Raffi Ahmad Distributes IDR 300 Billion For RANS Cilegon FC: This Is Not An Investment Value But A Fund For Supporting Infrastructure

Raffi Ahmad (center) receives a jersey from Yudhi Apriyanto, President of Cilegon United FC, during the inauguration of the football club's acquisition to become RANS Cilegon FC, Wednesday (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - The Chairman of RANS Cilegon FC, Raffi Ahmad, together with Rudy Salim, his colleague in the acquisition of the Cilegon United FC football club, revealed that the investment for the club competing in League 2 reached IDR 300 billion.

Both were reluctant to reveal the value of the club's acquisition. However, Rudy said the construction of the club, including supporting infrastructure such as soccer fields in 10 cities, as well as a soccer academy, cost more than IDR 300 billion.

"Over IDR 300 billion is the total investment value. Not the club's acquisition value, but for supporting infrastructure, land purchase, building construction, and so on," said Rudy, who is also the president director of Prestige Motorcars in a press conference in Jakarta, Thursday, March 31, as reported by Antara.

Rans Entertainment and Prestige Motorcars are working together to create an international standard sports arena with a FIFA Certified field located at Pantai Indah Kapuk 2 Jakarta.

The arena with an area of 2.7 hectares is planned to be a training center for various sports, ranging from soccer field facilities, futsal courts, skateboarding arenas, badminton courts, tennis, basketball, wall climbing, to esports arenas.

The training arena, which is named RANS Prestige Sportainment, will also be equipped with a commercial zone, such as a restaurant, rooftop cafe, soccer cafe, and food court. RANS Prestige Sportainment will be managed to become the center of the Football School (SSB) and the RANS Cilegon FC training center.

When asked about the plan to take the floor on the Indonesia Stock Exchange, as carried out by Bali United, which has conducted an initial public offering (IPO), Rudy did not rule out the possibility of doing the same.

"In the future, the team should be independent, from financial institutions or whatever so that they can get an injection of capital from the public to make it more transparent, effective, and efficient," said Rudy.

"It is good if a team or company can go to a public offering (IPO) because it is much more efficient, and there is an audit committee, there is a supervisory board, it is much better."

"It is not impossible, but the first focus is that we will improve the grass root, improve the system, and of course it will be professionally developed by the coach to find good players," added Rudy.

Meanwhile, for the formation of players in the club, Raffi Ahmad wants to combine senior players and young players and will open registration and selection of players.

However, to choose which players will join the club, Raffi left it to Bambang Nurdiansyah as head coach of RANS Cilegon FC and Hamka Hamzah as manager of RANS Cilegon FC.

"Our target does not have to be League 1, it is a bonus, the important thing is we have to play well, have a good mentality, be good ... Even if everything is good, our infrastructure is good, God willing, we will automatically advance to League 2," said Raffi.