Following on from Proph's "Potential at Cardiff" thread, I wonder if this is on the cards. I was told when the CCS was opened that the option to install the additional tier of seats around the Canton, Ninian and Family stands would cost circa £8M retrospectively, and provide an approximate additional 8,000 seats. Now that works out at a grand a bum that would be recovered within three seasons, assuming you had bums to fill them of course. In the light of current attendances, we have to get there first before anymore than the present capacity could be required, but in this day and age, it seems a pretty cheap option to me. Wonder if VT and Co. are putting out tender enquiries yet.
Seeing as the stadium came in over budget in all probability the real cost of extension is more than that. No point in extending while we are in this league. Look at Coventry and Boro. Stadiums far too big for them. Nothing worse than half filled stadiums.
Cheers Hilts - I knew I could count on you being positive. .............I do agree about half filled stadiums though.
Have to agree with Hilts on that. Reading had nearly 4,000 empty seats on Saturday, maybe more if they count all st holders as there, and boy did it show. Cov had 20,000 Saturday for the Spammers (7,000 away fans), we will probably take 1.5 to 2k tomorrow and their attendance will be about 14/15k max. A lovely ground but looks awful when half empty. Our place doesn't look great with the empty Prem seats. It would be a major gamble to start work now and get egg on our faces again if we stayed in the Championship. Best wait to see what the future holds and were we to succeed and get promoted then go for it pronto tonto.
Bluey - the last sentence in my OP was said tongue in cheek mate - hence the "wink". There's no way any such investment would be made in our present circumstances. Having said that, circumstances can change.
To maximise revenue, you need a stadium that can hold the maximum you can expect for 95% of the games. You will often get fixtures that far excede your capacity (big championship clubs or cup games) but you don't want a full house every week as it suggets that you could regularly get more if you had room. How many sell outs did we get last year or this? If we go up, we'll need the extra seats. Also, 20 odd thousand in a 30k seater stadium is two thirds full so could hardly be described as empty. If we go up, spend the £8M on the ground, if we don't, spend it on players.
Anyway, I've heard they're having a re-think about the use of the present Premier Club seating. They reckon they can make more money from it by renting it out as aversion therapy for agoraphobics.
yea i did read it m8, obviously the only way we can consistently fill the stadium is through promotion, who knows how many seasons it could be before we get to the promised land, until then there isnt a need for it of course. something tells me 26000 is the perfect size, maybe an extra 5000 or so seats could be put in after 2 or 3 seasons of PL football in the same way wolves are doing now
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sparkey pal......do you have a grand bum?
Not quite musty. Nearly 27K would be top whack with all away allocations and Premier Club seating taken up. Segregation would always take up a few hundred spots and keep it below the 27K mark. Without looking it up, I think our average is between 22 and 23K this season so far. Apart from untaken away supporter allocations, the biggest problem will always be the Prem Club seating whilst we're still in the Championship. I think it takes up about 1,600 seats and is usually much less than half filled. If we got promoted to the Prem, the plastic fat cats would snap up the rest in no time. I've no doubt that a 35,000 stadium for us in the Prem would 90% prescribed - we just gotta get there first.
