Is Acun Ilıcalı a good football club owner?
A deep dive into Acun Ilıcalı's reign as owner of Hull City.
The lack of match reviews in recent weeks is because I’ve been enjoying writing this special edition too much. I’ll start by saying this piece is an exploration of more about the ownership of Hull City as I for one knew relatively little about the none footballing side of Acun. Some of the below as always is opinion but as always I’m not saying what I think is gospel. I hope you enjoy reading it and hopefully you might learn something new to develop a more rounded view/understanding of Hull City and Acun Ilıcalı.
What was Acun’s key motivation behind buying Hull City?
To kick things off with this deep dive, I went on a bit of a theoretical learning curve on why people (with a ridiculous amount of wealth/cash to burn, emphasis on burn) actually buy football clubs like Hull City. Below is a useful graphic for segmenting the key motivations behind why owners buy football clubs in general.
Based on the above graphic on motivations to buy Hull City and the value creation he saw in doing so, Acun Ilıcalı’s motivations were/are economic and strategic. He had little to no connection to the local area prior to his takeover and he is publicly a Fenerbahce fan and a vice-chairman of that club. A giant of football in his native Turkey and Istanbul. More on the distracting effect that this vice-chairman role may or may not have had on Hull City to come.
Strategic Motivations
The golden bullet to Acun realising the success of owning Hull City is reaching the Premier League. However there are some wider strategic factors that go hand in hand to reaching that dream along the way.
Football clubs are unique assets, often with great visibility, attracting the interest of significantly large groups of people and audiences. Hull City I would hazard an educated guess at mostly hold a primarily domestic to the UK audience, mostly concentrated in Hull and East Yorkshire. However, Acun attracts a much larger sphere of interest mostly centred in his native Turkey but also internationally through his career as a TV presenter, broadcaster, TV producer, and all round media mogul businessman through his company Acun Medya and its affiliates.
This means Hull City is a suitable asset to function as a communication channel and media platform to reach the audiences within the Hull City sphere but also audiences within the Acun Medya sphere. Through Hull City Acun can convey information about the team’s achievements and activities to the Hull City fans but can also relay the messages of commercial partners and sponsors in an effective, attention-grabbing and authentic manner to Hull City fans and Acun Medya audiences alike. To sum it up an international network of varied commercial interests exists through Hull City that before Acun’s ownership did not exist.
The advertising channel created by Acun’s Turkish links and Hull City has created unique advertising opportunities for Turkish brands/companies that Hull City supporters would have never even heard of in most cases. Some examples include Safiport, Sportsbet.io, Corendon Airlines and although well known even last season’s McVitie's deal due to their Turkish ownership group Yildiz Holding. Personally I fail to see much of the value for most of these companies advertising through sponsoring Hull City but there must be otherwise they wouldn’t do it.
In a perfect world the vice versa could be said for Hull City gaining supporters in Turkey who would buy merchandise, video streams etc to increase the clubs commercial revenue and future ability to spend. In reality I would suggest the Turkish following of commercial giants Manchester United, Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal dwarfs that of Hull City. But that doesn’t mean the club should not try to grow this channel over time.
The next few paragraphs get a bit political but bear with me as I believe it is an important aspect of Acun owning Hull City that cannot be overlooked. The positive PR Acun attains through owning the club is a potentially uncomfortable topic for the Hull City fan base. His Sky Sports and Talksport interviews were fantastic and reflect very well on him and the club. The below is by no means an accusation that what he has done for Hull City has been done without genuine good intentions.
The potential discomfort for us fans should come from the historic context of his rise. His company Acun Medya has indirectly benefitted from the increasingly jingoistic and authoritarian Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s time as President of Turkey and as a media tycoon did not suffer any of the fall out from the failed 2017 coup attempt which saw a brutal media crackdown.
