AMEX expansion - there must be a plan hidden away somewhere......

[El Presidente]

Financially, I do think it's do-able, (but only due to the crazy crazy world of PL finance).

Financially it makes no sense.

Strip out VAT and the cost of the travel levy, assume 50% of tickets are allocated for ST’s and 1/4 of total tickets are at concession prices and it works out at £18 per fan per match.

Assuming 20 home matches a season gives an extra £360,000 a season, so 5,000 tickets is £1.8 million and 10,000 is £3.6 million. The cost of extending the stadium would run into tens of millions, would disrupt access for at least one season, possibly two and the existing inadequate transport issues would be amplified further.

The club earns £2.1 million for each incremental place in the PL table at the end of the season, so moving from 15th to 13th is more beneficial than an extra 10,000 seats.

If the club is still in the Premier League in 3-4 years 30,000 attendances will be the exception rather than the norm as ambition fatigue will set in when the aim every year is to avoid relegation.

The Amex is fine as it is.

 

[Is it PotG?]

Oooh goodie, may fave has reappeared. Do love this one.

We do not need, nor shall we get, a bigger stadium. What we have fits the bill perfectly.

 

[PILTDOWN MAN]

Oooh goodie, may fave has reappeared. Do love this one.

We do not need, nor shall we get, a bigger stadium. What we have fits the bill perfectly.

What’s the police got to do with it?

 

[wakeytom]

Corrected.

Yes, sorry I forgot. Its just a 48k seater stadium which when built 21 years ago was viewed as one of the best new stadiums and when fans visit now it is still seen as one of the better grounds to visit all at a cost of under £50m after inflation (£24m at the time) and an average attendance this year of exactly 30k in league 1 is not exactly bad going (only 500 less than Brighton's PL attendance on average this season)

 

[father_and_son]

Financially it makes no sense.

Strip out VAT and the cost of the travel levy, assume 50% of tickets are allocated for ST’s and 1/4 of total tickets are at concession prices and it works out at £18 per fan per match.

Assuming 20 home matches a season gives an extra £360,000 a season, so 5,000 tickets is £1.8 million and 10,000 is £3.6 million. The cost of extending the stadium would run into tens of millions, would disrupt access for at least one season, possibly two and the existing inadequate transport issues would be amplified further.


The club earns £2.1 million for each incremental place in the PL table at the end of the season, so moving from 15th to 13th is more beneficial than an extra 10,000 seats.

If the club is still in the Premier League in 3-4 years 30,000 attendances will be the exception rather than the norm as ambition fatigue will set in when the aim every year is to avoid relegation.

The Amex is fine as it is.

Agree with all of this ... except IMHO in 3-4 years time we will still be getting 30k in the PL. I don't believe that fatigue will set in and churn will be minimal. >20k STH (with another 8K waiting), +3k away allocations and the rest as matchday.

We would be good for 27-33k as PL-also-ran or top-championship side for maybe the next 10yrs. Though I agree, spending the money on a larger capacity Amex isn't going to be worth the cash in the long run. By your maths, 3k at £18 would only give us £10m over a 10yr, stay-in-PL period and it would cost more than that.

 

[ewe2]

Unfortunately for supporters wanting a seat,the only way i can see any small increase in capacity is via extra corporate areas ,maybe the north corner ,like the new TV area in the south corner.

 

[Beanstalk]

Financially it makes no sense.

Strip out VAT and the cost of the travel levy, assume 50% of tickets are allocated for ST’s and 1/4 of total tickets are at concession prices and it works out at £18 per fan per match.

Assuming 20 home matches a season gives an extra £360,000 a season, so 5,000 tickets is £1.8 million and 10,000 is £3.6 million. The cost of extending the stadium would run into tens of millions, would disrupt access for at least one season, possibly two and the existing inadequate transport issues would be amplified further.

The club earns £2.1 million for each incremental place in the PL table at the end of the season, so moving from 15th to 13th is more beneficial than an extra 10,000 seats.

If the club is still in the Premier League in 3-4 years 30,000 attendances will be the exception rather than the norm as ambition fatigue will set in when the aim every year is to avoid relegation.

The Amex is fine as it is.

Genuine question. Is this Bournemouth's motivation? That it makes more financial sense to pump £25million into Jefferson Lerma and finish 4 places (£8.4million) higher, than to spend £25million redesigning their league one ground for a return of £3.6million? Or is their owner just having a shorter term goal of spending loads and having a bit of fun without caring about long term ambition?

 

[Wozza]

Also the people in the offices behind the north stand, where the old TV studio is, have been told they will move out in April as the club are using the space "for commercial purposes" which sounds like another lounge of some sort.

Yes, this. More hospitality.

https://nortr3nixy.nimpr.uk/showt...-be-extended&p=8323949&viewfull=1#post8323949

No chance of significant increase in capacity given transport issues.

 

[Icy Gull]

They could always just wack the prices up significantly if we have a decent season....that will cut the waiting list down considerably.

 

[Hugo Rune]

12th biggest capacity in the Premier League. Whilst I'd like us to add another 2,000 to take us to 10th, we really don't need anything much bigger.

I'm sure a bit of creative design in the north and north east and some squeezing of existing seats could see the required increase.

