The owners of the Terriers and the Giants met last week and will need to work together to discuss the future of the shared stadium, but it’s still early days yet.
Terriers owner Kevin Nagle has reiterated the club’s desire to take ownership of the John Smith’s Stadium, but acknowledges it is still early days in that process.
Huddersfield Town currently jointly own the stadium with Kirklees Council and Huddersfield Giants in a 40/40/20 split respectively via KSDL Limited – but the football club would ideally like to become its sole owners so they can more easily make changes to it and more directly benefit from the revenues it generates.
Speaking to BBC Radio Leeds, Nagle said: “I think I’ve made it pretty clear we want to take ownership of the stadium. What that means in the end, I’m not quite sure. We have an open dialogue.
“When we do [take control], and I feel that we will – and I’m sort of negotiating against myself at the moment – but I would say this much: we want to enhance the stadium. We want to make it a better process for people when they come to the stadium, that they can find better quality food and more merchandise and access to spirits like beer when they need it.
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“Those are some of the things we’re going to do short term, but even greater as we look further out, once we would acquire it, we’d see things like more concerts. We’d look to see enhancement of the seats. We’d look to make sure the bathrooms operate a little bit better than they do now. Just some things that really where the bones are still there, but they still need some structural changes for the benefit of the fans and supporters.”
One of the key parties in any deal would be Giants owner – and former Town owner – Ken Davy, and Nagle confirmed that the pair sat down together last week to make their introductions to one another.
He said: “I had a meeting with Ken Davy – he’s a delightful man. We really enjoyed it. We shared stories – in fact, we have a lot of similarities in our background, and I think there was like an automatic kinship that was developed.
“We didn’t talk really about business at first, we wanted to get to know each other. It was just a great lunch. I feel like Ken and I can sit down and figure out what’s in the best interest of both parties, which we haven’t even talked about. So I’m looking forward to that next meeting. But I just had a very much a liking for him the first time I met him.”
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