New Everton Stadium

[windymiller]

I've not read the last 12 pages... Is it worth it ?

Depends, do you like misanthropes kicking off about bricks and architects? If so, yes, if not, no.

 

[AsiaAsia82]

What I really hope is that the seats are effectively picked up and overlaid to their corresponding seats. Then there is a period in which people can change if they want. I've sat with the same people for over 20 years now, would be a shame to be forced to sit away. Unless they want to of course. They might be relishing the chance of getting rid of me....

I’ve been sitting by the same people for years and would love to be able to change our seats!!

 

[Deleted member 41045]

This thread is unreadable. A tragic tribute to one man’s vanity. Admins have let it degenerate beyond saving IMO.

It's a shame the way they let one childish attention seeking moron hijack everything on here. All I see when I look is blue lines and "ignoring content".
He's like a 3 year old desperate for attention.

 

[davek]

Fair enough. HE were one of a number of stakeholders/consultees who asked for the simplification of the facade. My point stands that the planning process is a negotiation with inevitable compromise. I don't think this one was a major issue personally.

THE major player on restricting design plans were the conservationist groups....the club needlessly pandered to them in the end, as it turned out.

 

[davids]

THE major player on restricting design plans were the conservationist groups....the club needlessly pandered to them in the end, as it turned out.

They always had to Dave or the planning could have taken another ten years.

 

[davek]

For someone that would have neither you don't half spend a lot of time making the point.

But assuming Meis hadn't incorporated a nod to Leitch or St Rupert's Tower anywhere in the new ground, I would be shocked, (shocked I tell thee) that @davek , who was adamant we were all folly for believing it would be built, would have been ok that he designed a stadium for us with NO inherent reference to Goodison or the Tower.

All right yeah.

Anyone can be a critic, nothing special about it.

I don't know how you've the neck to show up in this thread anymore.
You've become a parody of yourself.

No idea what that is.

 

[Eggs]

No idea what that is.

….I suspect we all know what he means.

 

[Noggsy blue]

Few pics from a pint at the Bramley Moore

 

[davek]

They always had to Dave or the planning could have taken another ten years.

And if that was the case then they should have avoided a hybrid that made little sense.

 

[davek]

What I really hope is that the seats are effectively picked up and overlaid to their corresponding seats. Then there is a period in which people can change if they want. I've sat with the same people for over 20 years now, would be a shame to be forced to sit away. Unless they want to of course. They might be relishing the chance of getting rid of me....

"When the new stadium itself became home to Manchester City FC from the start of the 2003/04 league season, one of the first complaints about the ground itself was the fact that Manchester City season ticket holders at Maine Road could not transfer their particular seat over to the corresponding seat at the new stadium. Many groups of supporters consisting of friends and families alike who together had watched City play for many years at Maine Road, were now split up and scattered to different parts of the new ground. In particular, supporters were told that they could not have the same position in the City of Manchester Stadium's West Stand, which is the equivalent of what was the Main Stand at Maine Road. With the shared experience of the stadium part of the development of the sense of place within the traditional football ground, this fragmentation and atomization of supporter groups before the first ball was even kicked in earnest at the new stadium sees the issue of place attachment instantly raised around the fans in the newly built environment."

 

[Bluestar]

THE major player on restricting design plans were the conservationist groups....the club needlessly pandered to them in the end, as it turned out.

They had to pander to them at the time. It was a World Heritage sits and concessions had to be made.

In the end though, filling in the dock and building a stadium on if was always going to be a bigger problem than a few metres on the roof.

Many developments were altered to suit it. Buildings reduced in scale etc, to preserve derail it dockland.

 

[davids]

And if that was the case then they should have avoided a hybrid that made little sense.

If it didn't please the conservation lobby it would never have been built,the waterfront site was a blessing and a curse.

 

[davek]

Arsenal fans at the Emirates.

