Etihad Campus, Stadium and Collar Site Development Thread

[Shaelumstash]

£50 million on a stand accommodating 6,000 people? You are probably rather too high. It works out at £8,333 per seat. It would be normally around be £3,500 to £4,000 per seat. At £4,000 per seat the capital cost would be £24 million.

Secondly who says that the season tickets will be sold at £299 per person for evermore? There are also cup matches to take into account. On the South Stand only a small proportion were sold at £299, most were sold at a higher price. An extra 6,000 seats would mean a lot more people buying food and drinks inside and outside the stadium.

However let's go with a revenue of £1,500,000 per annum. So a revenue stream of £1.5 million per annum over the next thirty years discounted to present value at 5% discount rate gives a present value of just over £23 million. So it is not far off breaking even before you take account of inflation enabling prices to be increased. My seat in the corner of the Colin Bell Stand and the North Stand costs £600 for Platinum. 45 years ago I was paying £15 for a North Stand season ticket at Maine Road. Remember that inflation will not affect capital costs but will increase revenue considerably.

Of course you are right, expansion does not make commercial sense by itself. Had we stuck at 44,000 capacity, there would have been scope to increase season ticket and walk up prices considerably while still filling the stadium. Chelsea have been doing that for years as have Spurs and Liverpool. Expansion means that season ticket prices have to be kept low. That is rather short-sighted as stadium capacity matters when striking commercial deals. That is why Liverpool, Spurs and Chelsea are all expanding or building new stadia.

Expansion will come when they think it can be filled simple as that. It's only been one season since an extra 6,000 seats were added. They have generally been filled apart from League Cup matches and low profile European games.

Great post mate, it's a very good point regarding inflation.

The £50m figure is what I have always seen quoted as the price of the South Stand rebuild. Maybe this is inaccurate, maybe the additional cost was due to the unique roof we have. I'm not sure.

But I agree with you, looking at the basic supply and demand argument, there isn't really a viable case to go ahead with an expansion right now. Perhaps in one or two years time there will be a compelling case for expansion? Who knows, I certainly hope so.

I'm not sure how much an additional 6k on our capacity will affect commercial deals. Personally, I don't think it will have too much of an impact, if any at all.

Of course it would be great as a fan to have 60k plus blues there every week. An extra 6k cheaper seats to bring back some of our core fans who can't currently afford it would be brilliant and hopefully help with atmosphere. But being realistic, the only way that can happen financially is if prices increase elsewhere and there is more corporate seats. I just don't think the demand is there for corporate tickets yet at The Etihad.

 

[worsleyweb]

That's very true.

I had Francis Lee's blue print of how he originally wanted to redevelop Maine Road and it looked fantastic.

In saying that, leaving Maine Road and going to the Etihad was the making of us.

You mean that image in the middle of the programme once. And it was 45 million to do the south stand. Expensive at 8k per seat.

 

[Shaelumstash]

On the Nike deal....how do you think Nike or any other manufacturer price up a sponsorship deal>? Units sold that's how, hence why are deal is considerably less than the rags, Liverpool and even Arsenal. You put an extra 10,000 people in the stadium each week, some of those fans are going to buy kit/merchandise, that's going to raise the income from Nike considerably.

Only it isn't going to increase considerably is it? We're talking about a 6k capacity increase. Even if every single person who gets a season ticket buys a shirt, it's not going to make a great deal of difference to Nike.

The last figures on shirt sales that I saw said we sold around 250k shirts a year. The Shite and Real Madrid sell about a million. So in order to get close to them we are not going to get anywhere near by increasing the capacity of the stadium and hoping they all buy shirts.

The UK market is very mature for football. It's difficult to expand your fan base among people that have been born and brought up in England because most fans have local / family affiliations that won't be changed no matter how successful the team is. That's why the club are going to lengths to attract students, London based blues and corporate fans. It's no use trying to get Paul from Salford to ditch The Shite and come and support City, it's not going to happen.

The only way we will ever get close to those two clubs is to expand in to emerging markets that are quite new to football and have no or looser affiliations. The market with the biggest disposable income is the US, that's why we have set up NYCFC to try and capture hearts and minds out there. The biggest emerging market is China, with over a billion people and a rapidly expanding middle class, and an increasing interest in football, it is the perfect market for us to expand in to. That's why we have signed the deals with the Chinese companies, and I assume we will be launching a new City club in the Chinese league this summer.

