October 13: Leicester City’s Thai owners have given potential buyers until Friday to show their hand as the King Power move closer to ending a 16-year ownership that has taken the Championship club to Premier League champions, and now League One.
Citi, which is running the sale process for the Srivaddhanaprabha family, has asked interested parties to submit offers by Friday. The deadline has reportedly been pushed back to allow more bidders to enter the process, although no serious buyers have yet been publicly identified.
Reports have pushed King Power’s asking price up to £225 million. For a club sitting 17th in the third tier, it would be an extraordinary valuation, but the sales prospectus is based beyond the league table.
The Citi Project Lineup prospectus values Leicester’s physical assets at £224m before putting any price on the football teams. The package includes the men’s and women’s teams, the King Power Stadium, both training grounds, Belgian sister club OH Leuven and land around the stadium earmarked for future development.
Leicester obviously could not have foreseen such a dramatic fall down the football pyramid, and the reality is that the club’s facilities are much more in line with those of a top-flight Premier League team than a team seemingly destined for the fourth tier.
There are already plans to take the King Power Stadium to 40,000 seats and add a hotel and entertainment complex, while the Seagrave training ground is a Premier League standard asset despite the first team’s slide.
This is the sales pitch. The awkward bit is on the other side.
King Power bought Leicester for around £35m in 2010. Six years later they achieved the most unlikely title win of the Premier League era, followed by Champions League football and an FA Cup triumph in 2021.
Since that time, Leicester supporters have witnessed three relegations in four seasons, including back-to-back relegations that have seen the club leave League One.
The balance sheet is at least cleaner than the sports scene. King Power has converted nearly £300m of shareholder debt into equity in recent years, leaving Leicester largely free of conventional borrowing. A further £8.5m was converted last month, with the club confirming that the ownership structure was unchanged.
Citi had forecast revenue of around £97m for the 2026 financial year, but the decline has wiped out broadcasting revenue which previously underpinned the Premier League’s cost base.
Friday’s deadline day will give the first real indication of how the market values what Leicester have become: a League One club with facilities, properties and memories built for something much bigger.
Contact the writer of this story, Harry Ewing, at (email protected)