 

[nwgull]

Good grief. I was agreeing with him.

Talk about YOU having a spiteful agenda...

It came across more like you being a pompous arse than agreement to me as well.

 

[Simster]

The cost of stadium expansion would be astronomical and completely out of step with the rewards it might bring. From that point of view, it would only ever get done as part of a Tony Bloom vanity project and that doesn't seem to be how he chooses to run the club. Regardless, as [MENTION=189]Wozza[/MENTION] says, I reckon the biggest issue is transport. There is no chance of expansion given the limits on parking and rail.

Now if we're talking ideal worlds written on message boards, I'd love to see a stadium capacity of 37,000 - a touch bigger than clubs of similar size and coincidentally a touch bigger than our biggest ever gate - but it's pie in the sky and completely unfeasible.

 

[Seasidesage]

Financially it makes no sense.

Strip out VAT and the cost of the travel levy, assume 50% of tickets are allocated for ST’s and 1/4 of total tickets are at concession prices and it works out at £18 per fan per match.

Assuming 20 home matches a season gives an extra £360,000 a season, so 5,000 tickets is £1.8 million and 10,000 is £3.6 million. The cost of extending the stadium would run into tens of millions, would disrupt access for at least one season, possibly two and the existing inadequate transport issues would be amplified further.

The club earns £2.1 million for each incremental place in the PL table at the end of the season, so moving from 15th to 13th is more beneficial than an extra 10,000 seats.

If the club is still in the Premier League in 3-4 years 30,000 attendances will be the exception rather than the norm as ambition fatigue will set in when the aim every year is to avoid relegation.

The Amex is fine as it is.

This is all true and I agree with every word. The words that particularly resonate with me however, are 'ambition fatigue' and this is where my problem if I have one with the status quo exists. If we want to increase our status as a club and compete at the top end of the table and I would hope that we do or what is the point? We are going to need to become a 'bigger' club. Part of that must surely be attracting larger crowds? Growing our fan base both locally and globally? While it makes no sense financially, it does make sense from a sporting prospective. Bigger clubs get better players, both because they pay more but also because they attract ambitious players because they are bigger clubs? If you look at the way say Newcastle are treated by the media and the game itself v us you can see they are perceived as a far bigger club despite having a record no better than ours in recent years and less spending power. Clearly their history comes into play too but its mostly because they are getting 50k for a home game and as such are considered a big club..

If we don't expand and the figures against doing so are compelling I agree. We surely consign ourselves to at best staying in the lower reaches of the PL and losing our better players to the big boys when we find them. If that happens apathy could well set in. It's a very difficult balancing act.

 

[Simster]

Yes, sorry I forgot. Its just a 48k seater stadium which when built 21 years ago was viewed as one of the best new stadiums and when fans visit now it is still seen as one of the better grounds to visit all at a cost of under £50m after inflation (£24m at the time) and an average attendance this year of exactly 30k in league 1 is not exactly bad going (only 500 less than Brighton's PL attendance on average this season)

The simple attendance comparisons don't really work here though, as our ground is sold out pretty much every league game. Given a limitless capacity like your 48,000, we'd be averaging 10,000 more than you I suspect.

Sunderland are a big club though - I can only think of one other club averaging over 28,000 at that level in the past 2 or 3 decades. That said, I've always felt that 48,000 is just about the upper limit of what your ground capacity needed to be, a bit like 34-35,000 for us.

 

[wellquickwoody]

I always thought that the East stand was built in a way that makes it reasonably easy to put another tier in to match the west stand.
I know that the stadium had to be designed in a certain way to enable us to build it, but would it have made any difference to anybody if the east matched the west from the start.

Doh!

 

[Cowfold Seagull]

No. I am saying if the club is going to spend money expanding its supporter base , paying millions for a fee thousand extra seats is not cost effective. Investing in marketing the club in other huge potential markets will gain many more fans and money!

Absolutely this. spending millions to cram in a few paltry thousand extra seats will achieve very little income wise. The supporter base nowadays lies in those in the worldwide audience watching our games on tv and online, not in little Brighton & Hove.

It's already been said has it not, that in the Premier League at least, teams could play in a virtually empty stadium and it would make little or no difference to their bank balance.

 

[Bry Nylon]

It's already been said has it not, that in the Premier League at least, teams could play in a virtually empty stadium and it would make little or no difference to their bank balance.

It will be interesting to see the results of the pilot study that Palace are running on this, this season.

 

[Giraffe]

It will be interesting to see the results of the pilot study that Palace are running on this, this season.

 

[DavidinSouthampton]

If we were to decide we need a bigger stadium, given last week's planning decision we could probably work something out with IKEA and a few volunteers. I'm quite nifty with flatpack furniture, and could probably upgrade to a larger scale.

 

[Gilliver's Travels]

30,000 is plenty enough. We can see the sort of clientel that materialises with a 'big' stadium by looking at the return of the bald head fat necks at Wet Sham in their Olympic largesse. I saw a few of our returnees in West Upper last season, looking ferrety and out of place. Not pretty, certainly pink, but robustly un-fairy.

Exactly, dear boy. Who on earth would want members of the working class at a football stadium, of all places?