Arena Television Limited was formed in October 1989 as The Radio Consultancy Limited and changed its name to Television Sport Limited in October 1989. In June 1994, it became Arena Television Limited. An administrator was appointed on 23 November, 2021. 

The company had borrowed what was estimated at the time to be about GBP300 million, secured on assets, from a number of banks. Arena provided outside broadcast services from events such as Wimbledon tennis, the Football Association Cup Final, The European football championships in 2020 and the Six Nations rugby championship using a fleet of "OB" vans.

Arena provided the on-the ground tech for clients such as the BBC, ITV and Sky Sports. 

While creditors wonder what happened to the money, Kroll, the administrators, reserved GBP1.8 million for its own fees before going beyond the first meeting of creditors. 

In October 2022, the case was modified from an administration to a winding up by way of creditors' voluntary liquidation. This implies that there was no prospect of the company being run and/or sold as a going concern. The liquidator was also from Kroll. 

Both Richard Andrew Yeowart and Robert Harry Hopkinson, who had run the company since inception, were declared bankrupt with the trustees in bankruptcy being from a different Kroll unit at another office. 

As of December 2024, according to a notice of progress report, a Companies House document stored on an Amazon cloud server there were three companies: Arena Television Limited, Arena Aviation Limited and Arena Holdings Limited. 

Perhaps the most telling statement in that document is this: "asset realisations are largely uncertain as they principally relate to the claims against third parties and therefore by nature the quantum and timing of the outcome is uncertain."

Clydesdale Yorkshire Bank Group is in line for a large slice of that because it is secured under an invoice discounting (factoring) scheme under which it lends a proportion of invoices as they are delivered, recovering the loan when the invoices are paid. Seemingly, then, non-payment of invoices were instrumental, if not the proximate, cause of failure.

Much of the company's debt was in financing equipment including the OB vehicles. There was also a fixed and floating charge over all the assets (insofar as they were not charged elsewhere) in favour of NatWest. 

That December 2024 report says that Clydesdale's security will  not cover the debts but all other secured and preferential creditors will be paid in full. 

As, of course, will Kroll and outstanding taxes, etc.

Information as to assets relating to Arena Aviation shown at Companies House as at the date of administration was inaccurate and the charges should have been marked there as satisfied. 

There is a lot of cash lying in bank accounts. Given the appallingly low rates of interest paid at the relevant time, it is interesting to note that more than GBP115,000 had accumulated in interest in the liquidation accounts. 

There is an outstanding claim for more than GBP265 million against Lloyds Bank and the Bank of Scotland. That litigation is being conducted on a no-win, no-fee basis. 

So where is the fraud?

There's another company, Sentinel. The liquidators say "Sentinel was the largest intermediary to the company and from whom (it means "which") the majority of finance agreements for the fictitious assets were facilitated through," (directly quoted),

Arena Television has submitted a claim for more than GBP285 million in the administration of Sentinel. Sentinel has cross-claimed GBP996 million based on moneys paid by Sentinel to Arena. 

Adminstrators / liquidators for both companies have so far declined to admit the claims. 

What are the fictitious assets? They are not mentioned in the definitions section of the Report and we have been unable to find a reference to them in the public documents other than the mention above which says "as creditors are aware" suggesting that there is a private report.

The SFO's December 2024 arrest seems to coincide with the Liquidator's statement of 9th December which refers to "the fictitious assets."

It seems, then, that the SFO is content to let Kroll do the work to produce the basic information upon which it can conduct a formal investigation.

That might seem like it's a bit of a cop-out but it isn't. The SFO has long struggled under stringent budgetary constraints and if the initial states of an investigation can be packaged at someone else's expense, that is fiscally prudent. So long as it doesn't take so long that the memory of witnesses clouds, or that stress on the participants doesn't become an illness, it's not a bad plan at all.