It's the North American and Asian markets where the growth in shirts sales will come from. Expanding the stadium will have very little / no impact on shirt sales in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Shaelumstash]

The lobsidedness and roof supports in the corner disturb me - I like Symmetry and balance in a stadium. That's why I loved Maine Road so much.

Haha! Maine Road must have done wonders for your mild OCD! ;-)

You're obviously in the industry mate and know far more than me on the subject. I'm just looking at the figures and using some common sense and to me I can't see how expanding the North Stand is commercially viable right now.

What are your thoughts if you were being objective?

 

[west didsblue]

You mean that image in the middle of the programme once. And it was 45 million to do the south stand. Expensive at 8k per seat.

I assume that £45M includes the extra pitch side seats? So it's an extra 7,000 seats which works out at £6,400 each, which is similar to the Emirates. It brings up the overall average for the stadium from £3200 to £3700 per seat which doesn't seem bad considering there was extra cost having the stadium as an athletics track as an interim stage. For comparison, the overall cost per seat at the Olympic Stadium is around £11,700 per seat and Wembley was £8,700 per seat.

 

[Shaelumstash]

How much is made through match day food, drink and programme sales? Would 6000 extra fans make any significant headway there?

My guess would be as good as yours mate. I don't know what the margins are on the food and drink we sell and I don't know what kind of revenue it would bring in.

If you worked on the assumption that the average spend per person would be £5 (taking in to account many fans don't spend anything at all inside the ground).

So, that would bring in £30,000 per game.

Based on 25 home games a season: £750,000

Minus V.A.T: £600,000

The usual pricing model for food and drink is around 70% GP so that would leave £420,000 per year in profit from food and drink.

Those figures could be miles off, I'm just guessing.

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

The club have always said we would only do the collar site when the economic environment was much improved.

Coming out of the worst recession in history, the timing just hasn't been appropriate, partners haven't been so forthcoming with ready cash.

To put it into context, we spent about £10m on the collar site just to level it and wash it, making sure it was ready for future building use.

There is also a proviso that if we don't build on it, it will revert back to the council.

 

[Keeper!]

You mean that image in the middle of the programme once. And it was 45 million to do the south stand. Expensive at 8k per seat.

No, the one I looked at was not the one in the program, much grander than that.
It involved the demolition of the maine stand, and the roof removed from the north stand ( extra tier going in) looked amazing until Ms Lee/Dunkerly got to see the costs

 

[Yates]

My guess would be as good as yours mate. I don't know what the margins are on the food and drink we sell and I don't know what kind of revenue it would bring in.

If you worked on the assumption that the average spend per person would be £5 (taking in to account many fans don't spend anything at all inside the ground).

So, that would bring in £30,000 per game.

Based on 25 home games a season: £750,000

Minus V.A.T: £600,000

The usual pricing model for food and drink is around 70% GP so that would leave £420,000 per year in profit from food and drink.

Those figures could be miles off, I'm just guessing.

Probably nothing significant although it'd probably increase if they set reasonable prices!

 

[Keeper!]

Only it isn't going to increase considerably is it? We're talking about a 6k capacity increase. Even if every single person who gets a season ticket buys a shirt, it's not going to make a great deal of difference to Nike.

The last figures on shirt sales that I saw said we sold around 250k shirts a year. The Shite and Real Madrid sell about a million. So in order to get close to them we are not going to get anywhere near by increasing the capacity of the stadium and hoping they all buy shirts.

The UK market is very mature for football. It's difficult to expand your fan base among people that have been born and brought up in England because most fans have local / family affiliations that won't be changed no matter how successful the team is. That's why the club are going to lengths to attract students, London based blues and corporate fans. It's no use trying to get Paul from Salford to ditch The Shite and come and support City, it's not going to happen.

The only way we will ever get close to those two clubs is to expand in to emerging markets that are quite new to football and have no or looser affiliations. The market with the biggest disposable income is the US, that's why we have set up NYCFC to try and capture hearts and minds out there. The biggest emerging market is China, with over a billion people and a rapidly expanding middle class, and an increasing interest in football, it is the perfect market for us to expand in to. That's why we have signed the deals with the Chinese companies, and I assume we will be launching a new City club in the Chinese league this summer.

It's the North American and Asian markets where the growth in shirts sales will come from. Expanding the stadium will have very little / no impact on shirt sales in the grand scheme of things.

I know live in Asia, and I can assure you the millions of kit sales alleged are complete nonsense.