June 23 – After three years of being run by doughnuts, far fallen Leyton Orient have been taken over by a man who runs a doughnut company. A consortium led by Baskin Robbins and Dunkin’ Donuts chief executive Nigel Travis (pictured with friends) has completed its takeover.Leyton Orient, perhaps best known for previously being owned by mercurial sports entrepreneur Barry Hearn, have had a miserable three years since Hearn sold to Italian Francesco Becchetti.
Having just missed out on promotion to the Championship in 2015, the club starts the 2017/18 season in the National League after two successive relegations. The lub had lasted for 112 years in the Football League.
Under Becchetti, Orient had 11 managers, five of them last season. It recently just avoided a winding up petition in the High Court having paid off four creditors. It currently has just 15 senior players under contract with none of them over the age of 20.
Travis will bring much-needed stability, though no detail of how much he has paid or how much money the club will have to move forward have been released.
In a statement on the Orient website, Becchetti said the club had been sold without any “debts to the bank” and “without arrears for taxes”.
The Orient stadium at Brisbane Road is still owned by Hearn who Travis says he went to school with.
“Barry did a great job previously [as owner]. We’re going to take some lessons from what he did and bring in some new stuff, but he remains the owner of the stadium and that’s the way it’s going to stay,” Travis told BBC Radio London.
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