Huddersfield Town owner Kevin Nagle provides positive update on club's bid to take sole ownership of John Smith's Stadium

HUDDERSFIELD Town owner and chairman Kevin Nagle has revealed that the club are 'really close' to making a significant breakthrough in their bid to take sole ownership of the John Smith's Stadium.

The stadium – which is 30 years old this year – is owned in a three-way partnership by Town (40 per cent), Kirklees Council (40 per cent) and Huddersfield Giants (20 per cent).

It's a 40/40/20 split via Kirklees Stadium Development Ltd (KSDL).

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In a report issued last October, Kirklees Council stated that it wanted no further involvement in the running of the John Smith’s Stadium and would put no more money into the failing KSDL management company.

Huddersfield Town owner/chairman Kevin Nagle. Picture: Bruce Rollinson.Huddersfield Town owner/chairman Kevin Nagle. Picture: Bruce Rollinson.
Huddersfield Town owner/chairman Kevin Nagle. Picture: Bruce Rollinson.

Previously in December 2022, Kirklees Council’s cabinet gave approval for senior officers to enter negotiations with Town and the Giants over handing “operational control” to the football club.

Town are keen to take sole ownership of the stadium in order to make a host of changes to the stadium and enable the club to generate significant additional revenue streams.

Providing an update on his video diary on ‘X’, Nagle said: "We are in really heavy negotiations.

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"It's sort of funny, right before this (diary), I was working with Michael Thomas, who is my CFO, on a counter-proposal to Mr (Ken) Davy, who actually owns Huddersfield Giants (and) who was previously the chairman of Huddersfield Town AFC as well.

"He will be receiving the latest proposal from me. I feel we are really close. I think there's three or four points and I hope to have a deal.

"Ken has been really great to deal with so far and I feel we're going to get over the finish line in maybe the next week or two.

"I feel that. I hope I am not jinxing myself, but the reality of this is that negotiations are going fluid.

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"We will try and move and make the stadium, the John Smith's Stadium or whatever it may be called in the future - because we will want to make a change on it – one of the centres if not the centre of Huddersfield where we plan to have a lot of changes that go on there.

"I am excited by that. We've got a lot of them (changes) that are actually designed right now and we're trying to figure out in what order because you are up against the clock. You know the Giants are playing there right now and will play in the next six weeks or two months. We've got to make sure we are ready."

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