New Ownership Announced for Nottingham Rugby

A new management team stepped in and announced ownership of RFU Championship’s Nottingham Rugby. 

The management-led team bought the club from the former owners Jason Brewer and Luke Jones on Christmas Eve. 

The new owners led by existing directors Alistair Bow and Simon Beatham, are all known ‘friends’ of Nottingham Rugby, representing a significant shift from the previous ownership structure of the club. 

The deal hopes to rescue the existing state of Nottingham Rugby by funding the needs of its immediate financial demands with the hopes of securing the club’s future in the Championship. 

Alistair Bow will remain club chairman whilst existing Directors Simon Beatham and Diane Orson will also stay on the board. They are joined by Philip Barltrop, former Finance Director of Aggregate Industries UK and Chris Simon, the club’s current Operations Director. 

Existing director and Chief Executive of the new management Simon Beatham said: “”We’ve achieved our initial objective of securing immediate stability for the club, but our target is to ensure we have the mechanics in place to take us up to the end of the 2015-16 season. This is when the league structure and agreement with the RFU (Long Form Agreement) will be renegotiated. It’s extremely important that we have a position at the top table of professional rugby until at least that season.” 

Bow said: “This is good news for Nottingham Rugby, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do. We’ve been working hard for almost 12 months to secure the necessary funding to ensure the survival of one of the oldest rugby clubs in the country. I’d like to welcome all of our new shareholders to Nottingham Rugby and thank them for their commitment for the next three seasons. We’re on the way to achieving the first stage of our plan, which was to stabilise the club and make sure we have a base level of funding to maintain our existence and place in the Championship at least.”