Likelihood the extra 5000 seats would be general sale tickets, so that is (5000 x 48) x 19 = £4,560,000 a year without any cup games. Of course that doesn't allow for kids/OAP's so you can probably knock 25% off that figure taking it to around 3 and a half million if consistently sold out. These seats would pay for themselves within a period of 13-14 years once interest is included and when that happens that is money in the bank.
I can't help go back to the short sightedness of the Park End situation where it would have cost another 2 odd million to build a second tier, but they baulked and we have lost a rough estimate of nearly 100 million in income because of it.
I believe it is more than just penis envy it stands at the root of everything, are we going to have the ambition to try and be the best we can or are we going to make it comfortable for ourselves? A 12k increase after you deduct the premium seating means there is going to be around 8000 extra seats and moving from a consistently full stadium for an extra 8k doesn't feel like we are going to satisfy that general demand. That means you'll end up with an aging audience and the atmosphere will decrease accordingly. If kids can't get to the game here but due to the 15th tacked on extension next door means they can there, then we could lose future match going Evertonians.
I don't think many of us see us having more seats than Arsenal now, so we will have a smaller stadium than most of our rivals esp. when City and the RS expand. But we should be in the ballpark. 8 to 10,000 seats smaller than these clubs is a lot. We have struggled to compete against these clubs when we had one of the bigger stadiums. If we lose our sugar daddy we may end up playing in a nice stadium but still in the exact same position of being unable to realistically compete. If we could get to 57-58k, then you could say as we are only 3-5k down on our rivals we are in that 'ballpark'. I think most of us would accept 55k now.
I agree with the fact that we just want it built now!