Don’t think there’s a stadium where that’s even possible unless it’s really small or you have a retractable roof. The stands are just too tall in bigger venues to stop the wind blowing the rain in.
Although the way I feel about it right now echoes Elvis Costello in Oliver's Army, I live in St Petersburg, Russia, The new stadium here, built to host the final of the Confederations Cup in 2017 and World Cup games including the semi-final in 2018, has a retractable roof and it's brilliant.
The weather here for half the year is like Manchester, while for the other half it can be snowy and freezing, while at the height of winter it can get down to -30C. I've been in the stadium in swirling gale and pouring rain that would get blown right in your face throughout most of the stadium if the roof were closed and you couldn't even tell what the weather was doing outside. I've been in there when it was -20C outside and it was +17C inside.
I'd love a revamped Etihad to have a retractable roof. No chance of it happening, apart from anything else because I don't think the PL allows games to be played with a closed roof anyway, but it would be superb IMO and steal a march on other British stadiums apart from Cardiff.
I think that's just due to the timing more than anything. Covid will have killed the revenues. Even with the arena though you're looking at 2-3 events a week and it's not a 24/7 destination. Any hotel should provide a state-of-the-art conference/convention centre so it attracts big businesses to come and use the facilities. They can stay in the hotel and they can go corporate to the football games. Arsenal and Spurs will have loads of boxes sold on company credit cards for entertaining. There's more going on near the swamp with Salford Quays there and the cricket ground - with a very good hotel that probably sells out first. And there's a lot of tourists at the swamp which we know. To attract more revenue at the football you need to try and attract more businesses with the big company money out to that part of Manchester and that's one way that could do it.
I agree that conferencing seems a great way to stimulate daily use of the site. I remember being told way back that they were looking at something along the lines of the
Abd Dhabi National Exhibition Centre and thinking it sounded as though it absolutely fitted the bill for what we needed. Nothing has come of it so far, but maybe the Arena can help to stimulate development.
