Skip to main content

New stadiums boom

While many of us downed tools over the holiday period, the sports stadium building boom continued without a pause and the new year has seen things ramp up.  On Thursday, US-owned Premier League team Leeds United secured planning permission to expand Elland Road to a capacity of 53,000.

Earlier in the week, Nottingham Forest — owned by Greek billionaire Evangelos Marinakis — unveiled plans to redevelop the City Ground, with a view to taking capacity there north of 50,000 one day too.

Crystal Palace, which announced redevelopment plans for Selhurst Park eight years ago, may soon start putting spades in the ground.  Further down the English football pyramid, Millwall secured a new 999-year lease on its stadium, The Den, which will help clear the way for a potential expansion and upgrade there too.

Work to build a new stand at Wrexham is now under way, while Birmingham City’s eye-catching designs are still fresh off the printing press.

As the UK economy has sputtered in recent years, football clubs have been pushing ahead with stadium investment. Some hope these projects can help catalyse wider regeneration, with many football stadiums located in places in sore need of a boost, e.g., the CBS Stadium in North Coventry.

Demand to watch live sport is strong (Leeds has a waiting list for season tickets of 26,000), while financing these projects may be getting a bit easier as more specialist lenders start to take an interest. Wrexham’s construction work — which is linked to a far broader regeneration plan for the entire town — is being part-financed by Apollo.

Football’s new financial rules are also pushing clubs to find ways to boost revenue over the long-term so they can spend more on players.

As more institutional money pours into sport, we can expect more and more stadium upgrades. Many investors see hard infrastructure (and the reliable revenue from ticketing, hospitality and advertising that come with it) as the safest way to access the sector. That should in turn make accessing capital easier for teams, and alter calculations about whether a costly construction project is really worth pursuing.

In recent years it’s been easy to point out that sports lawyers are being kept busy. But the architects, civil engineers and building companies are very much in demand too.

Of course, new stadiums are not always loved.   The London Stadium was not built for West Ham, even though they got a good financial deal on it.  As an athletics stadium, it lacks the atmosphere of Upton Park.

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...
Post a Comment
Read more

Threat of financial calamity removed from Baggies

West Bromwich Albion had effectively been in decline ever since the club was sold to a Chinese consortium in August 2016, paying a figure north of £200m to buy former owner Jeremy Peace’s stake. Controlling shareholder Guochuan Lai’s ownership was fairly disastrous for the club, but his unloved tenure finally came to an end after Bilkul Football WBA, a company ultimately owned by Florida-based entrepreneur Shilen Patel and his father Dr Kiran Patel, acquired an 87.8% shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, the parent company of West Bromwich Albion Football Club. This change in ownership was urgently required, due to the numerous financial problems facing West Brom, including growing high-interest debt and serious cash flow concerns, following years of no investment from the former owner. Indeed, West Brom’s auditors had already rung the alarm bell in the 2021/22 accounts when they cast doubt on the club’s ability to continue as a going concern without making player s...
1 comment
Read more

A poor financial record, but new hope at Everton

I recently saw an amusing video online in which a group of Everton fans were rebuked in jest for being hopeful.  Football fans in general tend to swing between excessive optimism and excessive pessimism, but for many it seems that moaning is in their bloodstream (Spurs fans probably take the trophy).  However, Everton fans have had plenty to moan about on and off the pitch.   Let’s hope that a new era is about to begin for this grand old club. Everton’s 2023/24 financial results covered a fairly momentous season, when they ended up 15th in the Premier League, though they would finished three places higher if they had not received an 8-point deduction for breaching the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR). It was a worrying time for Everton fans, as the club faced a “perfect storm” of issues, including large financial losses, an ever increasing debt burden, a challenging stadium build and the tortuous sale of the club. There were eve...
Post a Comment
Read more