There has been a lot of debate and exchanges over the new academy set up, including the training facilities. With that more or less completed, perhaps within the next couple of seasons the time is right to expand Saint Mary's. My understanding is we can expand the existing structure by around 10,000 or so. I am not sure how this could be done, but assuming it can be done, and in reasonable stages when should we start. Our average gate for league games is close to around 30,000. Obviously I do not have figures that tells us how many we have to turn away for the grade A matches, or the occasional grade B matches. I am reliably told though, that it does happen. It has been said many times before, certainly by yours truly and a few others, that it is a chicken and egg situation. Equally though surely it cannot be too long before these plans are put into place. The last time we had to make a decision of this magnitude was while at the Dell. Long before Lowe and co got involved. We chickened out then despite maxing out week after week. Are we going to make the same mistake again.......are our present board more entrepreneurial perhaps. Should they expand or should they hold back like their predecessors?
For me, it's probably too early to consider development. The plan has obviously been made to try and make us a 7th-4th place club regularly with slight over achievement always welcome. Getting as far as we have this season has involved considerable investment in the playing staff, but I think with last years "player exodus" still fresh in the memory, we are going to have to get used to 2-3 key players leaving while we make the transition to the upper echelons of the division/Europe on a result basis. The more regularly this happens, the increasingly more likely we are to need to increase the capacity, but having said that if we do increase capacity it will also involve closing off large parts of the stadium for extended periods so would mean a revenue loss.
I think there's no doubt we would attract more fans with a bigger ground. For me the question is whether or not we should expand St Mary's in the near future or wait and go for the occasionally rumoured new stadium. I think both could make sense but without having access to all the information regarding cost, how many fans are turned away now etc it's hard to know what's best. One other possible factor is that the club might decide that the training ground development should be finished and/or that we should pay off what we owe the owner before investing more money in our stadium.
I meant to add in my piece that the new stadium is an option that I just have the feeling we (the board) would rather go for. The architects drawings that were clearly leaked deliberately by Cortese showed the redevelopment of the whole site, including the sand/gravel works and show that the site is huge potentially. In my mind I just can't see the board investing another £10 million plus in extending SMS when this same money could be invested in something new and better.
I thought the cost of a new stadium would be around £200 million. An extension to what is a very good stadium would be what £50 million to increase capacity by say 10,000 putting SMS on a par with the current Villa Park!!
I personally think we should wait until a decision on safe standing is made as I feel that is only 5 or so years away. Any stadium/expansion plans should wait so we can factor this in.
The training ground isn't finished yet and we owe 50 million to Katharina. Rogers said that from the accounts after next, he hopes we will see the debt go down. The viability of enlarging SMS is probably being/been investigated, but I think at the moment we are in a kind of recovering position. Comes under 'Next on the list'.
If our capacity was 40,000, how many games would we have sold out this season do you think? I'm not so sure that we'd fill it often enough to justify the cost. We have a very solid fan base but a fickle fringe if you ask me. If we were playing in the Bundesliga and could justify only charging £150 for a season ticket it would be a different story but I don't think there are another 10-15,00 with the necessary disposable income to make this viable. Just a feeling, based on attendances in the less prestigious fixtures.
Isn't it better to play before 32.000 every week in a packed ground, rather than have huge gaps all over a larger stadium? I don't see where all these extra fans are going to come from. Because we basically doubled our gate by getting back into the PL does not mean we can expect the same thing to happen again if we qualify for Europe. Our core support is around 14-18,000. 22,000 was a bumper gate in the Championship. I think 32,000 is about as good as it gets for us, unless someone's planning to build half a million new homes in hampshire.
Do you mean in League 1? From what I remember of the Championship we averaged 24-26k with a bumper crowd being close to a sell out.
Finishing consistently high in the league, while making huge transfer profits on prudent occasions, in addition to our own buying policy and youth development. is far more lucrative than building an expensive extension (on a ground that on cost £30m). Sunderland's stadium (Ok, it was actually cheaper to construct than ours) doesn't seem to do much for their success or financial clout. How much would an extra 10k on the gate make us, compared SMS now and finishing 8+ places above a club like Sunderland?
You might be right. Pretty sure we only sold out once though, vs Coventry. Even the games against Brighton and west ham weren't sellouts as I recall. Edit: our average home attendance was 26,420 for the 2011-12 season. So yeah, you were right, the gates were much bigger than I remembered. I still don't see us improving much on 32,000 though.
For the club to progress though and be able to compete with the Chelsea's and Spurs of the football world, we will have to be able draw in the larger crowds. City's crowd average is easily achievable in the South and we are not so far away from Chelsea or Spurs when it comes to crowd numbers. I am convinced we could eventually match their current crowd numbers. As previously said though it is a chicken and egg situation. You have to speculate to accumulate.
It might be budgeted for but there's actually loads of construction to go. There are new separate Academy annexe quarters still to be started and they are sizeable. There is loads of new stuff going on. The place is extensive and lots of it is a very well maintained building site, so it is far from completed. As for stadium expansion, I think my views are well known. St Mary's was and is too small. And you don't respond to fans banging down the doors for 5-10 seasons to get in. You do your research, see if your target audience will warrant such an expansion and then you plan for it. The data gathering and number crunching was done in the Cortese era. The club know what they could have if they wanted, but so many things need attention. The annual commercial income has to be way better than £8.5M [approx] for instance. That's a measure of the club's exposure. And the product has to be consistently good enough too. It all takes a bit of time even for a company in a hurry like Southampton FC. Give it a few seasons and I think there will be announcements made. Whether the club stay at St Mary's is another question though.
Whether it is new or extend, we are ready. For me the only question now is the commercial part, i.e., are we in a position to do it without holding the team back or with Katarina bumping more dosh in. I wouldn't mind if we had more away fans in, so it's not just about 30,000 Saints fans. For me, let's do it.
Doesn't seem that long ago we were closing parts of the ground as we couldn't afford to keep them open. Happy days now and 32,000 seems about right as much as I would like to see an extension. Anyone got a list as to where we compare to other current prem clubs
I doubt if anything will happen for a couple of years...a lot of money committed to the Academy and building the team. Krueger wants to increase our profile and commercial side, which depends on success on the pitch. Not really the time to spend on the stadium...as it would take a long time to get that money back. The board have got most things right...we just have to trust them.
