How many other property developments could he have secured which featured 2 different $10million federal government grants?
MC would have spent almost as much propping up the football club. He could have gotten better value for money developing elsewhere.
The property development is a huge deal. I've no idea what it'd be worth in the longer term, but it's a fair guess that in the construction phase it's a massive drain on MC's cash reserves. This hugely limits the amount that can be poured into the football club.
Whether this changes now that the office block is up or not I really don't know. I'd guess that the earnings from the office block are reinvested to drive the next stages of the development while the going's good, so until the project is fully mature, I wouldn't expect to see it delivering significant cash back to MC. It's going to be an appreciating asset though, because this:
This. If there wasnt money in CoE he would have been insane not to simply walk away when PT fell over.
In the meantime, I don't doubt that $20m might have been spent on the football club (quite likely more), but that money won't have been 'lost'.
The initial 'purchase' was (if reports at the time were accurate) essentially simply to take over debt in return for the equity. MC took over the club and promised to pay the players' wages and super that were owed, plus debts to the ATO, Gosford City Council and anyone else who was outstanding.
The purchase price was effectively zero, but in agreeing to take on that debt he's basically said that the value of the debt is the value of the club. I remember hearing at the time that that that sum was $7m.
Since then, he's run the club for three years - I remember seeing a figure saying the average A-League club spends around $8m a year, so he might well have spent $24m in that time.
But don't forget that in that time there was income from FFA, commercial, merchandise, memberships and ticketing, not to mention transfer fees...
Even still, I can completely believe that the average loss in that time was $1m. That puts the total spend on the football club at $31m with a cash loss of $10m.
There's only so long you can keep piling on more cash - there's a limit to how deep MC's pockets are.
Let's assume for a moment that he loses another $1m this year, but then the club hits break-even and that's sustained. His total cash output will have been $11m.
But against all of this, the value of the asset improves as future cash flows look stronger (because the club's no longer haemorrhaging money and because there's an improved TV deal in the offing). I don't reckon it's worth the $10m that MC has poured in at the moment, but if the TV deal is a good one that situation may change.
If the league develops and strengthens so that in 7 years (i.e. 10 years after he bought the club) he can move the club on for $25m, he will have made his money back with interest. If he can package it up with the COE (which all along has meant to be the thing that provides financial ballast for the football club, and should boost its price) he's probably laughing.
This is a long-run game - 10 years ago nobody would've expected
the *cheapest* MLS clubs to be valued at $100m or that the league would be charging
an expansion fee of more than $100m (that is you have to pay the league $100m just for the right to spend a load of cash on a team and a stadium to participate!).
The gamble is whether the league (and this club within it) is going to develop! Along with cash constraints, the amount of cash MC is willing to spend on the football club right now will be related directly to his feelings about how likely he is to be able to get that back down the track.
[EDIT: added sources for the MLS info - the MLS is jacking the expansion fee to $200m!]