New Everton Stadium

[Brennan]

So some people want too restrict our hopes because RS divvies might laugh at a few empty seats. Isn't this just accepting their view of us anyway. Jesus ,grow a pair, if they make nasty comments just tell em to do one and growl a bit, in my experience that'll send em scuttling back under the rock they crawled from . There are genuine arguments for and against, but what the RS may say? Do me a favour.

It's not just about empty seats, at all.

However, a packed stadium does look better and will result in a better atmosphere, and is more attractive to sponsors imo. Image is important.

The financial side of it is huge. Every seat creates extra cost which has to be paid for somehow. That money could instead be spent on players in the short term, something which is far more important at the moment than extra seats. See Arsenal's transfer spending following their move for an example of the impact a stadium can have. We cannot afford that situation.

 

[joey_macmo]

No.

I'm saying that you don't necessarily build the largest possible stadium you can afford, for various reasons.

See Crystal Palace, apparently looking to build a 40,000 seater because it fits their short to medium term needs. Building a 55,000 seater would be our equivalent. An extra 10,000 seats would take years to pay for themselves, never mind make us money.

In your scenario about expanding afterwards your method would cost Everton much more money than just building it in the first place.

 

[joey_macmo]

I'd be surprised if they didn't average high 70's if they had say an 85k stadium. Could be wrong though.

As I said you can still get tickets for tomorrow, couple that with the local sales now and its not hard to get a ticket at all now.

 

[Eggsyblueskin]

It's not just about empty seats, at all.

However, a packed stadium does look better and will result in a better atmosphere, and is more attractive to sponsors imo. Image is important.

The financial side of it is huge. Every seat creates extra cost which has to be paid for somehow. That money could instead be spent on players in the short term, something which is far more important at the moment than extra seats. See Arsenal's transfer spending following their move for an example of the impact a stadium can have. We cannot afford that situation.

As I said there are good arguments for and against as per your post, but RS scum extracting the micheal is not one I would accept. I genuinely don't care what they think or say about anything.

 

[Brennan]

In your scenario about expanding afterwards your method would cost Everton much more money than just building it in the first place.

In the long term, yes. Never disputed that and I feel you're missing the point.

 

[catcherintherye]

His comments were a bit OTT but read between the venom and there are some elements of truth in what he says.

Two questions need to be asked.

1) How many extra season tickets can we sell.
2) How many extra casual supporters can we attract.

The corporate hospitality figures are important to our match day income but will not have a great effect on attendance or capacity.

1) With season tickets you have to account for the fact that we have just achieved our highest ever sales on the back of a successful campaign aimed at the younger fans, plus we reduced our prices this year. Lots of people on here commenting on Man City and West Ham ST prices, but you need to remember that neither have a brand new very expensive stadium to pay for. General consensus is that it will cost between £400/450m for a club that is only likely to turn over around £150m pa, even with the new TV deal. There will be an element of long term debt taken out which needs to be serviced, realistically, from increased advertising and match day revenues. I can therefore only see us increasing ST prices for the new stadium, not reducing them. I'd be happy if we were able to increase out ST sales to 40,000 which is an increase of 25% on the current levels.

2) I don't have any figures on the casual supporter but, assuming that we give 3k to the away team, we normally sold between 6/8k each week. I don't have any details on membership/Forever Everton numbers (maybe somebody can enlighten us) but say there may be 30/40k individuals that share these seats over a season. One has to assume that some of these have been responsible for the big increase in ST sales this season, and likewise should we increase our ST sales in the new stadium. I'd be happy if we sold between 10/15k casual tickets per game depending upon the opponents but I believe even this is optimistic. You have to take into account we had less than 25k at the Yeovil game and 30k at Norwich the other night.

I'm a believer that too may empty seats will not look great, not to mention the stick we'll get from the RS which will be inevitable (you have to live and work in Liverpool to fully get this). I doubt we'd fill a 55k stadium more than a handful of games a season and anything bigger than this is not needed at the moment. Whilst it hurts, we have to accept the fact that we are based in a two team city and probably close to 2/3 of the population support the other team sadly.

My personal view is that we build something between 50/55k, but in a way that is relatively easy to build on should future demand dictate.

A lot of good points there mate. I'd ignore the league cup attendances, across the board they are down. Sides like Stoke get 8k in. Our figures are actually quite competitive.

The reality is, we sell out 37k (approximately our bit of the ground) almost every week with a poor team, in what is now a poor stadium in a poor location. This is with 32k season ticket holders that has been growing year on year. In both of the above figures they are capped so I don't know what the true potential is. The question needs to be how much of an increase will improving each area give us.

