Doug King is discussing the night Coventry clinched promotion to the Premier League after 25 years away. He had a tear in his eye when the moment arrived at Blackburn and, after eventually exiting the Ewood Park boardroom, the champagne flowing, the straight-talking owner worth hundreds of millions hunkered down at a Travelodge adjacent to a service station on the M65. “It was ... noisy,” he says, taking a second to land on the best adjective, “because all I could hear pretty much all night was: ‘We are Premier League.’”
It has led King to feel like a party planner of late. The biggest one yet was Monday’s open-top bus parade which started on Jimmy Hill Way, named after the manager who in 1967 led the club into the top flight for the first time. After Coventry were crowned champions last month, King guzzled from the trophy. “I didn’t think the lid would come off, so we had to make the most of that,” he says with a smile.
It has been quite the ride since King, a mathematical engineering graduate with a background in trading grains and petroleum, acquired 100% of the club in January 2023. The plan was promotion inside five years and, a few months into his first foray in football, he offered 5,000 supporters the chance to buy a premium five-year “Premier League package”, with the carrot of a free season ticket in the event of promotion for those who continually renewed. “If you did one year and said: ‘Well, they’re never going to get there,’ then you missed out.”
Coventry, after a couple of near-misses, succeeded ahead of schedule, Frank Lampard getting them over the line 18 months on from his appointment. Last season’s playoff semi-final defeat by Sunderland was especially excruciating. Lucas, one of King’s five children, covered his face with his tie to brace himself for the corner from which Dan Ballard headed the winner with seconds to play. “That hit hard, that last-minute kick in the face. It was like an earthquake, the ground was just shaking: ‘Oh my God, everyone’s going to be devastated.’”
One of King’s most significant moves came in August with the £50m purchase of the CBS Arena, where Coventry had been tenants at the mercy of landlords and lease agreements since it was built in 2005. “A big moment to just close the chapter of the club and its ground, once and for all. And that day, well, everything went in: 7-1 against QPR. It was fitting, really: ‘OK, everything’s together now, the team’s really good, let’s see where we can take it.’”
From day one King has fronted up, never more so than when explaining his decision to sack Mark Robins, who came within a penalty shootout of taking the club from League Two to the Premier League. King is hands-on and has no interest in hiding. “In business, I have delegated major projects to teams, to CEOs, where I’d been a bit disappointed. You delegate, you have your big, fat budget, they get on with it, and then you hear the bad stuff too late. For me, this was too important for that. This was my moment to be all over it. I wanted to make a contrast to the previous incumbents, the hedge fund [Sisu] in Mayfair: ‘We’ve got some leadership here, this is what we’re gonna do.’”
King is not too proud to get involved and regularly sings along with the Enemy’s We’ll Live and Die in These Towns, the club’s de facto pre-match anthem which the Coventry-born band performed pitchside in November. “It was way more special than I thought it would be – it just felt very intimate and very real. And I think we want to do different things. I don’t want to be boring. I think a club has to stand for more than just the products necessarily on the pitch.”
Once the celebrations subside, preparations for the Premier League will come into focus. “People might go: ‘If you finish 17th, it’s all good, and you go again.’ Yeah, OK, but maybe I want to look at different things: can we be a bit better? Sunderland did their script this season. Leeds and Burnley did theirs. As the leader of Coventry City, I will work it all out and I’ll put together a strategy and if it’s an absolute shocker, then I guess I’ll take the blame.”
The way Bournemouth, Brentford and Brighton have embedded themselves in the top flight, he says, generates confidence. “I like doing what I say we’re going to do. I haven’t said what we’re going to do in the Premier League because I haven’t formulated exactly how I’m going to attack it. But, clearly, it would be to try and stay in there, build momentum to get into the top half and, yeah, once every blue moon, maybe have a nibble into heading into playing in different countries.”
Such is King’s popularity, supporters chant his name and a couple recently donned fancy dress masquerading as him, wearing lanyards, sky-blue ties and bouffant wigs. He laughs. “I did give them a shoutout as I was walking around. They tried to blag themselves into the boardroom, they had the credentials on, but I’m way more handsome than them … ”
The fact King is approachable as an owner is rare. “Maybe you can be intimidated, you know: ‘The owner, the big owner.’ Listen, I’m a human being. I’ve earned some money. I’ve decided to deploy it into a project, which is a dangerous thing to do, actually, for your wealth. I should feel accessible. If it isn’t going well, say you don’t think that was very good, no problem.”
This is not King’s first taste of elite sport. That came on the greens of St Andrews as a golf-mad teenager. King, who grew up in Lowestoft, captained Loughborough University before working as a caddy for Ronan Rafferty at the 1986 Dunhill Cup.
“Ronan, who won the European Tour Order of Merit in 1989 and played in the Ryder Cup, was in the Irish team. We were drawn against Spain and he was head to head against Seve [Ballesteros]. Can you imagine? I’m on the old course caddying against Seve, who was No 1 in Europe: ‘OK, better not make any mistakes today.’ And we hammered him. I say we, I felt like it was we. Ronan shot 67 and Seve was grumpy and finished with 74.”
King interviewed Lampard at his offices in Pall Mall, central London. “I was happy that he was coming in with people that he trusted, because I think coming in on a solo mission and seeing what you’ve got is trickier,” King says of Lampard’s assistants, Joe Edwards and Chris Jones. “Because whenever you come in with his reputation and who he is, most people will tiptoe around the tulips. It’s always the way, right? Are you going to get proper feedback? I like that he came in with a close-knit team that he’d been successful with, and they could counter and balance him and he felt comfortable in that. I had no doubt he would do well, but I have been impressed with him and how it’s gotten under his skin.”
King recently made an intriguing confession: he likes “people who have had a few shockers”. Lampard was sacked by Everton after less than 12 months and, having also spent a single season at Derby, his longest stint as a manager was, by his own admission, 18 months babysitting at Chelsea. “I look at those things more as a positive. He will have had to handle some pretty dysfunctional messaging, let’s put it like that. Those sorts of things make you uncomfortable, but you have to find solutions to get by. So he’s been in areas that make you grow as a leader, as a motivator, as a coach.”
Is King taking steps to extend Lampard’s contract, which expires next summer? He gives a diplomatic answer. “Listen, it’s worked well. He put himself back into the arena and everybody sort of said: ‘OK, it’s Frank again, let’s see what happens here. He will probably near-miss it or it won’t go well,’ so there was quite a bit of pressure on him. He felt confident with his team that he could get clarity, motivation, focus, to take the club towards some form of success. Did he think we would be champions 18 months later? I don’t think so. Nor did I.”