On Tuesday, Wilken Engelbracht plausibly explained to the public why the repayment of the Corona aid was so painful for FC St. Pauli. The club has to repay around 15 million euros over several years, including the ongoing loans for stadium construction, which is around six million euros per year. This puts even such a stable structure as the Kiezklub in trouble – but how are clubs that have already stumbled into the Corona period already knocked out?
“I didn’t care about it and didn’t ask, because of course my focus is here,” said Engelbracht when asked. “But you can see it at Bremen right now. They are open to the question of whether they might take on an investor, not just for fun. That was a highly explosive issue there and shows the pressure they are under.” And he believes that this is not the only case.
Delicate situation: “If someone changes league..”
Because after the phase of two repayment-free years, it’s now time to get down to business. “Now comes the thumbscrew,” the 50-year-old summed it up. “Before you paid interest, you managed that. And now you have the situation where many people can no longer get any borrowed capital on their balance sheets, but they can still make repayments.” That’s why it will be exciting for some people in the next few years, “I can imagine that. Not much can go wrong. If someone changes league or goes down three places in the TV rankings…”
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In addition, the gap between the industry’s big names and the rest will become significantly larger. “Large corporations can put something like this away better,” emphasized Engelbracht. “Small and medium-sized companies like us in particular will be working hard to repay all these loans over the next few years.” Which of course significantly inhibits investment opportunities – including in the sporting sector. “That means the gap between clubs like RB Leipzig and Werder Bremen is widening even more because some have easily pushed it away and the others have been set back a few years.”
Corona aid was “important for survival”
However, this also affects many other industries. “The Corona aid was vital at the time,” emphasized Engelbracht, “and the state cannot give us the money. But he could have said: Pay attention, the repayment period is not that short, i.e. ten years and not four. But that is a decision that was made at the time and couldn’t have been made any differently at the time.”
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It is also pointless to speculate about this because the facts are clear. It hits FC St. Pauli to the core, but things could be even worse for other clubs. “Let’s see,” concluded Engelbracht, “what negative effects we will actually see in the next two or three years.”
2023-12-20 20:17:22
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