that tatty name all over the club

[toonlegend]

He bought the club with assets as well as debts. He got £35 million for Andy Carroll (who was a club asset). We could go round in circles with this, but what we do know, is that the club had about £80 million debt when he bought it and it now has about £140 million debt.

Whether you choose to believe that or not is up to you.

If ashley is to be believed - 60 million of the additional debt was accrued through the 2 relegations that were completely down to his own ineptitude. he qouted £30 million loss each time

[toonlegend]

both commercial and match day revenue have decreased since ashley took over - yet can't be because less people go - nope definitely not

Commercial income
Ashley took over the club with a fine reputation for business acumen. He had grown Sports Direct from nothing to the biggest sports retail store in the UK. So it would be expected that he would increase the club’s commercial revenue (sponsorship etc).

In 2007, the club’s commercial revenue was £27.6m. After 9 years of Ashley’s leadership, the latest figures available (2016) show that NUFC were actually generating less commercial income (£25.1m) than they were in 2007.

Newcastle’s brand has become so toxic under Ashley that sponsors just don’t want to be associated with the club. Whilst other clubs have exploited the popularity of the Premier League and the unique marketing of their stadium to the full, Newcastle have gone backwards under Ashley.

Worth noting a number of items here contributing to the failure to grow our commercial revenue:

Newcastle United receive absolutely no income from the Sports Direct advertising at St James’ Park
United outsourced their catering facilities in 2009 so no longer make any money from this activity
The renaming of St James’ Park to the Sports Direct Arena (which Ashley has again admitted was a mistake) generated no commercial revenue but a load of negative publicity for the club.
Even Sunderland have managed to innovatively increase their commercial revenue by using the SoL for pop concerts. Yet St James Park, with it’s unique city centre location, is only slowly catching up with utilising this funding source.
Match Day income
AsUnited’s commercial income has failed to keep pace with other clubs, how has NUFC’s match day income held up under Ashley?

In 2007, match day income was £33.6m. After 9 years of Ashley, match day income has crashed to £24.7m, or by 26%.

In fact, the only income growth that the club has seen is as a result of the Sky TV deal. And this has absolutely nothing to do with Ashley, it is centrally negotiated between the Premier League and Sky.

So why is this important? Because generally those clubs with higher income perform better on the pitch. And this brings us to relegation number 2.