Forget scarves and shirts, and corporate entertainment, Trabzonspor is building a hydroelectric power station.
The Trabzon region boasts big mountains and prodigiously high annual rainfall. Also, it?s helpful that club chairman Sadri Sener is a civil engineer controlling companies active in building everything from airport runways to luxury hotels.
But other European clubs may come under pressure to think equally boldly.
UEFA, the sport?s European governing body, is due in 2014 to impose its
Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations, which will prevent clubs from being funded directly by their owners? pockets ? be they billionaire oligarchs or Middle Eastern royalty. The ability to generate in-house revenues will become even more important.
Trabzon is due to play its 2012-13 Europa League qualifying games against Hungarian side FC Videoton on August 23 and 30. The club, which has won the Turkish league six times and the Turkish cup eight times, finished third last season.? But it has decided it needs more money to fulfil its European ambitions.
?The club needs a guaranteed source of income, and we have the ideal
conditions for hydro power,? a Trabzon club official told the FT.
The plans have taken time to develop. The club set up its own energy subsidiary
- Bordo Mavi Enerji Elektrik Uretim ? in 2007, naming after the new company after the team?s blue and purple colours.
The club isn?t saying what the investment might be in advance of a tender for a construction contract to be launched before the year-end. But industry experts estimate the proposed 28MW Uzungol I plant could cost $30m-$50m.
Once completed, electricity will be sold through Turkey?s nascent power market netting the club an expected revenues of around $10m year, before taking account of running costs, financing and tax.
A license application for a second plant of 9MW is still being considered.
It looks like the club is investing in the right place at the right time. With Turkish power demand growing at over 8 per cent a year, ?official projections indicate the country will have to increase its current installed capacity by around 45 per cent from 55,000MW to ?80,000MW by 2020 to keep pace with growing demand.
Turkey has virtually no oil or gas of its own and for years has been relying on expensive natural gas imported from neighbouring Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia to generate as much as 50 per cent of the electrical power the country consumes.
Little wonder the Turkish authorities want to promote hydro investments, even from football clubs. Today, Turkey boasts 18,282MW of hydro power plant accounting for 33 per cent of the country?s installed capacity. A further 13,000MW is licensed and awaiting construction, although how much of this will actually be constructed remains to be seen.
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