Power, space and the new stadium: the example of Arsenal Football Club

The practice and power of shaping memory and culture: bringing the ‘Old’ to the ‘New’​

In July 2006, Arsenal FC officially made their relocation from Highbury Stadium, where they had been based since 1913. The club had spent £390 million constructing the Emirates Stadium, which was only 500 metres from the former Highbury Stadium at a site known locally as Ashburton Grove. It has a capacity of 60,000 seats compared to fewer than 40,000 at the old stadium, and the extra income provided by larger attendances was viewed as crucial to Arsenal remaining one of the leading English soccer clubs.43 The old Highbury Stadium was converted into a residential development, which included the conversion of some parts of the old stadium that were subject to conservation designations. The new stadium has received a number of building and planning awards, such as the Mayor of London's Award for Planning Excellence, and more than 100,000 visitors each year take a stadium tour. Whilst such awards and visits appear to reaffirm the legitimacy of the new stadium, the relocation process met with significant opposition as several local resident and business groups were vehemently against the new development, and whilst any legal action taken was ultimately unsuccessful, local resident concerns over traffic congestion and road closures have continued.44
The relocation clearly provided an opportunity for the club to markedly increase revenues. Ever since Arsenal FC took up residence in the Emirates from the start of the 2006/2007 league season, there has been a year-on-year waiting list for the purchase of season tickets at the 60,000-capacity venue and most home games are sold out. This strong demand occurs despite the BBC45 Sport Price of Football Study showing that Arsenal FC's cheapest season ticket is the most expensive in the Premier League, whilst the club also has the most expensive season ticket and also the most expensive match day ticket.46 The level of season ticket sales that the club has achieved certainly adds credence to Conn, who argues that whilst some supporters have without doubt been forced out by the exorbitant price of tickets, ‘the excluded are a minority; most people who always went to the football still somehow seem to find the wherewithal to go’.47
In terms of numbers, the take-up of tickets has been significant since the club moved from the 38,500-capacity Highbury Stadium to the Emirates, whose much larger capacity was seen as one of the main drivers for the clubs relocation as Arsenal FC strives to compete with Europe's elite clubs.48 However, issues surrounding continued ticket price rises and the lack of access to individual membership levels within the club have caused continual concern amongst Arsenal FC fan groups since the club relocated. Groups such as Arsenal Independent Supporters' Association (AISA) and the Arsenal Supporters Trust have long voiced their concerns with the club over ticketing, access and pricing issues, whilst in direct response to these types of concerns, in 2009 an Arsenal supporters protest group called the ‘Black Scarf Movement’ was formed, with a fully integrated website starting in 2010 (http://www.blackscarfafc.co.uk/). The Black Scarf Movement has elaborated on how membership within the Emirates Stadium is split into different distinct levels with those at the bottom of the ladder having very limited access to match day tickets. At the very top of the membership hierarchy, Platinum members are those who take their seats in the invitation only, ‘Diamond Club’ and those who sit in ‘Club Level’, a season ticket holders only elite level area that holds 7000 seats. Then there are the 35,000 Gold Level members who are those who hold general admission season tickets in the non-elite sections of the ground. Finally, underneath these levels come the Arsenal FC Red and Silver members who are the thousands of non-season ticket holders who pay an ever-increasing membership fee every year for the right to be in with a chance to be able to buy a match day ticket with limited availability.49
Following an ongoing campaign focused on many pricing, ticketing and access issues at the Emirates Stadium, the Black Scarf Movement was invited to meet representatives from the club in November 2011 to discuss developments within the group and how it intended to move forward.50 Partly as a result of fan activism, in February 2012 the club announced a price freeze on general admission season ticket renewals for the 2012/2013 season,51 whilst in July 2012, following consultation with various Arsenal supporter groups, a change in the ticketing approach has been seen with the introduction of more match day tickets for non-season ticket holders.52 Whilst, then, on the face of it, season ticket sales, waiting lists and capacity attendances at the Emirates Stadium show one side of the story, there are many issues around ticketing and access at the stadium that have continued through Arsenal FC's tenure of the stadium, which have shown that negotiation and consultation between club and supporters' groups and fan activism will continue to play an important part in activity at the Emirates Stadium development.
The relocation to the Emirates also provided the club's owners and stadium managers with the opportunity to draw on a changed set of resources to shape the spaces and practices of the stadium especially in relation to crowd management and income generation. The Emirates contains the technologies of large screens, retail and hospitality spaces, and sophisticated crowd management and surveillance that Bale describes as the features of a panopticized and homogenized stadium.53 The Arsenal relocation, however, highlights how the power relations in a new stadium are not just shaped by technologies but also influenced by the significant memorial and architectural resources stadium institutions can utilize partly to try and avoid creating the standardized spaces Bale described.54 These resources take the form of new place names, artefacts, mementoes and building features that refer to and signify the history of the former stadium at Highbury, whilst contributing to maintaining stadium income by promoting a sense of belonging amongst supporters. Belanger,55 who analyzed the move of the Montreal Canadians ice hockey team, argued that attempts to incorporate history into the new stadium were part of ‘marketing memories to sell spectacular sites’.56 Gaffney, however, notes the importance of statues to both clubs and supporters in contributing to collective memories of spaces and history.57
