”

The 25,000 seater stadium is the home of Hull City Football Club, as well as Hull FC Super League Rugby League team. Hull is the 7th biggest city in the UK, and has a proud history of both football and rugby league.

According to Hull City Football Club Chairman Adam Pearson, “The Premier Club name was chosen to signify Hull City’s dream of reaching the English Premier League. The revenue provided by the Premier Club members will give us the capacity to help make this dream a reality” Mr Pearson said.

“Like all venues, we need to drive the non-match day usage of facility - to sweat the asset – and Bastions work will provide a great springboard for us to do this.” Mr Pearson said.

Prior to commencing the product design, and planning the marketing and sales program, Bastion UK conducted a market research feasibility to estimate the demand and pricing of memberships. According to Ken Sharp “the sales results were in line with the market research feasibility study that was conducted prior to marketing which predicted the 1,000 seat target could be reached”.

“The Premier Club product was designed around the key features potential buyers said they wanted to see and would pay for. The flexible, affordable membership really appeals to the vast majority of businesses that cannot afford executive boxes or match-day hospitality on a regular basis. Clubs that don’t target this new market are really missing out on an important revenue stream” Mr Sharp said.

David Hoar, Marketing Director of the Bastion Group, said that the fantastic achievements of the Bastion UK team had led to interest from a number of football and rugby clubs in the Bastion concept.

“Over 90% of businesses in the UK have less than 10 employees, and the Bastion business club concept and unique marketing approach directly targets this massive, untapped market. A significant number of small and medium companies do not use football or sport to network and grow their businesses, and our business club model allows them to achieve their business goals – and in the process help the club achieve their financial goals.” Mr Hoar said.

“The fact that we have been able to generate close to £1m per annum, and fully fund the sales project so that the client was not out of pocket, is seen as a remarkable achievement. Moving forward our plan is to expand the business, but only in a way that protects the brand that we have started to develop in the UK market”.

“And our business club seat concept is not limited to new stadia. We are working closely with two clients on reconfiguring their existing stadium seating - to help them boost the economic value of their stadium asset via an increase in their corporate yields” Mr Hoar concluded.

The principal advantage of the Bastion Product is that it provides NEW Revenue for Sports stadia. (Over 87% of Premier Club members in Hull who bought into the 5 year licensed memberships had never before spent money with the Club before)

The flexibility of the Bastion Model, by its very nature, allows for a far greater numbers of clients in hospitality spaces and therefore income take for the size of the sporting organisation facilities in greatly increased.

Bastion is able to provide its clients free use of its copyright licence documentation for Premier Club memberships. One-off production of similar legal documentation is invariably extremely costly to produce and is therefore prohibitive for sporting organisations to commission for one-off project use. The Bastion License provides clients with an ongoing, 5 year certainty of income currently not available under a traditional ‘match by match or annual sales strategy.

Bastion has agreements and plans in place for four more Premier Club’s in the new UK Stadium projects including:
§ The £14M Kingston Park Stadium for the Newcastle Falcons Rugby Club
§ The £63M Arena Stadium for the Coventry City FC
§ The £7M West Stand Millmoor Ground for Rotherham United FC
§ The £70M New Stanley Park Stadium for Liverpool FC

Bastion are currently looking for a funder in the UK who would be interested in buying the income streams from these and other Stadium projects currently in the pipeline.

For more information contact

Ken Sharp, Bastion UK Managing Director
ken@bastion-uk.co.uk
Please send Email with the word 'Securitizability.com' in the subject box