The Scunthorpe Problem: An Owner, His Debts and a Club in Decay

When Scunthorpe United supporters returned to Glanford Park for the first match of the season, after a year and a half away, they were greeted by dust, cobwebs and worse on their seats. The state of the ground was a fitting reflection of the state of their club: neglected, decaying and facing an uncertain future. A 3-1 home defeat to Swindon Town, a team only recently assembled, did little to lift the lethargy hanging over the place.

The attendance that day was reported as 3,602, with hundreds of those travelling from Wiltshire. It was a meagre crowd for the much-anticipated return of football, especially when compared to the 7,700 at Tranmere Rovers or the 6,000-plus gates at Carlisle United and Mansfield Town. After three consecutive relegation battles, it seems the patience of the fanbase is wearing perilously thin.

The Road From the Championship

A decade ago, Scunthorpe were a Championship club, spending three out of four seasons at that level. In 2010, they finished 20th, above both Crystal Palace and Sheffield Wednesday. As recently as 2017, they were knocking on the door of a return, finishing third in League One before losing a play-off semi-final to Millwall. The following year brought another fifth-place finish and another play-off exit, this time against Rotherham United.

Since then, the slide has been disastrous. Relegation to League Two followed in 2019. In the curtailed 2019-20 season, they were 20th. Last season, they finished 22nd, just three points clear of the drop into non-league football. The team ended that campaign with just one win in their final fifteen matches.

This decay on the pitch has been mirrored by a financial catastrophe off it. Club accounts show losses of almost £1 million in the year to July 2020, following two consecutive years where losses reached £3.6 million each. The total debt grew to a staggering £11.5 million, a figure built up under the ownership of Peter Swann, who arrived in 2013 after a spell at Gainsborough Trinity.

A Stadium Saga and an Asset Transfer

Swann arrived with grand plans for a new 12,000-capacity stadium, part of a wider ‘Lincolnshire Lakes’ development project. The £18 million stadium was meant to include a hotel, offices and other facilities to maximise revenue. But after repeated delays, the plans were scrapped in 2017 in favour of redeveloping Glanford Park. Those plans were also put on hold in August 2020, with the pandemic cited as the reason.

The club's accounts for 2019 and 2020 noted that its ability to continue as a going concern depended on the financial support of its parent company, Coolslik Property & Investment Limited, which is owned by Swann. That support took a highly unusual form.

In April this year, it was revealed that Glanford Park and other assets had been transferred to Coolslik. The move effectively wrote off £11 million owed by the club to Swann's company. In other words, the chairman’s own company took ownership of the club’s ground as repayment for loans he had put in. Swann defended the move, claiming it would protect the club for “999 years”, but many supporters were far from convinced.

The question of who is responsible for the ground’s current tatty condition, the club or Coolslik, seems academic when both are controlled by the same man.

An Uncertain Future

The immediate danger is what happens if the club’s on-field decline continues. A drop into non-league football for the first time since 1950 would be a severe financial blow, stripping the club of its Football League revenues and making it a far less attractive proposition for any future investor, especially now that it owns no significant assets of its own.

After pumping the club with a debt it could never hope to repay, the owner has claimed its most valuable assets in return. Swann stated the transfer was “just a protection thing” and that “Assets are worth nothing if you don’t do something with them, and that’s what we intend to do”.

He certainly did something with them. But as Scunthorpe fans survey the wreckage of the last few years, they are entitled to ask who, exactly, was being protected from what.