In the case of Arsenal FC, a distinctive process has involved moving the ‘old to the new’ by incorporating a wide range of elements of the former Highbury Stadium not only into the design and architecture of the new Emirates but also into the surrounding street spaces. This provides a very specific moment for stadium institutions to draw on the resource of built features and signifiers to reorder not only the collective memory but also the spatial management of the stadium. Of course, in other situations this resource based on history and collective memory will not be utilized by stadium institutions not keen to reify the past as they wish to emphasize the significance of the new stadium.58 In the Arsenal case, however, the spaces of the new stadium and associated power relations were strongly shaped by the material and remembered features of the old Highbury Stadium.
The merging of history and contemporary physical spaces involves both major architectural statements and a range of high-profile measures, which since August 2009 Arsenal FC and the national media have begun to refer to as the process of the ‘Arsenalisation’ of the new stadium.59 This process, which emphasizes the club's history in the built environment, also seeks to enhance match day atmosphere and a sense of collective belonging. It is clearly part of a profit-driven need to maintain demand for tickets but has also been a gradual response by the club to pressure from Arsenal supporter groups. The club would date the start of the process to the beginning of the 2009/2010 season, three years after moving into the new stadium, when, before Arsenal's first home league game of the season, 58,000 red and white scarves were laid out over the home supporters seats, designed for them to be waved above their heads at kick-off time. ‘12 Greatest Moments’ in Arsenal's history walls have also been established inside the stadium using a series of images that were selected after fan's votes on the Arsenal official club website. The pattern of a white cannon has been produced amongst some of the seats in the lower level seats of the Emirates Stadium opposite the tunnel, whilst inside the lower concourses of the stadium, pictures and displays celebrating Arsenal's exploits in Europe, the club's managers, its hat-trick heroes and a special players wall have also been introduced. On the outside of the stadium, eight large murals of well-known Arsenal players have been erected leading to the cumulative effect of them embracing the stadium and the fans, whilst the ‘Spirit of Highbury’ shrine has been introduced, which is an image that features a line-up of the 482 first team players and 14 managers who were involved at Highbury between 1913 and 2006. Further activities within the ‘Arsenalisation’ process since its inception in the summer of 2009 show that the Arsenal Club Level areas have also been ‘Arsenalised’. In relation to these areas of the stadium, the Arsenal FC CEO Ivan Gazidis states that ‘throughout all the spaces we have celebrated the club's history and traditions, so that people feel they really are at the home of Arsenal’.60 Other initiatives within the process have seen supporters being encouraged to design and produce their own banners to be displayed on the front of the upper tier of the stadium, whilst as part of activities to celebrate Arsenal FC's 125th anniversary in December 2011, fans memories of club legends have been detailed on the lower cores of the stadium. As a further part of these celebrations, there has been the incorporation of special flags around the stadium, which celebrate a section of fans that have a special story to tell about their support for Arsenal FC. Showing how the ‘Arsenalisation’ of the stadium is an ongoing and evolving process, Ivan Gazidis states that:
there is a lot more to do. This is just the beginning of the programme. I want the fans to come back and see more elements for them to be surprised by, so that everywhere you walk and everywhere you look you see pieces of our culture and history.61
The new architecture of the Emirates Stadium predictably asserts the power of the stadium institutions over the emergent spaces. Within the design specification of the Emirates Stadium, the club decided that they would use marble similar to one that decorated an art deco façade on the East Stand at Highbury. Marble walls with art deco design form the backdrop to the reception desks in both the club's administrative offices and the Diamond Club entrances, which is the luxury suite. The list of Highbury references and signifiers appearing at the Emirates is long and includes the use of distinctive Highbury Stadium lettering being copied at the Emirates and the incorporation of Highbury's bronze entrance doors and wood panelling for the boardroom. In addition, it was also decided to take the 2.6 metres diameter clock that stood above the clock end terrace at Highbury and place this well-known signifier high up on the outside of the Emirates Stadium. A half-sized replica of the clock was also incorporated within the Diamond Club at the Emirates Stadium. On 28 October 2004, a time capsule containing 39 items of memories and keepsakes of Highbury was placed within the Emirates Stadium whilst it was under construction and the club's offices at the new stadium are officially called ‘Highbury House’, which contains a replica of the famous bust of the club's legendary manager Herbert Chapman. The original still resides at the entrance to the old marble halls in the grade II – listed East Stand at Highbury. Ken Friar, an Arsenal board director, argued that whilst the club
was extremely excited about the prospect of a fantastic new stadium with outstanding modern facilities, we felt that it was important to supporters and everyone involved with the club that some of the history and traditions of Highbury that are so intrinsic to Arsenal were replicated in our new home.62
With some of the new stadiums in the UK suffering from a lack of character and individuality,63 the quote from Ken Friar indicates that Arsenal FC have brought these historical artefacts and signifiers with them from Highbury in part to encourage supporters to develop a familiarization with the new stadium surroundings and to strengthen the collective memory and identity of the club. Clearly, this also involves ‘selling’ the past, as Belanger describes in one of Montreal's stadiums,64 and some of the key design referents to Highbury are focused on the luxury Diamond Club. The quote below from discussions on the analyzed websites in reference to the new murals indicates that the club's agenda is shared by some supporters who want to feel a sense of collective belonging but they emphasize the role of supporters in supporting some, but by no means all, of these changes.
It's nice to see all that history and all those memories of great players and great moments in and around our new home, because I did think that the club moved on without making sure that they packed all the proud memories in the removal van.65
The built architecture and associated signifiers, however, are only one resource that the stadium owners, managers and supporters can use to assert their control over the new spaces. The naming of spaces has also been utilized but this is a process that has involved considerable contestation.

