What if.......

Someone who happens to be on the current City Board sets up a new company called for example "Bradford Sporting Club PLC" and gains support from a number of business colleagues from across the District who invest in this new company. This company, BSC, then bids for and gets the Bulls. BSC then offers to "buy out" City's shareholding with a share offering from the new company, therefore effectively transferring ownership to BSC.

In this scenario, what David said last night is perfectly true, no one from BCFC is or has made a bid for the Bulls. Don't forget, I am not talking about individuals here but rather companies who are legal entities in their own right.

Therefore, both you and Bulliac are right

Surely those offers with 'minor conditions' (quote) should be rejected on that very basis!? - 'conditional'.

I've never seen an offer to buy a company that wasn't full of conditions. Mostly of the "in the event of war or natural disasters" type. I can understand the RFL ruling out certain conditions, but all of them?

I do not think for one minute the RFL ruled out a bid that included ANY conditions, and certainly not f[iorce majeure[/i.

It seems pretty clear, surely, that the RFL have refused to consider any bids where as a precondition the applicant seeks guarantees that:

1 - the club will not lose its SL status; and/or

2 - the RFL will undertake to assign the head lease to the applicant.

Both seem not at all unreasonable to me? Since the first depends on the stance taken by the other SL clubs and their owners, and the RFL cannot speak for them - and in any case, they gave no such assurances in the past; and the second depends very much on the terms being offered and in the context of the wider offer?

If I had to guess, should a bid come forward that the RFL would wish to see succeed, I suspect the RFL would informally make it known whether or not they envisaged any significant issues with such wishes, or at least what would need to be done to pave the way to the applicant receiving a satisfactory response in the future. And, thereby, they can deter any bid deemed to be undesirable. But I speculate.

I wouldnt dispute that City are doing well in relative terms. But I'd bet that, if asked, City's directors would agree that life for all but a very few professional sports clubs is a continual struggle. And that virtually all sports clubs would benefit from additional funding.

It just seems a bit odd that if City's directors have funds available to put into the Bulls, why not put those resources into City instead? I could understand it if they were really looking to merge the two clubs, share a ground and administration costs. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

Exactly. The RFL will want Bradford in the SL and they would rather not have responsibility for Odsal.

I imagine that it is the latter in particular which caused the past bids to fail - there were certainly whisperings that the ABC had wanted Odsal back on ridiculous terms.