Tickets for Saturday’s opening game at Sunderland all went within a day of going on sale. Season cards, too, are long gone. Kit sales have never been higher and the club shop, two floors below that share certificate, has a snaking queue of supporters wishing to add Premier League badges to the sleeves of new shirts.
Eight years were spent awaiting this moment. There was the
ignominy of falling into League One and then the long, arduous road back that
climaxed with promotion via the Championship play-off final in May. Those
dramatic victories over Coventry City and Sheffield United are already the
stuff of Wearside legend.
There is the very real danger of the Premier League’s
formidable strength quickly putting an end to Sunderland’s rise in the coming
months but this is a very different club to the one that parted with English
football’s elite.
The ambition now is to be sustainable and strategic after a
string of wasteful, aimless years began a ruinous slide captured in the Netflix
documentary Sunderland Till I Die. Even with this summer’s spending —
£121m ($163m) and counting — it is stressed there will be no deviation from the
plans that have brought them this far.
Returning to the Premier League was always Louis-Dreyfus’ stated
aim when taking a controlling stake in Sunderland from Stewart Donald in
February 2021. The son of Robert Louis-Dreyfus, the late former owner of
Marseille, made it clear at the start of 2021-22 that a five-year plan
could guide Sunderland from the backwaters of League One and up to the Premier
League. It took just four.
There were missteps along the way, like defeat by Lincoln
City in the League One play-offs and the disastrous appointment of Michael
Beale, but Louis-Dreyfus, still only 27, has turned Sunderland into a club
feeling good about itself once more.
Sunderland’s methods in coming this far have barely altered
in the past four years, even when irritating a string of head coaches.
New arrivals have typically been under 23 with the potential
to develop into assets. Jobe Bellingham went from being a £1.5m signing from
Birmingham City to a £32m player sold to Borussia Dortmund this summer. The
year before it was Jack Clarke, sold to Ipswich Town for £15m and the year
before that, Ross Stewart, who Southampton paid £9m to sign.
Reinvestment has regularly been smart, such as moves for
Ballard, Dennis Cirkin, Romaine Mundle and Eliezer Mayenda, which have
complemented the emergence of academy graduates that include Anthony Patterson,
Chris Rigg, Dan Neil and Watson.
Wages have been controlled along the way. Figures from the
2023-24 season, the last available club accounts, showed salary costs to be 81
per cent of turnover, way below the Championship average.
Sustainability has always been the buzzword and it stretches
to the business outlook of a club that was the ninth-best supported in England
last season, with an average home crowd of just under 40,000.
Sunderland, inevitably, will enjoy record revenues in this
coming season. There is a guarantee to earn at least £110m from the Premier
League pot (almost three times the club’s turnover in 2023-24), as well as
matchday and commercial income climbing to new highs.
Kit sales, in particular, have seen enormous growth. A
partnership with Hummel, the Danish manufacturer that formerly supplied the
club’s kits between 1988 and 1994, led to output trebling last season.
There has also been increased demand for tickets. North of
30,000 season tickets were sold before the Wembley victory and the limits were
reached within 48 hours of being placed on sale in June. With corporate
hospitality offerings taking season-ticket holders to 41,000 and Michelin star
chef Tommy Banks now overseeing high-end food on site, it is the first time
since the capacity of the Stadium of Light was increased in 2000 that supply
cannot meet demand.
A fan commented: ‘However well run, however intelligent in
the transfer market, it's tough for any newly-promoted club to survive at the
first time of asking. Sunderland fans know this. However, they also know that
what Louis-Dreyfus has done is genuinely impressive. The club was a basket-case
when he arrived, years of foolish expenditure and near-bankruptcy having been
followed by indiscriminate cost-cutting.
That was just under five years ago. Since then the
management team he has assembled has systematically begun to repair the damage,
both on the pitch and behind the scenes. Most importantly - and uniquely, as
far as the experience of many fans is concerned - they do what they say they
will, stick to their plans, and seem able to acknowledge and react to their
mistakes.
The last time there
was anything like this level of joy around the club was a quarter of a century
ago, when the SoL was newly opened and Quinn and Phillips were scoring for fun;
and even then, there wasn't the sense there is now, that an attempt is being
made to put in place something that can sustain itself in the longer term.
It's always possible that it may all end in tears. It's certainly possible that
it won't succeed at the first or even second try. But it's a refreshing change
all the same and it is reconnecting the club to the City and to a generation of
fans that was in danger of drifting away.’
As a Charlton fan I
can only wish Sunderland well.
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