Millions of pounds in debt, Paul King put his family home up as a guarantee to keep Salford Red Devils afloat – and he is not the only one out of pocket
It’s been a black eye for Super League all year and the final blow was dealt last week when Salford Red Devils finally went bust. The financial destruction of the club has left players, staff and creditors out of pocket and a city without a team to support.
The situation started 10 months ago after a takeover by a consortium, but the club would actually end up being run by Kiwi owners Curtiz Brown and Sire Kailahi of Jacobsen Management Group.
The pair came in before the start of the 2025 season, and once they had taken over, they claimed that they had cleared “all current club debt”.
But that was just the first in of a series of falsehoods and damaging incidents that have festered in M30.
The motives of Brown and Kailahi, and of Jacobsen, remain a point of conjecture. It is believed they claim to be representing a wealthy American hedge fund with plans to buy the CorpAcq Stadium and land around it from Salford City Council. However, those plans have never materialised.
Brown and Kailahi declined to comment when approached by The i Paper.
“It’s been scandalous what they have done to our club and what they did at the last home game,” said Shirley Bradshaw, the chairperson of the Salford RLFC Supporters’ Trust and a director of the Community Benefit Society (CBS) that owned the share capital of the club.
“Their attitude to the fans protesting, offering them out and then wanting a police escort to get them out. What a farce they are.”
Salford Red Devils fans have been left without a club to support (Photo: Getty)
Lifelong fan Paul King ran the Red Devils as chief executive from 2018 up until Jacobsen takeover in February, but then returned to help run the club just four months later.
King was convinced by Jacobsen to make a number of personal guarantees, even putting up his own house to secure loans to pay Salford employees and keep the club running, with the promise of new funding arriving.
But it never did, and debts spiralled out of control, reaching around £4m in total.
“Jacobsen brought me back in from gardening leave in June and when I was there I felt like a hostage,” King told The i Paper.
He said his own passion for the club, spending seven years trying to relive the glory days of his childhood in the 1970s, made him vulnerable.
“It feels as though Jacobsen were very smart at spotting those weaknesses and manipulating them. They could read people really well: Machiavellian, cruel and evil, but nonetheless, it was a skill. And that’s what my trigger was. I believe they got the passion, the personal guarantees, everything and they used it against me.”
Salford were finally wound up last week over an unpaid tax bill of more than £700,000.
“You do it with your heart and not your head sometimes and I admit that,” King conceded.
“I’m now a 60-year-old unemployed man who has just had his bankruptcy hearing pushed back to January.
“I’m genuinely frightened about what 2026 will bring for me. I have sat and stared into that void a few times recently and a few weeks ago I figured maybe I’m worth more to my family dead than like this.”
Jayden Nikorima is one of those players who claims to be owned a significant amount of money (Photo: Getty)
King faces bankruptcy and could lose his house, with him personally in hock for £500,000.
His first personal guarantee to secure money came in June last year and he said it was done to keep the club afloat with the expectation they would receive a subsidy grant worth £1.8m from the council.
But when that subsidy grant did not land, Salford were forced to ask the RFL for a £500,000 advance of its central distribution money in November 2024 to ensure the club did not go under then.
King claims Brown and Kailahi initially inquired about buying the club in 2023, but ended talks when they learned they could not acquire the stadium as it was not fully owned by the council.
Jacobsen then came back into the picture in December 2024 after Salford’s finances worsened. By now the council fully owned the stadium and King was under pressure at that stage to sell Red Devils players to help alleviate the club’s financial pain.
“I didn’t bring Jacobsen in but I made the conscious choice to hang on because I believed they had money,” King admitted.
“I was just hedging my bets that these boys were the real deal and everybody was to be fair. Well, it seems like the RFL was, I mean, obviously, the due diligence wasn’t done as well as one would hope but I guess everyone was desperate for someone to come forward.
“Apparently the council had seen the bank account with £200m in it, as had the RFL. I never saw it but there have subsequently been questions raised over its authenticity.”
From February, Salford’s position deteriorated: losses mounted up, players were sold, supporters’ anger at the situation grew and the club slowly but publicly fell apart.
The collapse has had a nightmarish impact on all of those involved. The i Paper has spoken to several ex-Salford players who state that they were lied to and manipulated by Jacobsen and are still owed money.
“The whole time we’ve just been led on to believed that we’re going to get our money,” says Jayden Nikorima, now with Bradford. He says he is owed £15,000.
“Then we’ve been told ‘Don’t stress, it’ll all work out.’ And look, it’s not worked out. Not one bit. We’ve had no support whatsoever from the RFL.
“The RFL are the ones that have allowed this to all happen. And them being the governing body of rugby league, when things have hit the fan, they’ve just pushed the issue elsewhere.
“What young kid would want to come and play rugby league now knowing that, if you do get in these financial situations, they’re just going to be left to dry?”
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