When you consider the Spurs game was sold out 3 weeks in advance you get an idea of the demand for the tickets, certainly for 6 games a season being much higher than what it is currently. I'd hazard a guess we could have sold another 10k for Spurs. It's a useful start point to say 40k for poorer games and 50k+ for bigger games.

Lets factor in the other factors. A stadium with better facilities. Lets call this a 10% increase. Lets call the location being central as nominally 5%. Finally the team performance, I have indicated could be as much as 30/35% but to be cautious again lets keep that at a moderate increase of 10%. I think those numbers are reasonable and not overly ambitious, especially given the immediate excitement that exists around the stadium and the quality of location it will have.

We have a 25% increase on numbers given. That roughly speaking (factoring in 3k away fans) gives us 48-50k for less attractive games and upwards of 60-65k for half a dozen league games a season.

In all honesty I don't mind what the capacity is. Anything from 50k-70k have pro's and cons. My ideal would be 60k with a chance to extend as it gives the club something to work towards. However what is more important is sorting out the corporate side of things having got a ground in a fantastic location. Every FTSE 250 company needs to be targeted as well as American and Asian companies. If we had a 60k stadium it should allow us to be creative in getting the next generation of fans in and allow to sell discounted tickets to under 16's for a dozen matches a season. You can't under estimate the importance of ensuring the next generation of young children are Evertonians in the city and having a stadium for some games with 20k+ under 16's would be fantastic.

 

[catcherintherye]

As I said you can still get tickets for tomorrow, couple that with the local sales now and its not hard to get a ticket at all now.

I didn't know they hadn't sold out. Did they sell out Leicester? If they are struggling to sell a 54k stadium it is not good news for them. I do think over the last 10 years their local roots have withered.

 

[toffee66]

Adding on capacity later, even if the stadium is designed to be upgradeable, is typically at least 3x as expensive per seat as building the capacity up front. This is really a question of attitude to and appetite for risk. Do we want to risk extra up front cost/empty seats or excess demand/expensive future expansion?

There are lots of big questions to be answered. Off the top of my head, definitely not exhaustive and limiting myself to the stadium not any wider development:

1. Single purpose vs. Multi-purpose? If multi, what else? Concerts/boxing/athletics/arena sports/other sports/monster trucks/conferences...they impact design decisions
2. Retractable roof? (& if so single structure or modular?)
3. Retractable pitch (& if so how to handle e.g. rollout over open dock, car-park?) or cover able pitch
4. Moveable seats/arena configuration? (see Meis' designs for Saitama, UNLV) or removeable seats (athletics)?
5. Capacity? Expansion?
6. Spurs/Dortmund single tier stand vs. NFL style multi-tier or in-between all around (Wembley/Emirates)
7. Bowl/Distinct stands (& if latter how to address 'corner seat problem')
8. Iconic exterior/roof vs. heritage design
9. Prevalence/size/location of executive boxes and premium seating areas
10. Build down e.g. sunken pitch or up (depends on site practicalities e.g. flood risk, planning/sight line restrictions)

You could go on forever. It is worth keeping this in mind if things seem to be moving slowly or some design decisions seem odd. All of this stuff has to be worked out for planning and them for contractor procurement. The upfront thinking can take as long as the build. The fact that Meis, Wilson Owens Owens and no doubt others have apparently been working on potential designs for a while suggests that the behind-the-scenes process is well underway.

I'd personally not expect public confirmation before we are at least 95% sure we have land secured, workable designs, support from planners/politicians, partners and funding lined up.

 

[Tel001]

If the weather was bad enough to require the roof to be closed, the game would be called of anyway due to the safety of the fans traveling to the game (which is why most prem games are called of these days)..

Retractable pitches are great ideas though, good for the health of the pitch aswell!

We could set up some hydroponics and grow weed in the close season..

 

[joey_macmo]

I didn't know they hadn't sold out. Did they sell out Leicester? If they are struggling to sell a 54k stadium it is not good news for them. I do think over the last 10 years their local roots have withered.

Some reports had them about 3k down but In reality they were about 1500 short.

They do £9 tickets now and specific sales periods for L postcodes. Its an absolute doddle to get on their ladder for all the cup games and it's becoming increasingly easier to get tickets for league games too. I honestly don't even think they'd sell out the proposed Anfield road expansion never mind more on top of that.

 

[evertonarntwe]

If they are so arsed about "filling" the stadium, it's simple just reduce the ticket price or do a scheme for kids maybe, there Is just absolutely no point building a brand spanker stadium, then a few years down the load realising it's not big enough to have to spend A LOT more money adding capacity, do it now whilst it's getting built and cross the bridge of empty seats "IF" if it gets to that

 

[Ashtonluke]

Adding on capacity later, even if the stadium is designed to be upgradeable, is typically at least 3x as expensive per seat as building the capacity up front. This is really a question of attitude to and appetite for risk. Do we want to risk extra up front cost/empty seats or excess demand/expensive future expansion?

