Acun Ilicali: The game player taking Hull City into the Premier League

Hull City owner Acun Ilicali is preparing for the club's return to the Premier League, the latest milestone in a life that has taken him from bankruptcy and personal tragedy to television stardom.

Dubbed Turkey's Simon Cowell, Ilicali has become one of the most recognisable figures in his home country, a rise that might once have seemed unlikely after he was declared bankrupt in his twenties.

Now, as Hull prepare for their first season back in the top flight since he bought the club in 2022, he says he is approaching the challenge with the same determination that has defined much of his life.

On the streets of his home city of Istanbul, he cannot go anywhere without being recognised and asked for a picture or a few moments of his time.

I witnessed this as we walked through a local street food market close to the banks of the Bosphorus Strait.

People's faces lit up as they realised they were seeing someone who clearly holds megastar status in Turkey.

Everyone wanted their few seconds with him, taking selfies, asking questions, and after a while it looked quite intense.

Ilicali married at 20 and became a father at 21 to his daughter, Banu. But tragedy would befall him when his parents were killed in a car crash while travelling with his daughter for a family holiday in Bodrum.

"We jumped in the car, drove six hours and went to the hospital and I was thinking that I would see my parents," he recalls of that day.

"I asked a member of the hospital staff if I could see my mother and he just looked and said 'she passed away'. Then I said 'Ergun Ilicali', he looked and said 'he passed away too'. Then I start begging to God that this was a nightmare.

"Then I learned that my daughter had 15 bones broken, but she survived, [and] spent three months in the hospital."

He says his life "collapsed" in the months after the accident.

"For one year, I didn't go out of my house. Then after one year, my wife thought there would be nothing from me and wanted a divorce, so this was another trauma."

Within 12 months, Ilicali had blown the inheritance left to him by his parents.

"At that time, I'm 21 years old and I started to make trades. I opened a shop, but in one year I lost everything because the currency collapsed in Turkey."

Yet Ilicali's rise to fame and fortune began far from the worlds of television and football ownership.

Born on 29 May 1969 in the Turkish city of Edirne, near the border with Greece, he was the self-confessed "lazy boy of the house".

"One side of me is still a little kid. I was born to play games and make people play games."

Today, he owns a Premier League football club, but his childhood was far removed from that world.

"I didn't have enough money to buy football shirts when I was a kid, now I'm the owner of a club in the Premier League," he says. "You can imagine what it means to me."

When it came to education, he describes himself as "the worst student in high school".

"I couldn't listen to the teachers, I couldn't concentrate. If I'm not interested in something I was forgetting it. So, I studied the lesson and in the morning I'd wake up and I remember nothing, but if I'm focused on something I remember everything. My brain caused me big problems."

Even as a child, he says he found ways to turn dull lessons into competitions and games.

His parents met at university despite coming from very different backgrounds, a relationship that initially faced opposition from his father's family.

A chance meeting with a famous sports commentator changed his life and led to him working as a sports reporter on a Turkish channel, Show TV.

After succeeding in that role, he started his own travel show, Acun Firarda, or Acun on the Run, where his popularity started to grow.

In 2004, he formed his own television production company, Acun Medya. The company bought the rights to several high-profile shows such as Masterchef and Deal or No Deal. It also launched Turkey's Got Talent, on which he served as one of the judges.

Ilicali says he has met Simon Cowell three times.

"He's a very nice guy and very intelligent. The format belongs to [Cowell], we met about how we can improve the format. We met in Cannes, one time in England.

"When they call me 'Simon Cowell', I'm never disturbed by it. He's a good guy and a very good name. My business part is completely different than my on-stage part, we have a big production company, but on stage I can say I'm the Simon Cowell of Turkey, it's no problem."

Success brought access to global stars including Christina Aguilera, 50 Cent and Bruce Willis, who appeared on his programmes for charity.

His first love, though, has always been sport and particularly football. A loyal and passionate fan of Fenerbahce, the Turkish giants, he had a brief spell owning the Dutch side Fortuna Sittard, before looking towards the English leagues.

"One option was Derby County. Cardiff and Swansea could've been options and Hull City was one of them," he recalls.

"I flew with my plane to Hull for half a day to meet Ehab Allam [the former Hull City co-owner]. I landed at Humberside Airport and travelled to Hull."

He was struck immediately by the Humber Bridge and its similarity to the First Bridge, which connects the European and Asian sides of Istanbul over the Bosphorus Strait.

"I said, what is that?" he remembers. "It made me very interested."

At the time, the relationship between the club's ownership and fans had reached irreparable levels, driven by an unsuccessful attempt to change the club's name to Hull Tigers.

"Ehab said they want to sell to someone who will make the people happy. And I got the feeling. I always went in my life following my feelings and the feelgood factor was top for me."

In January 2022, Ilicali completed a deal to buy Hull City and arrived with big fanfare, big promises and big ambitions.

While I was with Ilicali in Istanbul, he took a video call with a potential transfer target and offered a mesmerising sales pitch about Hull City's plans for the Premier League. By the end of the call, he certainly had me convinced, such is his enthusiasm for the project.

It hasn't all been smooth sailing over the first three and a half years, however, and there was even a threat of relegation to League One that saw them survive only on goal difference in May 2025.

The club has also faced scrutiny over its finances, with recently published accounts showing underlying losses rising to £41.7m, while promotion brought fresh challenges around profit and sustainability rules.

Twelve months later, a memorable and dramatic day at Wembley Stadium saw the Tigers seal victory in the play-off final and promotion to the Premier League.

Amid all the successes he has experienced in his career, where does that moment rank?

"It's number one. If you'd given me eight years, I'd say we can do it. In four and a half years, to get promotion, I can say it's my biggest achievement in business."

Now, after mixing with the biggest celebrities in the world of entertainment, he will stand alongside football's elite – beginning with an opening-day visit by Manchester United on Saturday lunchtime.

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