Meet Hull City's Acun Ilıcalı - The Premier League’s most UNUSUAL owner! - The Sports Agents

Mark Chapman (0:02)

This is a Global Production.

Acun Ilıcalı (0:05)

I can guarantee you that there are 19 richer owners in Premier League than me.

Who buys English clubs? Billionaires of America, billions of Americans. I'm not the billionaire of billionaires. And why I did it is the passion and to go to success. Only being successful makes me happy.

Gabby Logan (0:35)

Hello and welcome to The Sports Agents. We've got a very special conversation today, haven't we, Mark? Because we have just recorded an interview with Hull City owner, Acun Ilıcalı, who is a force. He's a TV star, a media mogul who has taken his passion for football and turned it into, well, you'll hear in the interview, I think, a way of running a football club like I've never heard before.

Mark Chapman (0:57)

I mean, not to sort of preempt everything that you're about to hear, but if you go right to the end of the interview, the feeling that we both have is that we want to work for him.

Gabby Logan (1:07)

Yeah, I'm actually going to LinkedIn later and sending my CV to him.

Mark Chapman (1:12)

If you're a media officer at Hull City, we're coming for your job, because we just...

Gabby Logan (1:16)

Oh, I want to go work for his TV company in Istanbul.

Mark Chapman (1:19)

It is, look, there are some sad moments in this interview and some difficult moments, but I defy you to not have a smile on your face through an awful lot of his answers, whether it's about Hull the place, whether it's about his staff, whether it's about the players or his passion for volleyball. He just has an energy and a vibrancy that it's impossible not to be swept along by him.

Gabby Logan (1:52)

Here he is, joining us from Istanbul.

Adon, great to chat to you. It feels like Hull are the story kind of of the early part of the season so far. Results, the feel good factor, the way you have taken to life in the Premier League has been something of a joy to behold. You're just beaming constantly.

Acun Ilıcalı (2:12)

Yeah, thank you very much for your kind words. Actually, I'm so happy, of course. I had a dream and actually it was my slogan.

I have a dream and my dream came true. So in my four years, a little more than four years, my biggest dream was to go to Premier League and I pushed everything to do it. And I think by the help of God, we managed it.

Mark Chapman (2:39)

Were you surprised that you went up last season and have you been surprised by the start you've had?

Acun Ilıcalı (2:51)

No, I was not surprised because I believed in my players. But I was shocked.

I mean, surprise is, you know, you have a surprise, I want a good surprise.

It's like a big shock for me, and I was expecting four points for us, maybe a little more than five, because our opponents are the United Nations. Aston Villa, Cup winners of Europe, and Chelsea. So how many points you can expect from a new promoted team? So I was expecting four would be good, five fantastic. Now we are already eight. This is for me a miracle.

Gabby Logan (3:41)

Let's go back a little bit, shall we, to your story, which is just fascinating, the transition from somebody who had a passion for football and did a similar job to us in the very beginning, on the, I don't know what we've done wrong in the last 30 years, because we don't own a Premier League club. You can tell us.

Reporting on football, having a passion for football, and obviously, let's not overstate it, being the equivalent of a Simon Cowell, Anton Deck type character for Turkish television. You're huge in Turkey in terms of your on-screen persona, to where you are now. And one of the things that strikes me about you is incredible belief, but also a desire and a passion to prove people wrong, and to kind of buck the trend of what's expected.

Acun Ilıcalı (4:30)

Again, thank you so much for your kind words. And actually, yes, I'm from your side in life, started the business, but don't forget, I'm still in your side, I'm still making TV shows. So your side is fantastic. So yeah, this is one part of my life that I enjoy very much. I make reality television, still on television, I'm still on screen, I enjoy it. I have a good connection with people.

But apart from that, of course, I have a business side, like, for example, in television, there are two sides, on screen and off screen. I'm playing both sides, like number eight in football, you know, number eight goes to box to box. So I can defend and I can attack. So my style is, I'm crazy football fan, you cannot imagine.