What future for Anfield?

There has been a lot of debate in recent weeks about stadiums with Manchester United unveiling their ambitious and as yet unfunded plans, Chelsea’s board divided about Stamford Bridge, and Everton starting to move into Bramley Dock.

Stadiums are an expensive capital asset that cost money to maintain and are used for football at best an average of every 10 days.  The new Tottenham Hotspur stadium is designed to maximise use for purposes other than football.   Some continental clubs have built their stadiums so that there are shops and other commercial premises around the ground floor.

I don’t want to start choosing the most iconic stadium I have visited, but Anfield is up there.

Anfield has been transformed since Fenway Sports Group (FSG) bought Liverpool in 2010.

Where houses were once tucked tightly up to all sections of the ground, now there are wide walkways on either side of the newly-built Anfield Road Stand (which opened in 2023) and Main Stand (expanded in 2016), with those largely derelict and run-down properties outside, some of which were previously owned by the club, no longer standing.

It still looks and feels like the older version of Anfield, and many of the surrounding features remain, but there are 15,000 more seats and a modern, regenerated look to the place now — something underlined by how the Kop, the stadium’s most famous stand, is these days dwarfed by other sections of the ground.

FSG spent more than £210million ($272m at the current exchange rate) enlarging the Main Stand and Anfield Road Stand and improving facilities throughout the stadium. 

In July last year, Liverpool’s CEO Billy Hogan told The Athletic there were “no plans for further expansion of the stadium”, and that remains the case.

FSG felt the best way forward was to modernise the ground where it could rather than start afresh — a decision underpinned by the fact the club revealed losses of almost £50million in 2012, including a “huge amount” written off on the new stadium project.

Rebuilding the Main Stand (taking its capacity from 12,000 to 20,500) and expanding the Anfield Road Stand (from 9,000 to 16,000) enabled the stadium to welcome 60,000-plus crowds for the first time since the terracing days of the early 1950s, but further expansion on the other two sides of the ground — the Kop and the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand — are not seen as viable at this stage.

The principal reason is a lack of room behind them, as they both back onto housing. The community on Skerries Road, which runs behind the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand, often become nervous when talk of further expansion around Anfield is mentioned, so Hogan’s comments last year were welcome. Expanding Anfield again could not happen without knocking down houses and relocating those residents and Liverpool have already been through that previously with the other rebuilds.

Extending the Kop is even more difficult as Walton Breck Road, which is a major A-road within the city, runs behind it. Even building over the road would require knocking down other buildings. It is simply too complicated.

The best stadiums now are 365-day-a-year operations hosting concerts, conferences and other non-football events. Tapping into that remains essential, even with the limit of staging up to six non-football events at Anfield per season that’s been agreed with the local council.

FSG, however, believes Anfield — a modern stadium in a historic setting — will maintain its appeal. The way it reshaped Fenway Park, the home of its Boston Red Sox baseball team, and the surrounding area of the U.S. city into something of a heritage site, is probably the template Liverpool will adopt.

Liverpool made £101million from matchday revenue last season, fourth-best in the Premier League. Manchester United generated the highest figure (£137m) with Arsenal (£131m) and Tottenham (£105m), two London clubs clearly reaping the benefits of having a new(ish) multi-purpose stadium, not far behind.

As the graph below shows, Liverpool are well off the top two but will be encouraged to know revenue is likely to increase when their next set of accounts are released early next year, following the return of Champions League football, as well as having a full season of home matches at the expanded Anfield.

A critical view is that FSG want to keep the capacity to lower than it should be so they can keep demand high at all times regardless of on field success.  This means they can continue to raise prices and and fleece supporters. Especially the one ones from the South, Ireland and America who will pay an excessive premium for those new hospitality seats they added with both extensions.