SALFORD RED DEVILS have held talks with a Premier League club over a potential stadium move.
The Super League side’s struggles with securing a permanent move beyond 1st December have been well documented with managing director Paul King explaining how the issue could affect the Red Devils’ future.
Speaking on BBC Radio Manchester, King offered honesty surrounding the situation.
“It’s serious across multiple levels. I think one is obviously we have different funding pots, the match funding that can generate up to up to £2 million, the standard mark, and they are utterly reliant upon having heads of terms at the new stadium,” King told BBC Radio Manchester.
“We also have a commercial partner opportunity that is also entirely dependent upon reaching that heads of terms point before we can actually get the ball rolling – and that’s quite a significant sum of money, so that’s difficult for us on a commercial basis.
“We can’t access food and beverage incomes until we’ve got those heads of terms – so that’s difficult. On the other hand, we’re also in breach of Rugby League protocols as of the 1st of December. That would cost us a point in our IMG grading if that position is maintained until the end of 2024. Then clearly in 2025 we’ll drop out of Super League.
“We’ll lose our distributions of £1.31 million which means we’ll revert to about £50,000 below level, and we couldn’t function at that level.”
King also revealed that the club is in discussion with Manchester City Council about potentially using the Etihad Stadium.
“We had a conversation a couple of years ago about Wool Lane but it isn’t compliant with the RFL and the cost of making it compliant was about £4 million pounds. That was just wasn’t feasible.
“We’re having a conversation with Manchester City Council around the Etihad complex. There’s Gigg Lane, Bury, and we’ve put the feelers out in the general direction of Stockport.
“But without wishing to be rude to any of those people, it’s not Salford. We’re Salford Red Devils for a reason, our fan base is primarily in and around the city of Salford and it feels a little bit of a death now if we were to move outside of the city.
“We’re desperate to represent the city that we’re representing really well, we have done consistently for quite some time now and we’re just hoping that we’re recognised on the local authority level.”
Click here to purchase a digital edition of League Express.
Click here to purchase an online edition of League Express through pocketmags.com.
Click here to listen to our new League Express Podcast.
League Express is widely available from local newsagents across the north of England.