Shahid Khan is not letting the grass grow under his feet. Even before the FA Council’s 127 members discuss selling Wembley Stadium to him on Thursday, the Fulham owner’s staff are examining how to limit the tax he will pay in the UK when bringing his Jacksonville Jaguars to what until now has been the home of English football.
Sportsmail understands that Khan would be is looking to continue basing his team in Florida, regardless of staging their home games at what he anticipates would be the new jewel in his London property portfolio.
Tax liabilities are already complicated enough for NFL players who, under Internal Revenue Service rules in the US, must pay a percentage of their income to each state they play in during the NFL season. It’s why Khan's staff are keen to avoid dealing with the UK’s Inland Revenue.
By flying into London for games, perhaps on a Thursday, and leaving immediately afterwards, the team will also avoid exhausting journeys from London to the US west coast for ‘away’ games and the Florida climate will be conducive to players.
The point is that Khan has fierce financial focus. He’s turned the Jaguars’ stadium into a commercial goldmine by attending to the small details of how to sweat the asset.
Doing that is a financial necessity in the NFL, where TV and sponsorship revenues are shared out equally between franchises and the only way of extracting commercial advantage is by working the bricks and mortar to death all year round.
Those who have worked with him say he will do precisely the same at Wembley. England might be negotiating to ensure “major fixtures” are still played at the stadium but the national stadium will, in every sense, be lost.
And for what gain? Khan’s offer to the FA is £600m, a figure very substantially less than the £860m the FA has spent buying and rebuilding it since 1999.
The Economist newspaper observed this week that house prices in London have trebled in the 19 years since the FA bought the stadium and that is what makes the value look poor. It’s what happens when you’re selling your house and have only one buyer.
The FA counters that the money will go to the grassroots game, though how long will it last and how far will it reach with the 29,000 clubs out there is questionable. The £61m of lottery and government money have stumped up to assist the FA’s development of Wembley must be repaid. Then it will be a race against time to achieve the “transformation” of the game that the FA is promising before the money runs out.
By the time it does, expect Khan to have shown the governing body a thing or two about how to make a stadium like Wembley into a cash machine. Ask those who have worked with him and it keeps coming back to commercial rigour.
‘It’s the American fan experience idea for him,’ one tells Sportsmail. ‘He makes the experience for visitors so good that they keep coming back and he is constantly looking for reasons to bring them back. Events, events, events. That’s what he’s about.
‘He is much better at that than the British. You have to feel the FA will look back on a sale and wonder why they couldn’t install the kind of people he employs and make it work financially for them.’
There is evidence at Fulham of what this one-time Khan executive means. The £100m he has invested in the new Craven Cottage Riverside Stand, overlooking the Thames, is expected to become a bigger non-match-day earner as on the 19 days a year that Fulham play at home. For just six times that cost, Khan gets to own Wembley. He’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.