English club rugby has suddenly become ‘quite a hot property,’ says Cherry and Whites owner
Martin St Quinton, owner of Gloucester Rugby(Image: Getty Images)
Gloucester Rugby owner Martin St Quinton says the club are getting ‘in-coming calls’ from investors as English professional rugby has become ‘a hot property.’
St Quinton has had a financial stake in the Cherry and Whites since 2008 and took over as majority owner in 2016. While he confirmed he has been dipping into his own pocket most seasons to back the club, with the latest accounts showing a loss of £516,000, his fortune doesn’t match the type of money coming in the Gallagher PREM in the last 12 months.
READ MORE: Gloucester ‘not clinical enough’ but defended ‘heroically’ in Saracens loss
Billionaire Sir James Dyson has bought a 50 per cent stake in Bath Rugby, Red Bull purchased Newcastle last summer, and now USA billionaire Bill Foley and his Black Knight group are in the process of taking over Exeter Chiefs.
Speaking to BBC Radio Gloucestershire, St Quinton assured fans that Gloucester will not be left behind.
He said: “The club is not up for sale, but we we are not sufficiently narrow-minded not to talk to very wealthy, very well-funded, typically American, but they’re not all from America, people who want to invest in English rugby, which they think is relatively inexpensive at the moment.
So, we’ve been talking to people for a while, except the big difference now is there’s a much greater appetite to invest, principally because we’ve scrapped relegation.”
Relegation has been scrapped in the Gallagher PREM from next season, although no one is going up or down this year either, with the league moving to a franchise model with the aim of introducing at least two additional sides by the 2029/30 season
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St Quinton continued: “These big, very very well-funded corporates who are starting to buy into English rugby, I think that is a trend. Can we keep up with it? We’re we’re absolutely doing our best. But as I’ve said all along, if a big corporate came along that all the shareholders really felt could actually take the club to a different level and win trophies, so that’s what we basically want to do for all the very loyal fans we’ve got, we would talk to an external investor.”
“We’re only upping the conversations because we’re now getting inbound phone calls from people saying, “We want to come and talk to you. We like the look of it, we love what Gloucester have done for the last 150 plus years.
“We love the Kingsholm atmosphere, we love the setup, we can see what you’re doing. We think it’s a well-run club. You put a hell of a lot of work into the community, and you’ve got a very successful foundation.”
“They like what they see, and they’re attracted to English rugby. So yeah, we are talking to more people now than we have been before, principally because English rugby is, all of a sudden, with the advent of Red Bull and Black Knight and Dyson, it’s suddenly become quite a hot opportunity.”
This year, Gloucester launched a capital fundraising campaign called ‘A Piece of Holm’, asking fans to buy minor shares in the club to raise money to support the club’s academy expansion, having gained new territories, and the development of world-class training facilities at Kingsholm.
Providing an update this week, St Quinton confirmed, at the time of his interview, 174 individual investors had signed up, exceeding their target to raise £411,000.
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