New Ground

[blueboy]

Cardiff's cost £48m,so the costs are all over the place,i guess its hard to work out.I I think its the purchase of the land thats key

[blueboy]

It is clear that stadia need not be massively expensive. It is a matter of choice and resources on the part of the club/developer. Stadium capacity need not be constrained by cost either. Liverpool and Tottenham could quite feasibly build 100,000+ seater stadia if they wanted to. The marginal cost of adding 30,000 or 40,000 is actually small compared to the fixed costs of breaking ground and the specification need only be adjusted down to stay within budget. Perhaps keen to get away from accusations of plagiarism, Liverpool have had their new stadium radically redesigned, this time more like an old fashioned Anfield. The club's new owners are keen to boost capacity from 60,000 to 73,000 too. It would seem to be a good idea. Arsenal regularly pack Emirates to the rafters, suggesting they underestimated their market share. The big clubs know that their stadia will pay for themselves in fairly short order anyway. A 60,000 seat ground, for example, will bring in about £30m/year in gate receipts, not counting corporate hospitality. Club costs aside, a base outlay of £400m would therefore take only 13 years to pay off, not counting interest on loans, nor name sponsorship deals. By comparison a fairly cheap, low-spec ground such as the Stadium of Light must have paid for itself a few times over by now, and even so, has been considered of high enough quality to host England internationals.

New stadium costs are impacted by many factors and each club's case is different. It is true to say that usually the cost of 'laying bricks' is a minor part of the overall budget of a new stadium. One important consideration is land tenure. Purchasing new land for a new stadium can be extremely costly, especially in inner city areas, and some clubs that actually lease their stadium will have to consider buying up the ground they play on before they can rebuild their stadium. It is the lucky few who own their patch already. Demolition, of existing buildings on new land, or the old stadium itself, can be far more expensive than most people appreciate (in the case of Wembley, £93m!). Then there is project management and design. If you want a Norman Foster stadium, you are going to have to pay Norman Foster prices. The flipside of all this, of course, is when you do sell that piece of prime inner city real estate your old ground was on you can cash in. Arsenal ingeniously sold off Highbury to be converted into 711 luxury apartments, preserving the listed art deco facades of the old ground. At the time of writing, all but 17 have been sold. Newcastle United might be wishing they'd done the same.

New grounds range from the extremely expensive Wembley (nearly £9,000/seat) ; and the parrochially cheap Stadium of Light (<£500/seat). Cardiff's Millennium surely ranks as a bargain stadium, as does the Estadio da Luz in Portugal and the new Weserstadion in Germany. Top in the value for money stakes though, is the Riverside in Middlesborough, costing a mere £457/seat. Adjusted to 2009 prices this would be £640, at least 14 times cheaper than Wembley. It does what it says on the tin!

[bushcelt1]

if expensive apartments were ever built on the land where our ground sits do you reckon the owners of these would pop into the smutts for a quick pint....just a thought!!!

[Brooksie]

Probably letting my heart rule my head both emotianally and financialy, but nothing beats loftus road rocking, shite views, no room, poor facilities, even poorer stewarding but i love it. a lot of opposing fans slate our ground but i bet there is a few who actually love LR. Save Our Ground.

[blueboy]

Probably letting my heart rule my head both emotianally and financialy, but nothing beats loftus road rocking, shite views, no room, poor facilities, even poorer stewarding but i love it. a lot of opposing fans slate our ground but i bet there is a few who actually love LR. Save Our Ground.

there's no reason why we can't re-create some of the best bits of LR in a new stadium.Just with a bit more legroom and no pillars.
i have posted this before,but take a look at these stadiums on the continent

[swanleyhoop]

I love Boavista's ground. Imagine that in blue and white.

[blueboy]

I love Boavista's ground. Imagine that in blue and white.

here are a few more images of Boavista

[steveruby]

New ground

I would get a nose bleed, jees I hate hights at the best of times. Check out Espanyols ground in Barcelona, just perfect for us. Didnt cost alot and a brilliant atmosphere, been there many times now. Holds 40,000