Power and naming stadium spaces​

The new Emirates Stadium was separated from the nearest underground station by a railway line and two pedestrian bridges had to be built. In further reference to the club's past, these were named the Clock End and North Bank bridges after the former terraces behind each goal at Highbury. Ken Friar, the Arsenal director, was keen to emphasize the value of these names and spaces to supporters, suggesting ‘perhaps supporters who took their seats within those stands will enjoy meeting fellow Arsenal fans and friends on that respective bridge before matches at the Emirates stadium’.66 Whilst this quote stresses the potential value of the bridge names for the practices and collective memory of supporters, the bridges also play an important role in the practices of controlling supporters on match days. In order to manage a crowd of 60,000, the club and police have to take control of public streets and transport stations around the ground before and after an event. Names that extend the reach of the stadium institutions into surrounding spaces will contribute to legitimizing this process of public space management.
The reactions of supporters to the naming of spaces stress the need to understand how supporters individually and collectively draw on resources to develop practices and spaces in a new stadium that are expressive of supporter agency rather than the power of the stadium institutions. The analysis of website blogs, chat rooms and fans forums used by Arsenal supporters shows how online spaces have become important resources for supporters seeking to shape the physical spaces of the new stadium as well as the collective memories associated with both Highbury and the Emirates. In 2003, nearly 1300 Arsenal fans completed an online AISA stadium survey and 85% were opposed to selling ‘naming rights’ for the new stadium. The new economic arrangements of English soccer, however, meant that on 5 October 2004 when Arsenal FC announced that the new stadium would be known for at least the first 15 years of its operation as the Emirates Stadium due to a £100 million sponsorship deal with the Emirates airline company. This lucrative naming rights deal has been debated by supporters on fan forums often acknowledging the financial necessity whilst highlighting the consequences for collective identity. Barry Baker, secretary of the club's official supporters' club, argued before the relocation took place that
the new name has no connection to Arsenal whatsoever. The tradition has gone. We were all hoping it would be called Ashburton Grove or maybe Emirates Highbury. We'll get over it but I can see many fans calling it Ashburton Grove rather than the Emirates stadium.67
Since Arsenal took up residency, messages on fans forum sites have discussed Ashburton Grove, the Grove, New Highbury and Highbury II as alternative names. One supporter simply stated that ‘Ashburton Grove it is for me, or simply Arsenal's ground’.68