Before TV8 was bought in 2013 by AcunMedya, it was one of the last strongholds of trusted journalism on the Turkish TV, at a time when mainstream cable news stations were hesitant to cover important political events. With the benefit of hindsight for good reason. The first decision of Ilıcalı as the new owner was to permanently close TV8's newsroom. "We'll create a channel that will give happiness to the people. TV8 will not broadcast any news," Ilıcalı announced at the time. Head in the sand to the more difficult and important aspects of organised society or a more cynical motivation to make this decision?
Whilst I am not directly accusing Acun of being in anyway complicit in Erdogan’s politically motivated policies on cracking down on press freedom and authoritarian approach, the fact remains they are known to have close ties and an ongoing relationship.
Why should Hull City and its fans care about this? Well they shouldn’t as they are neither the UN, EU, world police USA or any other global super power. However on an individual supporter basis I think most people are generally against the ‘De-newsification’ of UK media and the press, even within football journalism. So why tolerate this happening to those in Turkey through our economic support of our beloved Tigers. It is a flashpoint where personal beliefs and ethics on how we receive our news information somehow collides with supporting our local football team.
Try and pick that apart if it troubles you and how you come to a decision I don’t really know. Does any person rich enough to own a Championship football club not have skeletons in the closet.
The fact remains there are even today in Turkey: 72 convicted journalists in prison, 89 arrested journalists awaiting trial and 167 journalists in exile or wanted (Stockholm Centre for Freedom). I’m not trying to sway your personal beliefs with the above or telling you how to think, it is just food for thought and in my opinion important. It hasn’t stopped me supporting Hull City and more pertinently paying money into the club to go to games.
Economic Motivations
Since 2008, Acun Ilıcalı has been one of Turkey's top 100 largest taxpayers. His reported net worth works out at about £79m but this is not easily verified and subject to change over time. In the latest reported accounting period Hull City costs about £500k a week to run and the only way to cover losses is via player sales or Acun’s funding. So what is the financial appeal to owning a business that costs 2 million pounds a month?
In recent years, media rights revenue have skyrocketed, particularly for the English Premier League but also the EFL to a much smaller extent. There is also increasing financial sustainability fostered by the introduction of Financial Fair Play regulations. These regulations foster/require a key reason behind investing in a football club being to operate it as a business in order to gain dividends and capital growth.
Closely linked to the financial gains to be made in English football, mostly by reaching the Premier League is the potential for global growth. Interest in English football is truly global and the Premier League rules the roost as the most powerful league in the world. This growth has been further accelerated by the internet and the development of digital media platforms in recent years.
This growth is appealing for prospective owners who would like to be part of this phenomenon. If Acun has found the right team in Hull City, can apply a successful strategy (more on this below and also find the right moment in time (luck), the broadcasting revenue boom and commercial revenue growth can potentially provide a return on his investment and a profit-making scenario for Hull City. Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Brighton are some examples to just name a few teams that have achieved this one way or another in recent years through promotion.
Finally on the financial incentives for owning Hull City. I’m no accountant but there are almost certainly enormous tax benefits for Acun and his profitable business empire by owning a high loss making business like Hull City. It is likely having close ties between the profitable Acun Medya and ~£24m a year loss making Tigers optimises Acun’s overall tax burden. There aren’t many other ‘sustainable’ businesses outside of sports teams that can consistently deliver such a huge loss as a reliable tax write off for highly profitable bigger business.
How can we judge Acun’s time in ownership of Hull City?
To spin this deep dive onto the other side of the coin lets now take a look at the benefits to Hull City that Acun has brought as an owner rather than fine tooth combing Acun’s motivations.
On the footballing side here are the league finishes since he took over:
22/23: 15th Acun Medya completed takeover of the club in January 2022
23/24: 7th
24/25: 22nd At time of writing (Pre Leeds United match 04/01)
I’ll start by saying this is not a financial analysis of Acun’s time in charge. There are resources out there that explain the club’s accounts in much greater depth and quality than I can such as the below which I would reccommend. The one thing I would highlight is although auditors had no going concerns for the latest period but the club's debt (£66m) is going up and up and up on its current trajectory.
