Allam will only sell to the right owners
Hull City’s owner, Assem Allam, says he has received ‘several offers’ from parties interested in purchasing the Championship club yet none have met his high standards.
Admitting that he would be willing to sell the club for as little as £2million last year, the Egyptian-born businessman told ITV Calendar that he would only let the club go to ‘the right home’.
“There are offers from not what I would call a good home,” he said. “I’m a local man, I still want the club to do well, and I want the future of the club for the sake of the community.”
75-year-old Allam put the Tigers up for sale last year after an application to change the club’s name to Hull City Tigers was heavily criticised and rejected by the Football Association.
Having purchased the club in December 2010, he helped lead them to the Premier League and an FA Cup final before suffering relegation at the end of last season.
Under his leadership, he also helped break the transfer record for Hull City four times in the past five years with Abel Hernandez’s eight-figure fee, the largest in the club’s history.
Speaking about the future of Hull, he said: “If I left tomorrow, the club would go bust and I don’t want that. I want to stop the club relying on me.
“When you’re a Premier League club, you’re global. But in the Championship you’re local and relying on gate receipts.
“So either we go global by changing the name, or I keep pumping money in. It’s textbook marketing, the shorter the name, the better the brand.
“The fans were at the club before me. Who am I to force the issue? This is a present that I’m trying to give to the community, but saving it from a winding up order, getting it into the Premier League and an FA Cup final. Why should I force them to accept it?”
The Allam family was ranked 295th in the UK on the Sunday Times Rich List last year with an estimated worth of £320m.