This disenchantment, however, also confirms that to some degree the supporters share the stadium institutions wish to use references to Highbury to affirm identity and memory. For the stadium institutions, this has been pursued through signifiers and artefacts, but for some supporters this is not sufficient and names that reflect the past for the new stadium and places within it are also desirable. Also, whilst supporters may be unable to resist the corporately driven naming process, they are able to develop practices that to some degree subvert this process and develop their own informal links to the remembered Highbury. Threads on fans forum pages in 2005, a year before the Emirates Stadium opened, showed discussions regarding the naming of the stands at each end of the new stadium, which were to be called the North and South stands. The fans forums contained numerous discussions regarding the need to develop alternative names for these new stands, with suggestions of calling the new North Stand the ‘North Bank’ and the new South Stand the ‘Clock End’, in reference to the old stands at each end of the former Highbury. Such attempts to re-forge Highbury identities and spaces in the new stadium in online spaces are then visible through practices in the stadium with supporters flags appearing at matches in the North Stand saying ‘North Bank’ and other references to this particular area of Highbury through the songs sung by the crowd. This ongoing contestation of the naming of spaces indicates how the resource of online spaces opens up opportunities for supporters to develop practices in the stadium itself that challenge the spatial strategies of the stadium institutions. As a result of this informal naming and pressure from supporters, the club officially announced in July 2010 that as part of the ongoing ‘Arsenalisation’ the names of the stands from Highbury would be introduced into the Emirates Stadium in 2010.69
In terms of power relations, the supporter practices cannot be interpreted as simply resistive acts to stadium managers and owners seeking to corporatize and control the spaces of the new stadium. The supporters, whilst rejecting some of the names for the spaces of the new stadium, are also, like the stadium institutions, drawing on the resource of the club's history to enhance collective memory. In this way, the shared and conflicting agendas of supporters and stadium institutions become entwined with consequent implications for the power relations that emerge in the new stadium. This is particularly noticeable through the connections between online spaces and the supporters' use of match day practices and spaces as resources, which are analyzed further in the next section.

 

[davek]