Instead I’ve considered how the ownership can be judged in terms of strategic planning in terms of player recruitment/investment, manager/coaching staff recruitment and focus on Hull City in key periods.
Player investment and recruitment under the current pressures of Championship football is one of the only ways to break even or make a profit. The knack to this is to have a scouting network that relatively consistently finds players that have a significantly higher future value. The club has had a mixed bag of deals when it comes to this under Acun. Notable relative successes only includes Jaden Philogene (£13m profit) and Jacob Greaves (£18m profit).
Other than that I would say its only the recent shift to signing younger, first team quality players on permanent transfers that have given Acun and the recruitment team any credit in this department. The potential unrealised future fees players like Belloumi, Millar, Hughes, Pandur, Puerta and Zambrano are those I would see as potential big profit future sales. Albeit the latter two players would have to be signed permanently based on unconfirmed reported loan clauses.
Moving onto coaching recruitment, in particular managers during Acun’s tenure as owner of Hull City. Firstly he hired Rosenior, a pragmatic decision at the time that brought stability and Championship safety. However depending on opinion ultimately did not do enough given the level of investment and calibre of players he had at his disposal last season.
Next the disaster class that was Tim Walter from beginning to end really. This was the first instance of fans lashing out at the ownership and decisions on how the club was run. Acun did not sack him early enough and highlights the footballing side disconnect between the owner and club at times. I think the lack of leadership figure due to the messy exit of Tan Kesler as Acun’s number two on the ground in HU3 contributed to this. Hopefully it is a scenario that does not happen again after the recent reshuffle.
The recent arrival of Ruben Selles who is showing early signs of having what it takes to keep the Tigers up is hopefully going to vindicate Acun alongside the restructuring of the club hierarchy. It will demonstrate Acun learns from mistakes whether they are his own or not and a flexibility to the challenges ahead.
The big obstacle to this highlighted by last summer’s odd transfer window is Acun’s favour to his role of vice-chairman at Fenerhbache being his priority. The Championship is not forgiving to delaying inevitable decisions like sacking struggling managers or not signing transfer targets before the start of the season. The Tigers are currently paying the price for this this season. That isn’t really up for debate.
The next consideration to judge whether Acun has been a good owner or Hull City is the club’s commercial growth. In short this is a resounding and echoing yes. Attendances have increased to around the 20,000 mark each home game and the reduced in price ticket offers are a welcome initiative of giving back to the supporters. The match day experience has been improved with the street food offering and increased attendances.
The commercial revenue strategy from merchandise is a welcome change recently too, in particular the return to retro inspired/replica kits of yesteryear. By creating desirable, nice looking merchandise they are maximising a revenue channel that in my opinion was overlooked for years with some pretty drab kits for what they could have been putting out with some imagination. When you can flog each individual garment for upwards of £40 it starts to add up over time.
Finally, what is quite refreshing during Acun’s ownership so far is the supporter dialogue, engagement and at times transparency that you don’t see at every football club.
He is a likeable character but the only small criticism I have is even the One Family approach revealed even families have in-fighting in the tough times. However, in the case of sacking Tim Walter, action would always speak louder than saying anything publicly.
Although not for everyone I quite like his meetings with the members in the suite at the MKM. If anything they are entertaining and we see a side to the owner that would otherwise be largely hidden. As long as there is a precedent for why they are held and attending members actually ask useful questions long may this relationship continue. At least he tries to explain the decision making process, even if people disagree. It shows a basic level of respect to the paying supporters and in a basic sense his customers.
To sum up, is Acun perfect? No, but the positives at present just about out weight the negatives. Survival this season will put the club back to where it should have been at the start of this season and a chance at a fresh-ish start.
As a fan most importantly the buzz Acun has brought to the football club that has danced along the fine line of financial ruination a few times in it’s past has given me faith he is in it for the long haul with the Tigers. There is a chance at some point in the next few seasons they can string a playoff run together with the right planning, timing and a little bit of luck. I hope you have learned a bit more about the owner of the club we all support and you can now maybe make more informed ideas of how the club is run moving forward from reading this.
UTT