There are lots of big questions to be answered. Off the top of my head, definitely not exhaustive and limiting myself to the stadium not any wider development:

1. Single purpose vs. Multi-purpose? If multi, what else? Concerts/boxing/athletics/arena sports/other sports/monster trucks/conferences...they impact design decisions
2. Retractable roof? (& if so single structure or modular?)
3. Retractable pitch (& if so how to handle e.g. rollout over open dock, car-park?) or cover able pitch
4. Moveable seats/arena configuration? (see Meis' designs for Saitama, UNLV) or removeable seats (athletics)?
5. Capacity? Expansion?
6. Spurs/Dortmund single tier stand vs. NFL style multi-tier or in-between all around (Wembley/Emirates)
7. Bowl/Distinct stands (& if latter how to address 'corner seat problem')
8. Iconic exterior/roof vs. heritage design
9. Prevalence/size/location of executive boxes and premium seating areas
10. Build down e.g. sunken pitch or up (depends on site practicalities e.g. flood risk, planning/sight line restrictions)

You could go on forever. It is worth keeping this in mind if things seem to be moving slowly or some design decisions seem odd. All of this stuff has to be worked out for planning and them for contractor procurement. The upfront thinking can take as long as the build. The fact that Meis, Wilson Owens Owens and no doubt others have apparently been working on potential designs for a while suggests that the behind-the-scenes process is well underway.

I'd personally not expect public confirmation before we are at least 95% sure we have land secured, workable designs, support from planners/politicians, partners and funding lined up.

Great post mate- I definitely agree about that last part. With an underwhelming summer transfer window, the last thing they would want to do is promise a dockland stadium without it being pretty much nailed on. I suppose the question is (I'm not sure of the answer) is how far we can get through the process in private before certain things have to enter the public domain e.g. at the planning phase.

 

[brieverton]

Adding on capacity later, even if the stadium is designed to be upgradeable, is typically at least 3x as expensive per seat as building the capacity up front. This is really a question of attitude to and appetite for risk. Do we want to risk extra up front cost/empty seats or excess demand/expensive future expansion?

There are lots of big questions to be answered. Off the top of my head, definitely not exhaustive and limiting myself to the stadium not any wider development:

1. Single purpose vs. Multi-purpose? If multi, what else? Concerts/boxing/athletics/arena sports/other sports/monster trucks/conferences...they impact design decisions
2. Retractable roof? (& if so single structure or modular?)
3. Retractable pitch (& if so how to handle e.g. rollout over open dock, car-park?) or cover able pitch
4. Moveable seats/arena configuration? (see Meis' designs for Saitama, UNLV) or removeable seats (athletics)?
5. Capacity? Expansion?
6. Spurs/Dortmund single tier stand vs. NFL style multi-tier or in-between all around (Wembley/Emirates)
7. Bowl/Distinct stands (& if latter how to address 'corner seat problem')
8. Iconic exterior/roof vs. heritage design
9. Prevalence/size/location of executive boxes and premium seating areas
10. Build down e.g. sunken pitch or up (depends on site practicalities e.g. flood risk, planning/sight line restrictions)

You could go on forever. It is worth keeping this in mind if things seem to be moving slowly or some design decisions seem odd. All of this stuff has to be worked out for planning and them for contractor procurement. The upfront thinking can take as long as the build. The fact that Meis, Wilson Owens Owens and no doubt others have apparently been working on potential designs for a while suggests that the behind-the-scenes process is well underway.

I'd personally not expect public confirmation before we are at least 95% sure we have land secured, workable designs, support from planners/politicians, partners and funding lined up.

Excellent post. I think you highlight the fact that, whilst we all want the best possible, with all of the "add-ons",and having the world gasp in admiration and awe, the club will have a defined budget which inevitably means that compromises are going to have to be made, or have been made already, with at least some aspects of the design and build.

The only guarantee is that there will never be 100% consensus and satisfaction with the design, or indeed the final outcome.

I am confident though, that for once, and with Moshiri driving this, that the result will be something that most of us will be very happy with. More than that is hard to ask for.

 

[arch stanton]

I meant the new stand at the pit mate.

Ours will be fine, as all the stands will be the same height, so you won't have one exposed to the elements.

sorry foot long, i skipped a few of the pages of the capacity debate (it was getting a bit samey) so was a bit out of context.

Big stand though, all the norwegians will be used to the harsh cold winds up there.

 

[The Cowboy]

Love the idea of floating the pitch out over the river.