Etihad Campus, Stadium and Collar Site Development Thread

[Shaelumstash]

It costs £50m to expand the North Stand to add 5000 seats. If they were all £300 season tickets, it would take 33 years to pay for itself", i really dont understand this link. are you saying thats how they are paying for the expansion. ? they are paying for the expansion through the owner and all the other revenue streams. mentioning liverpool swell, its not commercially viable because they cant rinse the fans of money. with the tv revenue no club has to rip off fans, liverpools owners are known to do that, especially in their american owned clubs and anfield is one of the worst for having barely any locals in the ground.

why do we have to price out fans ? at the minute everything seems to be about as making much out of the fans as possible from food, drinks, tickets ........ why can't we take a different approach, perhaps the german model and make it so everyone can afford it. we dont have to charge high prices, or increase the corporate bit, we make enough money from everything else. thats just my view. i agree it would be great if when we expand the ground more its more affordable. but there is a disconnect at the minute imo and the club is going to far the other way,.

The club are getting the money from TV anyway aren't they? Whether we expand or not? Those are the things that are unrelated.

It costs £50m to expand the North Stand. Whether that £50m comes from Sky TV or Sheikh Mansour's pocket initially, doesn't really make any difference. Finding the money to fund the build is not a problem whatsoever.

The problem is what's the purpose of building a new stand? If it's just to let more hard up City fans access the ground, then you're essentially asking the club, or Sheikh Mansour, to donate £50m to subsidise cheap tickets for low income fans. I think that's probably asking a bit too much personally. It would be an incredible charitable gesture, but the Sheikh has done so much good for the club already, perhaps we're expecting too much of him.

If they can reconfigure the stadium, increase revenues elsewhere so that the expansion is viable, and the net result is more low income City dans can attend, but the expansion essentially pays for itself, that sounds fairer to me. More realistic.

There's no perfect solution, but to ask the club or Sheikh Mansour to donate £50m to subsidise cheap tickets for 5000 blues is unfair and unrealistic in my view.

 

[Cheadle_hulmeBlue]

The club are getting the money from TV anyway aren't they? Whether we expand or not? Those are the things that are unrelated.

It costs £50m to expand the North Stand. Whether that £50m comes from Sky TV or Sheikh Mansour's pocket initially, doesn't really make any difference. Finding the money to fund the build is not a problem whatsoever.

The problem is what's the purpose of building a new stand? If it's just to let more hard up City fans access the ground, then you're essentially asking the club, or Sheikh Mansour, to donate £50m to subsidise cheap tickets for low income fans. I think that's probably asking a bit too much personally. It would be an incredible charitable gesture, but the Sheikh has done so much good for the club already, perhaps we're expecting too much of him.

If they can reconfigure the stadium, increase revenues elsewhere so that the expansion is viable, and the net result is more low income City dans can attend, but the expansion essentially pays for itself, that sounds fairer to me. More realistic.

There's no perfect solution, but to ask the club or Sheikh Mansour to donate £50m to subsidise cheap tickets for 5000 blues is unfair and unrealistic in my view.

mate i understand where your coming from. and i understand the need for corporate sections. I'm not asking that, but we make so much money that we could clearly reduce prices all round, german teams have shown that. most clubs could. there is no perfect solution as you say though.

 

[Shaelumstash]

mate i understand where your coming from. and i understand the need for corporate sections. I'm not asking that, but we make so much money that we could clearly reduce prices all round, german teams have shown that. most clubs could. there is no perfect solution as you say though.

Where do you draw the line though mate? We pull in around £55m a season for regular tickets. Sheikh Mansour could easily cover that and not notice the difference in his bank account. Every ticket being free all season.

But to me that's asking too much. That's expecting more from a guy who has already changed all of our lives for the better.

I don't think Sheikh Mansour is out to rip us all off. Squeeze us of every last penny and pocket it all himself.

I just think he wants the club to be self-sustainable. I don't think that's unfair or unreasonable.

The only way an expansion could be self-sustainable is if we increased the corporate offering elsewhere in the ground. It's not ideal, but it's just the reality we live in.

We're already light years behind the Shite, Chelsea and Arsenal on match day revenue. Liverpool too I think. We have to catch up somehow, we can't just run at a loss and expect Mansour to subsidise ticket prices for everyone, it's asking too much.

 

[Marvin]

mate i understand where your coming from. and i understand the need for corporate sections. I'm not asking that, but we make so much money that we could clearly reduce prices all round, german teams have shown that. most clubs could. there is no perfect solution as you say though.

If you had £50 million and wanted to maximise return, you wouldn't sink into a football stand whether you get £600 or £1000 a seat. And haven't we just built a stand and filled it with seats at £500 pa or so? If City extend the North Stand I suspect it will be with £500 season tickets in mind. more important for City to have a full ground.

 

[Cheadle_hulmeBlue]

Where do you draw the line though mate? We pull in around £55m a season for regular tickets. Sheikh Mansour could easily cover that and not notice the difference in his bank account. Every ticket being free all season.

But to me that's asking too much. That's expecting more from a guy who has already changed all of our lives for the better.

I don't think Sheikh Mansour is out to rip us all off. Squeeze us of every last penny and pocket it all himself.

I just think he wants the club to be self-sustainable. I don't think that's unfair or unreasonable.

The only way an expansion could be self-sustainable is if we increased the corporate offering elsewhere in the ground. It's not ideal, but it's just the reality we live in.

