Can we get it copy and pasted please?
It's quite a long read so I will sift through the important bits
This followed Storey’s failed attempts to buy Sunderland in 2020 and Coventry City in 2022. Sunderland, like Reading, were playing in League One at the time and were seeking a sale. Coventry were being sold by SISU Capital, their hugely unpopular owners.
All three bids failed to progress.
“He’s never been close to buying anything,” explains a source who worked for Sunderland when Storey was trying to buy the club. Like others who spoke to
The Athletic for this article, they will remain anonymous to protect relationships. “There was nothing (at Sunderland). There was no deal. The guy was a fantasist, a Walter Mitty.
“This is his MO: he sends an email to a football club saying he wants to buy that club. Then he launches this social media blitz. ‘Yeah, I’m buying the club, I’ve got a deal, can’t say anything more than that’.”
“He walks around with a letter from David Sullivan,” says a source who has sat around the negotiating table with Storey. “The letter from David and the Haas deal are William’s two tools of the trade.”
Then he moved on to Coventry.
The BBC reported that Storey agreed heads of terms — an agreement in principle, subject to a formal contract being signed — over a £30million takeover of the Midlands club, one of the founding members of the Premier League. Bonus payments would be paid to then-owner SISU Capital if Coventry were promoted back to the English top flight.
The report noted that Storey was being backed by Origin Sports Group, a sports investment business. Origin Sports, however, was only instructed by Storey to advise on the deal, according to a person who worked on it at the time, so carried out the financial due diligence for him and attempted to help structure a sale, but did not back Storey as an investor.
However, it was Doug King who entered a period of exclusivity with Coventry in November 2022 prompting Storey to threaten legal action against the club as he believed SISU had breached his exclusivity window.
A SISU statement at the time said: “The allegation of a breach of exclusivity is untrue and unhelpful.”
No legal action has yet materialised.
Asked why Storey became involved, someone close to the talks believes it was to run a “self-promotion campaign”.
“Any successful businessman would not want to be linked to multiple failed transactions, so that bit was puzzling,” they added. “The other side is that he is fame-hungry and wants people to know who he is, and he succeeded in that.”
It might all have been so different for him, though. Had the infrastructure been in place when he sponsored the Haas F1 team, then perhaps Storey would now be a credible and key player in the sporting world — but after his flirtations with Sunderland, Coventry and Reading, it is unlikely he will be taken seriously again.
So, what is his motivation now?
“I think he enjoyed the taste of it and wants to get back there,” speculates the person involved in the Haas F1 discussions. “And in the age we live in now, he is clickbait gold. The social media age has supported someone like William Storey.
“He goes on the radio and they know it will drive engagement, even if it’s just angry people shouting at him.”
theathletic.com
would be a shame if SISU profit from any future success