The other thing people forget is that we are not established in the Prem, and relegation would see our gates drop back around the 18k mark, what good is a 35k seater stadium then ?
There's two problems here, we're losing fans so the stadium won't be full for half the games next season, it's if and when we get the place full that we need to talk about expansion. I say it all the time but we should be able to fill a 35,000 seater ground. Considering we got 25000 at times last season without doing any marketing, the potential is obviously there. But people need to know when there's a game on for a start.
At the minute the SMC pays no rent to the council. A request to the council to increase the capacity would allow, in my opinion, the council to renegotiate the terms of the lease. Given the abuse the council received from supporters complaining about the current lease and how it should be getting more money, I'd expect the rent to significantly increase. Its not in Assm Allam's financial interest to expand the KC. At the minute, he gets the stadium for nought why put that arrangement in danger. Some things take a while to sink into my brain, but they do eventually.
They did know for the cup semi, we couldn't fill it. 27000 wasn't it. Forget about the stadium, were a long way off a 35000 supporter base.
Whatever the capacity of the stadium we could fill it because we could always reduce prices as well as allow more away fans into the ground (I would only like to see this as a short term strategy). The more fans in the ground the more we could sell food, drink and merchandising. Giving away tickets to children would also help with future attendances. The club/council could also arrange football weekends with a package that includes hotels and vouchers to local attractions/restaurants/pubs. These could be marketed around the UK and Europe - maybe Asia given the current Allam obsession!
Chicken and egg - when will we ever get "established" in the Premier League and how many clubs can you say are "established"? If we have the above attitude we would never try to progress. Should we have bought all the players we have done if we are worried about what happens if we get relegated. Even if we got relegated the aim would be to use our improved infrastructure to get promoted again.
1. We could not reduce prices until the cost of the expansion was paid for 2 Away fans would require further investment for segregation within the ground/concourse etc 3. Only Premiership football would attract more fans 4. Allam has said he won't expand a council owned stadium 5. The council has no money to invest in the project 6. The stadium is already starting to show it's age & any expansion would probably never recoup its cost before we need to look at a new stadium 7. We would need to look for a new home for a season as such large scale work could take up to 12 months
I would also ask which is most important for the future development of the club ? A stadium expansion OR a new Academy & training facilities ? We are currently having to use Bishop Burton for the academy & our training facilities are those of a league 2 side rather than a Premiership side These things both cost money and we need to prioritise
We need to do something about it. The people are all here and they don't yet watch live football. We've got the product and we've got the customers. All we need to do is market it. Some teams would love to be in our situation.
If only it was that easy, there are a few other problems Sky & BT Sport coverage means you can get your footie fix at home Young kids like to "support" the clubs who will almost always be in the Premiership (eg Man U, Man C, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool etc) The high cost of attending games (for many it can cost over £100 per game with travel, ticket, parking) I cannot personally ever see our support going past 30k & remember there are still a lot of Rugby fans in Hull which does mean our catchment is reduced (even 10000 a week between the 2 clubs will have an impact)
"1. We could not reduce prices until the cost of the expansion was paid for" We could "2 Away fans would require further investment for segregation within the ground/concourse etc" Yes "3. Only Premiership football would attract more fans" Yes "4. Allam has said he won't expand a council owned stadium" He's not going to be around for ever "5. The council has no money to invest in the project" Hull City should pay "6. The stadium is already starting to show it's age & any expansion would probably never recoup its cost before we need to look at a new stadium" I disagree "7. We would need to look for a new home for a season as such large scale work could take up to 12 months" It doesn't all need to be done at once
But we are talking about now, and the Allams are here for the foreseeable future & why should Hull City pay as we are only users of/customers of the stadium, now the SMC is another matter but it makes no money (apparently) so why would they invest millions in expansion.
The club and the SMC are effectively one and the same and they should expand the ground because it's in the club's best interest to do so. With dynamic pricing we could fill the ground and we'd get the added benefit of being able to attract the next generation of fans, which is an issue that all Premier League clubs need to be addressing, the average age at a Premier League game is getting way too old. There's a wider issue of attracting fans generally, the club needs to engage much more with the local community, the rugby clubs buy and sell us in this regard at the moment. There's also an opportunity to expand football tourism in the area, we already have fans travelling to games from Holland, but they're generally treated like criminals. These fans should be encouraged, travel packages should be offered by the club, local hotels, airports, ferries etc, though the police need to be on board with it, rather than marching them through Hull together and filming them. There's so much more that could be done, all it needs is the will to do it.
All those things affect other clubs, and clubs with a similar catchment area of fans to us manage to fill much bigger grounds than ours. The attitude around our club is to look for external factors to blame the lack of support on, rather than even trying to do anything about the factors we can control.
People should be grateful that we have got a nice stadium at all. Without the Dot Com boom and the sale of Kingston Communications god knows what state we'd be in. Stadium would never had been built, Pearson never would have come and we'd have probably ended up in the Conference. We're in the Prem and people moaning about our stadium not being big enough. We only just sold out the FA Cup final tickets for gods sake. We are a small club so 35,000 would be a sorry site with 15.000 in it
Back in the Championship they got down to 14,000+ Even the game versus Bristol on the Friday night when we could have gone up was only 18,000 there.
Q: What will happen if we put up prices? A: We will get reduced attendances Q: What will happen if we reduce prices? A: We will get increased attendances Q: How do we increase attendances up to our capacity? A: Reduce prices and/or increase marketing? I think we are on to something here.
Stoke are again paying for coach travel for fans who go to all away matches next season. Although that isn't at home it encourages fans to support their team.