We're already light years behind the Shite, Chelsea and Arsenal on match day revenue. Liverpool too I think. We have to catch up somehow, we can't just run at a loss and expect Mansour to subsidise ticket prices for everyone, it's asking too much.

as the previious poster alluded to, if you sink 50m into a football stand you aren't going to get much of a return on that. the difference between 500 and say 1000 isn't that much overall, or trying to recoup that 50m back from ticket sales would take years. i think just level 2 should be cop orate. with level one swell, wed have one of the biggest cop orate sections in the league for one of the least corporate fan bases. to me that doesnt make any sense

we've had year on year increases, food price increases. we aren't running at a loss either, we announced huge profits the other day. the club make up for that money ten times over through other revenue streams. the owner and club have a choice and they could easily keep prices down. get the expanded ground full and full of noise or have it half empty with a completely different crowd.

 

[Shaelumstash]

as the previious poster alluded to, if you sink 50m into a football stand you aren't going to get much of a return on that. the difference between 500 and say 1000 isn't that much overall, or trying to recoup that 50m back from ticket sales would take years. i think just level 2 should be cop orate. with level one swell, wed have one of the biggest cop orate sections in the league for one of the least corporate fan bases. to me that doesnt make any sense

we've had year on year increases, food price increases. we aren't running at a loss either, we announced huge profits the other day. the club make up for that money ten times over through other revenue streams. the owner and club have a choice and they could easily keep prices down. get the expanded ground full and full of noise or have it half empty with a completely different crowd.

So essentially you think the club should make a £50m charitable donation to City fans who can't currently afford to go? Just can't get my head around why you'd think that was a realistic option.

 

[caseball]

So essentially you think the club should make a £50m charitable donation to City fans who can't currently afford to go? Just can't get my head around why you'd think that was a realistic option.

I appreciate your point of view and agree in a way but with FFP more seats in the North stand would boost the bottom line whatever happens. The capital investment will not necessarily be recouped through ticket sales. He could sell 2% to China. So I'm not convinced that the stand development depends financially on the corporate development. They were talking about this tunnel thing before the South stand was changed and nobody connected the two. I think they've wanted this as a kind of showpiece for a long time and they think now's the right time. If it works out and enough people cough up the money then it will show a huge return in proportion to the capital cost and they can build it out of profits. Which is what I'd guess is driving its construction. If you could make 1000 twice by spending 100 or 1000, you'd spend 100 first and then 1000.

 

[dadnlad]

stop paying over inflated fees and wages for average players would help reduce ticket prices

 

[blueparrot]

It costs £50m to expand the North Stand to add 5000 seats. If they were all £300 season tickets, it would take 33 years to pay for itself", i really dont understand this link. are you saying thats how they are paying for the expansion. ? they are paying for the expansion through the owner and all the other revenue streams. mentioning liverpool swell, its not commercially viable because they cant rinse the fans of money. with the tv revenue no club has to rip off fans, liverpools owners are known to do that, especially in their american owned clubs and anfield is one of the worst for having barely any locals in the ground.

why do we have to price out fans ? at the minute everything seems to be about as making much out of the fans as possible from food, drinks, tickets ........ why can't we take a different approach, perhaps the german model and make it so everyone can afford it. we dont have to charge high prices, or increase the corporate bit, we make enough money from everything else. thats just my view. i agree it would be great if when we expand the ground more its more affordable. but there is a disconnect at the minute imo and the club is going to far the other way,.

Not really clear what you want that we aren't doing. with a matchday income of only 50 mill, and the profit of 20 mill from a £390 mill turnover coming rom player trading, all those with s/c less than £400 are clearly subsidised by all the other corporate, tv, sponsorship deals.
Most of the south stand extension were cheap tickets. from what @worsleyweb says nearly all the North stand extension will be cheap season tickets. So what bit of what you want are the club not doing ?

 

[Shaelumstash]

I appreciate your point of view and agree in a way but with FFP more seats in the North stand would boost the bottom line whatever happens. The capital investment will not necessarily be recouped through ticket sales. He could sell 2% to China. So I'm not convinced that the stand development depends financially on the corporate development. They were talking about this tunnel thing before the South stand was changed and nobody connected the two. I think they've wanted this as a kind of showpiece for a long time and they think now's the right time. If it works out and enough people cough up the money then it will show a huge return in proportion to the capital cost and they can build it out of profits. Which is what I'd guess is driving its construction. If you could make 1000 twice by spending 100 or 1000, you'd spend 100 first and then 1000.

I understand your point mate, but you seem to have forgotten the displaced season ticket holders in blocks 124-127. If they are being moved for more corporate, they have to go somewhere. I assume the strategy is to offer thousands of cheap season tickets in the expanded North Stand in the hope that a huge slice of them will be taken up by existing season ticket holders in level 3 of the East Stand and Colin Bell Stand.

The displaced season ticket holders from CB1 will then take up mid-priced seats in level 3 of the East and Colin Bell?

So essentially the plan is create 5000 new affordable tickets and 1000 or so corporate tickets. Using rough figures, let's say:

5000 new North Stand seats generate £400 per seat on average - £2m a season
1000 new corporate seats in CB1 generate £8000 per seat on average - £8m a season

So essentially the new corporate offering in CB1 is subsidising the building of the new stand and the 5000 new cheap seats.

I would assume prices will start creeping up in CBL3 and those who can't afford it will be offered first refusal on North Stand level 3.