Part Two​

​

Practices, virtual spaces and the REDaction group​

The collective practices of supporters that have emerged on match days draw on a loosely composed set of spatial resources that include online spaces, the seated areas especially in the new north stand (Bank) and the socializing spaces inside and outside the stadium. Much of the collective activity is organized through the Arsenal ‘REDaction group’, which work closely with facets of the club itself but stress they are an independent organization with the mission statement ‘to bring Arsenal back to its faithful fans and buck the trend of growing indifference in English club football’.70 A key aim is to bring more atmosphere, fun and noise to Arsenal on match days, which many of those posting on the igooner website feel could be improved: ‘it is right that the atmosphere in Club Level is shocking! You get the dirtiest looks aimed at you for basically supporting your team and having a sing as if it's wrong’.71
Some of those posting on and maintaining the REDaction group website meet in ‘The Rocket’, a public house close to the Emirates Stadium, which is REDaction's ‘official’ pre- and post-match bar. It is through this social meeting place and the group's website that events and activities are coordinated to try to inject a sense of atmosphere to the new stadium. By working in conjunction with the stadium managers, one of REDaction group's first initiatives was the creation of around 550 seats in the stadium designated for REDaction registered members to encourage practices involving waving scarves, flags and chanting to create more noise and identity expression. However, this appears to be an evolving process that involves an engagement with a range of different other socializing spaces. After an Arsenal home game in September 2007, REDaction planned a ‘meet and greet’ inside the bar area close to the Redsection with the intention of encouraging singing and getting feedback about how fans in this area can improve atmosphere. The REDaction group practices, despite being in a designated space, have encountered restrictions arising from complaints to stadium staff from some supporters sitting in the section regarding people standing. The REDaction group feel that there has been a zero tolerance approach from the authorities within the stadium on issues such as singing and standing up, with this issue being presented to club management at an official supporters' consultative forum held at the stadium.72 Some supporters have been thrown out of this section for persistent standing, and clearly regulation and control remain central to the management of the match day spectacle.
REDaction have continued with their activities and tried to make waving scarves a regular feature for all night games. The use of chants and songs has declined in the new stadium compared to Highbury, and for the 2008/2009 season a ‘chant of the month’ was introduced by REDaction and there is a ‘drawing board’ on the website where chants and songs can be learned. The group also now organize the regular pre-match and post-match ‘Rocket March’ between the stadium and the public house, giving a visual and vocal demonstration of their presence. To show the continuing activity of the group, prior to certain matches in the 2008/2009 season, meetings were organized within ‘The Rocket’ pub to try to come up with new ideas to take to the club themselves, if necessary, or if they are workable without the club's assistance to promote new activities through REDaction's own members. One such idea that REDaction took to the club themselves was to bring the former Highbury Stadium Clock End clock back into the stadium from its current position from high up on the outside of the stadium. In a partial result for fan activism, a new Clock End clock, which is similar but larger in appearance than the old Highbury timepiece, has been introduced into the new Clock End of the Emirates Stadium, with its reintroduced Highbury named stands, for the start of the 2010/2011 season. The quote below acknowledges the role in these changes of supporter collectives and online discussion:
The new clock is far larger so that it does not look like a wrist watch in terms of the size of the stadium. Well done to all who campaigned so long and hard to get the clock back. REDaction are producing some commemorative T-shirts to be given out prior to the Blackpool game.73
The ongoing development of the REDaction group's activities and ideas illustrates how the attempts to build a sense of place and collective identity within the new stadium spaces are a central concern of supporters, and similar issues are keenly felt at other new British soccer stadiums.74 The resources the group draw on involve virtual spaces and a range of spaces internal and external to the stadium but their practices are still significantly constrained by the match day controls and management in the stadium. Their goals of injecting colour, noise and identity in new stadium all-seater spaces would no doubt be shared by the stadium institutions but practices that involve standing and singing are often restrictively managed. The power relations that emerge mean the REDaction group often seek to develop activities jointly with stadium management but equally their members come into conflict with stadium staff who manage seating areas on match days to prevent people standing. The authority of the stadium institutions is asserted by crowd control, codes of practice for behaviour and the threat of ejection from the ground.

