I want a purpose built stadium that is owned by Swansea city with every possible amenity like a hotel, plenty parking space, and easy transport to and fro from the stadium. I dont want to spend millions on something we must share and pay rent ourselves. It works for us at the moment but if we can establish ourselves as a premiership club with the best amenities available then there is little chance of us ever going back to the bottom leagues again. I know we cant have everything all at once but we could have most of it within 3-5 years.....dont waste our money on others and make us the ones that people pay to use our facilities.....Spend wisely to accumulate into something special...
That's a fair point! You wouldn't rent a house put a lovely extension on it then move out! Is there a chance you can't just buy the stadium?? Instead of building a new one?! This isn't ment to be a wum but is Swansea as a city big enough to warrant two stadiums of that size?! I don't even think Cardiff as city is either
Dai, we would all like to own the stadium but the sensible way forward is develop the existing stadium to a 32000 seater and then use the increased income to buy the rest of the stadium from the council. A new stadium built elsewhere is always going to be out of our reach financially
I actually agree with what you're saying there Dai. I can't understand why a stadium wasn't built on the site of the old Felindre steelworks. Right by the motorway, close to Morriston Hospital (in the event of serious injuries eg Neil Taylor) and plenty of room around it for parking and other amenities. Why should we build and pay for an extension when it helps the Ospreys too. They could have a hotel a far bigger club shop and hold concerts there to bring in extra revenue. Visiting teams with dickheads for fans would be kept well out of the city too.
you take your fans with you and we could fill the stadium every home game if its marketed in the right way. I would even have a section for those fans who wish to stand...there is so much more benefits of owning than sharing and paying rent....I love the liberty but i also loved the vetch so i wont really care if we moved to a new state of the art stadium that we can call our own....a dream maybe but i hope one day....
Expanding the council's stadium for them then buying it off them could be a concern unless the deal is put in place before hand. What if they happily let us expand then hike the price up of the newly expaneded stadium? It sounds like more trouble than it's worth. The ideal scenario would be to buy it now, then expand.
Would the council allow us planning permision for a new stadium somewhere else in Swansea if we drop them in the crap by leaving them with a stadium that the Ospreys can't fill and they have little other use for? I'd love a new custom built stadium, but the council could have us by the balls on that one
I like the Liberty, and I'm sure the expansion will be well designed as is the rest of the ground, don't agree with Dai, as the financial model we are on has served us very well so far over the years since leaving the vetch, don't want to be spending large sums of £40 Million for a new stadium, think that is down the road 10 years or more maybe, and I stress maybe..................
why would the council stop us building our own stadium. they cant demand us to pay them rent for eternity, Its like someone in a council house saving until they have enough money to buy their own property and the council owns very little land compared to the private sector....If we have enough money in 2 or 3 years it would make financial sense to go it alone and not waste millions and millions of pounds towards something we will never own....Its ok at the moment as we have no choice but eventually we should think of ourselves and what we can earn and not what we can earn for the council...
Because they'll end up with the Liberty with nothing to do with it. It wouldn't be so bad if the Ospreys could run it on their own, but they're more or less giving season tickets away. I agree that we'd be better off going it alone though. It would be nice to have our own custom built stadium. We could never have foreseen us being where we are now when the Liberty was built though, so it made sense at the time.
They can until the end of the lease agreement which i would guess has at least 18 years left on it. So you think rather than spend 15mil to expand the current stadium which we can afford to pay if we stay up this season, we should saddle the club with 50-60mil of debt to build our own stadium meaning if we get relegated before we pay it off the club goes to the wall
Because they'll end up with the Liberty with nothing to do with it. It wouldn't be so bad if the Ospreys could run it on their own, but they're more or less giving season tickets away. not our problem and they cant use that excuse if we want to progress. they will have to market it better, they cant stop progress if we decide we dont want to waste our money on rent and everything else we have to pay towards anymore.....
I agree Dai, but they hold the cards. If we drop them in the crap, they're not likely to jump through hoops to do us any favours
there wont be such a lease would there. what person in their right mind would sign a lease like that not knowing what the future hold......If the board decides that they would like to build a new stadium then they will have enough time during the build to do what they got to do. they cant stop us or the ospreys leaving. In fact the ospreys are thinking about playing more games at the gnoll anyway....
There must be some sort of lease surely? Who in their right mind would spend millions on a stadium without a long term agreement with a tenant? It would probably make sense for the Ospreys to use the Gnoll if all parties agree, as they're support isn't enough for the Liberty apart from when they play the turks
This all sounds very cavalier. The swans have a lot to be grateful for, we would never have got the liberty without the council's financial backing. We should work together in harmony. Having a good working relationship with the council is a win for us and a win for the council. Who knows what tomorrow brings, the last thing we should be doing is getting ahead of ourselves and getting arrogant. Remember where we've come from and have a bit more gratitude and humility.
When we were in the **** the council (tax payers) helped us. I don't think it would be very honourable to **** off now and leave them with a white elephant...or very smart. Very risky to saddle us up to £50+ million worth of debt at this stage. Better to stay put, expand stadium, continue to sell out every week, keep demand high. Meanwhile the tax payers are getting some of their money back and we are showing some unity with the Ospreys, keep the good atmosphere going. In the future we could buy the Liberty outright and expand further. I'm not one for hotels and all of that bollocks. More interested in the club's ability to produce quality merchandise and get it to market (capitalising on our new found notoriety).
Nice idea dai but a bit premature i think. With a catchment area around and in our city of a couple of million population maybe, but to risky for now and dont trust the council to make it easy for us or the government for that matter would love to find more ways to tax football to death in the coming years ! But long term if we stay up and make vast sums then a stadium on the old velindre site with all the add ons hotels shopping etc hell even a welsh alton towers then that would be thinking big if within future financial means also some of the income to our city generated by a well established swans prem team they could develope the vacated liberty into another successful venue ? But for now an extra 12000 seats is needed and even more a bookies right outside the liberty would help pay for some concrete too !
There is no place within Swansea for a new stadium, so we have what we have. The development of the Liberty is the only option. I actually was saying this in the BBC 606 days, but was routinely dismissed most notably by Dai who says we don't own the ground so we can't do anything to it, changed your tune there Dai We should be looking at options to buy that stadium rather than spending untold millions on another, we won't get planning for for another out of town shopping centre so its never going to happen, having a hotel on site will not pay for the new stadium, so we should forget about it IMO.
