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.
Comments
Post a Comment