Errrrr, not quite true. The only times the Dell got close to capacity was for the visit of Man Utd, when they would bring over 6,000 fans and almost as many neutrals would turn up. A "comfortable stadium" made almost no difference to whether people turned up at football in the 70's & 80's. I'd also say that back then it was actually EASIER to get to games using train and bus than it is now (certainly cheaper). As others have said, it only makes sense financially if the current stadium is full up every single week, including all the corporate suites and boxes. TV money contributes a bigger & bigger percentage of the club's revenue every year and its getting to the point where season ticket and matchday sales is now the smaller of the two sources of incomes. I can't see that changing. It made sense for a club like Arsenal to move stadiums for the massive fanbase and corporate location in London. To me, makes no sense right now to commit to expanding St Mary's. It feels more like an ego move than a logical business one.
Plus, if the stadium was bigger, there are no more "hardcore" fans suddenly going to start going. Its only going to be more corporates or more "turn up 5 minutes late, piss off 10 minutes early" brigade.
An expanded stadium would be all well and good, but I think the club would need to do something about getting the traffic out from around the stadium more efficiently first!
Easy, the johnny come latelys will leave even earlier. An alarm will sound around the stadium 12 minutes before the final whistle to allow those who "must beat the rush" to beat the rush, allowing them to get on with their mega busy and interesting lives, which they can clearly not allow themselves to waste a single minute of.
I don't get that logic. If the stadium was suddenly bigger, we'd have the same people turning up as we had before. A stadium expansion isn't going to encourage loads more corporates and casual supporters to suddenly start attending. It's the other way around: an expansion will be in the works when there is an excess of demand. An expansion right now would just mean more empty seats.
What's the best way for a Football Club Owner to own a million pounds? Answer: Start with four million.
With additional capacity, Saints could start to court new fans by providing Free/cheap tickets to school kids to encourage future fans that if left purely watching MoD or Sky will fall for the "Glamour" clubs rather than their local club if encouraged at an early age
For a start make buying a ticket easier, reduce the ticket tax, display the loyalty points on the web or make readily available, have membership cards (it adds to the sence of belonging and can quantify those interested in supporting Saints). Improve the concourse (not that I go for a beer or food but plenty do) and even the corporate experience is being slated. Etc etc. Anything to make more want to come and see Saints.
We won't expand for a good few years yet, at least. I know the Echo aren't respected press around here but this article makes sense as far as I'm concerned. http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/sa...71165.St__Mary_s_expansion__Seems_unlikely__/ At £3000 a seat it will cost about £24m to expand to 40k - that sounds pretty realistic to me. Even if you sold every one of these extra seats you'd only make about £8m a season. Unless our season ticket holders are taking up so many seats that it is impossible for others to get tickets (e.g. Highbury, the Dell), and we are secure enough that we think relegation is unlikely for at least a few years, it makes no financial sense to expand.
Not quite true it starts to make sense if the over demand for the big games where we have capacity crowds is sufficient to finance the expansion over a particular period of time. This would then make the seats free in the other games where hopefully demand will increase as we are more successful but in the interim could be used for PR purposes for kids, etc. I'm not saying it makes sense though, I don't know what the over demand is. Does any one know for the Utd game earlier this year?
I am tempted to agree with that unfortunately. I think it will happen, but probably not in the next few years. That's just me though.
Hallelujah..! Somebody gets it. On a purely selfish note, I might get to go occasionally instead of having to end up buying a bloody season ticket. You people who have your season tickets and go any time you like are in a wonderful position to pontificate. I can hardly ever go, if I have to plan. But the number of times I could have gone over the last few years if I was able to make the decision about 15-20 minutes before actual kick-off is more than I can count on several set of hands. And there are loads of people out there like me.
A lovely idea, but the main problem with that is that it would take a very long time to recuperate all the costs of expanding the stadium, and relegation during that period could be potentially catastrophic. I think we need to be quite certain of avoiding relegation before we make an investment of that size.
To be quite brutally honest.... **** "new fans" getting free tickets etc, what have they done to deserve that!? Radical idea, but how about actually acknowledging the loyalty of fans who have stuck with the club through thin and thinner. And I don't mean through ill-thought out "points" systems like the rubbish the club has now.
Well thats a massive sweeping statement. So, your business case for building a 40,000 seater stadium is that there are "loads" of fans like you who won't buy season tickets but "might" go as they know there will be empty seats? Seriously... WTF are you talking about?
