AEG Comes Up Short?

If AEG can’t prove it has the funds to build a new Copenhagen arena by Oct. 1, the project may get shelved, according to the Danish city council’s head of culture and leisure.

“If the money isn’t there, then we can’t build an arena,” Carsten Haurum told Pollstar after the U.S. entertainment company failed to come up with the estimated $225 million it needed by the June 15 deadline.

“It may be hard to raise the money in a city as small as Copenhagen,” he said, although he refused to say how far AEG was adrift of its target.

Just before the AEG deadline, rumours surfaced that the company was having trouble raising the money. But Brian Kabatznick, the company’s European vice president of facilities, declined to comment until after June 15.

Kabatznick is still not commenting and Haurum admits that extending the deadline is the council’s only option. If AEG doesn’t make the revised deadline, the council’s tendering regulations allow for those who previously failed to win the contract to re-enter the picture.

But the rival bidders, including a consortium led by FC Amager soccer club chairman Brian Mollerup, reportedly withdrew from the process when AEG came out on top.

“I suppose it could be what you’re calling the only game in town,” Haurum said, confirming that Mollerup and others no longer have bids on the table. “We have given AEG longer because it has shown it’s making progress with ongoing negotiations, but it isn’t a process we go through just for fun and I think the council would want to see further progress before granting further extensions.”