BullensRoad
Player Valuation: £25m
There should be a sizeable increase in matchday income, however that is not a given across the full range of ticket categories. The fact that no-one seems to be able to lift figures from projections in the planning or subsequent docs since, might indicate a slightly laissez-faire attitude by club (and fans) in our approach.... which as far as I can see appears to have been based on "don't worry, Uncle Ussy's got it covered". A predication that no longer applies, as is applicable to most aspects of the original financial strategy.
For example: When West Ham first went from their 35k stadium to the 55k+ (now 62k+) Olympic stadium in 2016, their matchday income barely changed for the first few seasons up to covid. To fill the extra capacity they had to reduce average ticket prices. Fortunately for them, the stadium was a freeby and there was sufficient latent and new support in London and the home counties to draw from (presumably 10 million+ population gives a reasonable floating vote). Our club has claimed a 15-20k waiting list in recent times (yet only mention much smaller waiting lists in the actual planning docs). We will have to see how price-dependent our total season ticket demand is, before we can predict what income increase there will be from increased General Admission ticket capacity. Austerity rarely affects the wealthy, so the premium seating sales shouldn't be overly affected by the current cost of living crisis, the mid-level and corporate-lite range may or may not be less resilient.... I think they're still testing that price range as we speak. As you say, we've had low ticket prices and certainly no success in recent years. It's also a smaller capacity step- up, so overall our ticket-price elasticity might be more robust than West Ham's. Since Covid, their matchday income has gradually increased to the point where they're roughly 25%-50% higher than their final Boleyn ground matchday income of 8yrs ago.
At perhaps the other end of the scale, Spurs roughly doubled their matchday income and I think Arsenal went from approx £40m to £70m when they first moved too (but they had to endure several years of increased austerity afterwards). The commercial incomes have risen too and Spurs seemed to have benefited from a good hike in those figures. So, maybe our projections are somewhere in between. The issue is of course, if or not all of the anticipated income increases can cover the debt in the absence of USM or similar outside support. At present we have little or no official stadium financial figures, no sponsor, nothing solid on the ownership make-up or its longevity, with all the other "financial sustainability" and on-pitch frailties as a backdrop. So it's very difficult to make accurate or valid comparisons.
My only concern is the potential scale backs due to the reduction in USM.
MSP being American based, will hopefully be investing to the standards they have in their stadia.