Conclusions: power relations and compromise​

The 500-meter relocation from Arsenal's old venue at Highbury to the new Emirates Stadium indicates the complex power relations and modalities that may emerge in the new stadiums and the need to develop a power perspective on the contemporary stadium that does more than view it as a panopticized space run by owners and managers intent on using authority and domination to manage either passive, consumer-supporters or resistive hooligans. The comments made by fans discussed in this paper indicate a recognition that power relations are different in the new stadium compared to the former Highbury. Prior to the early 1990s when Highbury became an all-seater stadium, there were substantial areas of terracing where standing supporters could develop certain practices and rituals as they were not confined to a seat or so closely monitored by CCTV and stewards. At Highbury, the architectural features of the stadium developed over a long period of time and were not so specifically designed using the power resources of the owners and managers of the stadium to encourage certain approved types of supporting and consumption behaviours. Furthermore, Highbury was named after the part of London where the former stadium was located and the power modalities reflected in the naming of the Emirates Stadium were yet to emerge.
In the new Emirates Stadium, there are shared and conflicting desires amongst supporters and stadium institutions that result in geographically specific sets of power relations, which result in continual changes in the spaces of the new stadiums. Supporters may lack power in influencing many aspects of modern sport75 but they can draw on a range of resources to attempt to shape new stadium spaces. In the case of the Emirates, the stadium institutions through their use of authoritative resources76 based on property and product ownership have sought to incorporate historical reminders, artefacts and signifiers of the old Highbury in the new stadium spaces, thereby not only reinforcing a collective memory amongst supporters based on the traditions and histories but also generating income through activities linked to executive suites, business conferences and visitor tours. The practices of supporters indicate that many share aspects of this agenda and value the new spaces that contribute to their sense of attachment to the club and the collective memory linked to Highbury. Indeed, the ongoing contestation of the selling of the stadium naming rights to Emirates airline was based on the supporters' desire for a new name that maintained the past links to Highbury. Similarly, fans have developed colloquial names for parts of the new stadium that draw on the names of spaces in Highbury. The supporters' contestation of some aspects of the memorialization process in the buildings and spaces of the new stadium cannot simply be seen as an act of resistance because for some the process could have been extended and involve, besides artefacts and signifiers, the use of the old stand names from Highbury in the new stadium.
Clearly, some of what has taken place at Arsenal FC is distinctive to the club's history and the stadium's location but it offers an example of how stadium institutions and supporters use the same resources in different ways to develop a sense of collective belonging, suggesting that new stadiums are perhaps more complex spaces than the placeless homogenized arenas Bale suggested would emerge.77 In addition, both the stadium authorities and the supporters at Arsenal had recognized the potential negative implications for attendances and supporter willingness to pay some of the highest ticket prices in the Premier League if match days in the new Emirates Stadium lacked atmosphere. Thus, collective supporter groups have emerged that, through practices involving online and physical spaces, seek to ensure that atmosphere, colour and noise are enhanced in the new stadium spaces. Their actions can bring them into conflict with stadium staff seeking to maintain match day conformity, especially in relation to supporters standing in all-seater areas.
The allocative, as opposed to authoritative, resources78 that supporters draw on involve intersecting virtual and physical spaces including the viewing and hospitality areas in the stadium, social spaces in and outside the venue and websites hosting blogs, chat rooms and fans forums. The resulting power relations that emerge highlight the authority of stadium institutions over the physical spaces, design, architecture and management of the new stadium. The supporters, however, may value many of these controlled physical spaces for their historical resonances or spectacular features but they can also draw on a range of resources to change or challenge the memorializing and controlling aspects of the new stadium by using their own names for new spaces and encouraging their preferred practices for match days. In this way, new collective groupings of fans have emerged that replace old networks of fans often based on kinship, friendships and community connections.79
In such a situation, the process of naming power modalities encouraged by theories of power80 becomes challenging. In the new stadiums of British soccer, the monumental architecture and technologies are the setting for continually evolving power relations based on supporter and institutional agendas that are both shared and conflicting. The power modalities of authority and domination are clearly evident in the practices of stadium managers and owners asserting authority over space through surveillance, crowd control, stewards and policing. Co-present with these practices, stadium institutions seek to use resources linked to naming and memorialization in the new spaces to encourage a sense of attachment and collective identity amongst supporters. Supporters will be closely involved in this process not simply as consumers but as active individuals and collective groupings that include formal organizations liaising with stadium institutions and informal collectives often using online spaces to interact. At the same time, supporters utilize online and physical spaces to develop their desired spatial practices, distinct remembrances and sense of belonging. The actions of supporters are not encapsulated by notions of power as resistance as they often share the agendas of stadium institutions. Allen's power modalities of seduction and negotiation only partly capture the power relations that emerge.81 Supporters are acutely aware of the seductive dimensions to the practices of stadium institutions and are prepared to negotiate these through their own practices and use of resources. In keeping with notions of power as both conflictual and consensual,82 the power modality that emerges in the new stadium might be better described as compromise. Not only do the supporters and stadium institutions negotiate but also they seek to influence practices and spaces through joint agreed actions and at other times through contestation. The outcomes can involve stadium institutions asserting authority, such as preventing supporters standing in seating areas, but also involve compromises over naming and the use of spaces in and around the stadium. Untangling power relations in major new stadiums, therefore, requires identifying co-present power modalities whilst also understanding how resource mobilization involves the interactions between physical spaces and the online worlds that are implicated in the spatial practices of supporters and stadium managers.

 

[allen]

Few pics from a pint at the Bramley Moore

That pint is pretty handy with a camera. Good work!