AstonVilla owners buy stadium in £56.7m deal

THE home of Aston Villa has been sold to the club’s owners in a £56.7 million deal. Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens have acquired the stadium via a group subsidiary company called NSWE Stadium which is under the direct control of the pair.

Mr Sawiris and Mr Edens bought Aston Villa last summer during a troubled financial period for club shortly after it missed out on promotion to the Premier League after losing the play-off final to Fulham.

Land Registry documents confirm the sale of the stadium.

Aston Villa’s main parent company Recon Group UK is controlled by the billionaires and a few weeks ago the company formerly known as Recon Football announced a name change to NSWE Stadium.

And the paperwork reveals that on May 21, NSWE Stadium paid £56.7 million for the famous stadium in north Birmingham.

NSWE Stadium ceased to be controlled directly by Aston Villa and instead came under the direct control of Sawiris and Edens.

According to the accounts of Recon Group UK, Villa’s losses totalled around £50 million for the two seasons 2016/17 and 2017/18.

In the most recent minutes of Villa’s fan consultation group, chief executive Christian Purslow is quoted as saying: “Aston Villa’s assets – the football club, stadium, training ground, academy, retail store etc – are commonly owned by companies controlled by Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens.

“The club and our owners have no intention whatsoever of selling the stadium to a third party.”

This latest news comes after it emerged last week that Villa had lodged an application for planning permission to develop an area of Villa Park.

It wants to demolish its ticket office and the Villa Village merchandise store and move them to temporary units.

They could be replaced with a museum, superstore or even a hotel, according to the newly submitted planning application. Docu

ments supporting the application said: “Aston Villa are proposing to move the ticket office and merchandise store into temporary units elsewhere on site. In the short-term, they will use the footprint of the ticket office/Villa Village as car parking.

“They will still continue to use the football pitch in the academy building in an outdoor capacity.

“They are looking to regenerate the whole park area in the near future with a superstore, museum and possible hotel which would be subject to a full planning application.

“They would like the current buildings to be demolished as they are run down, not serving a great purpose, nor aesthetically pleasing to the owners nor staff.” The club is hoping to begin work during July and be finished by the end of August.

The plans will leave many fans questioning whether this is the start of the process to renovate the stadium and the club has stated redevelopment and rebuilding on the demolished site will be proposed at a later date.

There have previously been plans for the North Stand to be increased when Aston Villa were under the ownership of Randy Lerner at which time the club wanted to increase the stadium’s capacity by around 7,000 people.