New Stadium Ideas..

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I have to say I'm very close to this view, We are a club with the POTENTIAL to fill a 30k stadium but so many false dawns have left us with a hardcore 13k fans, in order to fill even a 25k capacity We will need an exciting product to sell, We certainly don't have that at the moment. For every Swansea who have kicked on from a new stadium build there is also a Coventry too! lets get it right on the pitch first..Then they will come!

 

I also believe accessibility is another issue. South Bristol is a pain to get to.
Living in Swindon I am between Bristol and London but for convenience I would rather fly from Heathrow than Bristol because I can drive straight there.
Ok that's flights not football, but neither AG nor the proposed new stadium would be easy to get to by any form of transport.
There is talk about a new halt on the Portishead line right by the new stadium - if I were in charge that would be an absolute precondition rather than a possibility for later on.

 

Southampton did last season in the Championship with many over 30,000. Brighton are averaging around 24,000 aren't they? Reading are in the south with decent crowds and have now gone up twice to the Prem in the last few years. Cardiff, whether we like them or not, will fill their ground next season as are Swansea.
All are smaller than the sixth largest City in England!
I wouldn't mind betting that if Plymouth got a decent team together in the Championship, they would pull crowds. And so will Bristol City if we got a decent side here that was top eight in the championship for a couple or three seasons and really knocking on the Premier door. Instead of the dross we've had for the last four years.

So what should SL and City do? Settle for a comfortable existence in League one? I bloody hope not! And I've suffered this for 64 years but I still want us to get somewhere better.

 

New stadium will bring more in cause its more modern and stuff

 

Possibly ..

The robust business case for i.e. source and terms of funding, ownership structure, rights over non-football revenue has never been put forward for fans to scrutinise.

Only months ago Ashton Vale was supposedly the only viable option, now it isn't.

 

I spent three years at UWE. Don't expect things to go well if they are involved in any way.

 

Whereas I would rather see serious money being thrown into producing a world famous academy

 

I'm not as worried about the crowds we will pull in the future although this will become more vital as time goes on but the club must find ways of making income from the ground for more than the 23 games per year that we currently do the idea of ground sharing is useful in this regard but the club will need to find ways of increasing the revenue from its major asset.
If we do move to Ashton Vale it would be useful to have a stadium/arena complex to generate extra income but again transport could be the sticking point.
Regarding transport if there was some way of connecting AV/AG to the rail network perhaps a supertram system to run on the rail lines say connecting the outlying areas to the Centre of Bristol and the mainline railway stations for example WSM, Clevedon, Portishead, Avonmouth, Lulsgate, Filton, Patchway, even up to The UWE ground the Gas will share, with the City Centre, Bristol Temple Meads and Bristol Parkway surely that would reduce the traffic on Bristols roads it certainly did in Manchester and Blackpools Tram system now it has new rolling stock has had a big increase in usage by the locals. A city the size of Bristol deserves a better transport infrastructure regardless of the situation of the football clubs.

Yes we need to have a better academy but the better players are going to want to showcase their talents in the best stadiums something that AG surely is not at the moment, The board/Mr Lansdown have taken the view that if the club can increase its revenue then it can attract better players without running foul of the FFP regulations you have to remember WE CAN NOT GO ON SPENDING LIKE WE HAVE ON WAGES UNDER FFP. We therefore can not spend millions on new players and wages whereas we can spend it on the ground to increase the income stream which will allow us to pay higher wages for better players.
Outside of the Premier League I think footballers are going to get a real shock soon as there will be an effective wage cap which will mean the smaller teams will find it harder and harder to get the better players if you don't get average gates of 18000 per game teams are really going to struggle in the Championship.