DURHAM County Cricket Club is raising more than £7m from wealthy individuals looking to take a stake in the business.
The region’s top cricket club sold a 90% stake to Indian media mogul Gautam Radia and his brother Hilem a year ago for £2.4m and is now looking to sell more shares.
DCCC wants the money to help fund its expansion with the building of a new £10m Hilton hotel and gateway building and conference centre which are hoped to dramatically boost its finances.
The club revealed its fund-raising plans as it unveiled its annual financial report which showed that it had made a loss of more than £1m in the 12 months to the end of September last year compared with a £146,000 profit a year earlier.
The loss mainly came from a fall in match income to £1.2m from £2.9m in 2009 when it last hosted a Test Match – a five-day England-West Indies game which brought in £1m.
It said that it expected to see an operating loss for the next couple of years and would not post a profit until 2013 when it will host its first Ashes match against Australia.
The club’s turnover fell from nearly £7m to £5.5m last year, a similar total to 2008 when again its focus was more on county cricket than big internationals.
The club, which is currently top of the county championship, boosted membership to more than 315,000 last year and won a six-year sponsorship deal with airline Emirates. It sees international games as one of the keys to financial growth.
Chief executive David Harker said: "These results are in line with our long-term financial planning and compare favourably to other Test match venues that do not host Test cricket on an annual basis."
But the longer term hope to boost its finances is the creation of the 150-room hotel and other facilities which it says will make it one of the UK’s best cricket venues.
Chairman Clive Leach said: "We have a very substantial long-term plan and that is what the last two years were about and that is what the next two years are about.
"The foundations of the strategy will start to bring in real returns when we get the investment in. It will help us to get bigger Tests and help bring in income from the hotel and conference events."
Mr Leach, who brought in his business associate Mr Radia to invest in the club, said he is now talking to individuals who are interested in investing in the club.
"We are focusing on the long term. I am talking to wealthy people who are interested in cricket, two or three of whom are from abroad, who want to invest in our business," he said.
Mr Harker said: "It is essential that Durham County Cricket Club is not solely reliant on international cricket revenues alone and the exciting developments which are planned will see the club move away from a dependency on international cricket, placing it on a strong foundation for the future. "
Mr Leach said that the talent in the team, which includes England players Steve Harmison, Paul Collingwood and Graham Onions, justified its £2.5m wage bill last year and said that it had not been necessary to invest in overseas players.
