Arsenal have confirmed that the capacity of Emirates Stadium will increase to 60,600 as the club adds 780 extra seats.
The capacity of the arena has dropped below 60,000 since it opened in July 2016 due to safety requirements and improvements to facilities for disabled supporters.
The work is set to take place over the course of the next two summers and will involve adding an additional row of seating to Club Level.
Alongside this work, Arsenal have also confirmed refurbishment to additional areas of Club Level over the next two years. The first upgrade will be to Dial Square in the summer of 2018, which will see the area transformed to celebrate the club’s original name of Dial Square Football Club.
Speaking about the construction work, Chief Commercial Officer Vinai Venkatesham said:
“The development of Club Level is crucial to ensuring fan experience at games is at its best whilst also enabling us to stay at the forefront of stadium hospitality.
“As we continue to face high demand for tickets in all areas of Emirates Stadium, this is a significant investment to ensure that as many supporters as possible are able to watch the team play at Emirates Stadium.”
Does anyone know if there’s ability to significantly expand the Emirates’ capacity in the future? I imagine it would be a lot harder for the modern bowl stadiums compared to the ‘traditional’ stadiums with separate, tiered stands. Just wondering.
Off the top of my head, I do recall when the stadium was opened that it was announced that future expansion was possible. But, if I remember correctly, expansion is potentially prohibited by existing transport links (as opposed to architecture)
Yeah I’ve just done some reading and a few people were saying that it was limited to 60,500 by Islington Council, unless we paid for upgrades to the station or Holloway road or something. Cheers.
I think you’re right. Begs the question, how have Spurs got away with it? Shocking transport links at WHL.
The transport links will just mysteriously burn down if they refuse. Or something.
Because Haringey Council has caved in to every demand from Tottenham in relation to the planning process?
Poor old professional football club, getting paid hundreds of millions, Tottenham Hotspur. How can they possibly make the site affordable without making any provision for affordable housing, etc.?
The area around Shite Fart Lane is really run down and Haringey council are desperate to rejuvenate the area. So they’ve encouraged the spuddies in every way that they can. Any problems they’ve had concerning planning have come from outside authorities like national heritage who stopped them knocking down a couple of buildings.
Unfortunately Islington didn’t have the same needs when we were building our stadium, so we’ve been forced to spend loads on local amenities / services and we still have problems with Transport, even though it’s better than our neighbours…
I’d hesitate to describe an area with a few thousand additional spuds wandering around it on match days as “rejuvenated”.
I don’t know what’s involved in the ‘rejuvenation’ but I’d guess there area will have some new non spuddie things for non-match days
They get leeway because their ground has been found to be traditionally a great place for other teams to win the league.
The worrying thing is that they could be using Real Madrid money to pay for the stadium if they sell the window licker, Allie or even Pochettino to them…
During in the stadium tours they say there isn’t room and permission wouldn’t be granted.
its plenty of room, the original stadium plan was for near 80000, but the council refuse and limited us to 60K , the seat at the emirate are bigger than most stadium in the UK because of that, we could replace some seat with smaller one and fit easiily 15K more people
A standing area would probably do it. Look at any stadium in Germany!
Except that standing areas are illegal so it cannot be done
Yep. Unless they do some structural changes to the roof. Which would mean building up and slightly out and rebuilding sections of the roof. I imagine they can do that if they want, but thats serious amount of work involved…
Aren’t the seats in the Emirates something like 20% bigger than the normal sized seats in other stadia? You could easily increase the capacity just by changing to the smaller, hard plastic-y seats that other grounds have.
As others have said though, it’s to do with transport/planning.
Two questions spring to mind…
Does this make the Emirates bigger than the new Shite hart lane?
Does 750 new seats in the club level do anything to increase ‘fan experience’??
I believe theirs is planned to be 61,000.
Clearly the board have missed yet another an easy opportunity to please the fans.
The stadium capacity will be 61,559. I would imagine they have increased capacity as much as legal restrictions allow.
They are doing without a trophy room
Shite hart lane will sitll be bigger I think
Filling the empty seats should be their chief concern.
Those empty seats are already sold.
Yes, as the club repeatedly tell us. But there’s no getting round the fact that the stadium appears more empty than it has previously.
There’s a queue of people that would be happy to take them.
I’m holding on to the hope that the board will wait until the new Shite Hart Lane is built THEN increase capacity to 62,000 just to duck them over.
But ‘hope’ and this current board aren’t that compatible at present so….
Improving and expanding club level for the small minority of fans who play between £2,300 and £4,500 a season to sit in silence, great.
I suppose those extra 780 seats will make the club at the very least another £2m a season, I’m sure the renovation don’t cost anything like that much so more than worth it in that respect. 😐
More money for Plonker to plunder into his failed US teams?
“Fan experience ” what a horrible corporate phrase ! We’re NOT fans ! We are SUPPORTERS ! We support the club with our presence at games by buying merchandise etc we are not like screaming girls at a Take That concert ! As supporters being entertained is secondary to our team winning or coming from behind to snatch a last minute draw ! Fans are guaranteed to be entertained by whoever their a fan of as supporters there is NO such guarantee! Fans only suffer when a a group member leaves or the band they follow break up or their… Read more »
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Ffs bring down the prices and encourage a Carabao Cup atmosphere inside he Emirates every game!
At league cup matches there is a very poor atmosphere. Loads of people spend the first ten minutes of the match standing around like dummies because they can’t find their seats, then they sing stand up if you hate tottnum even though they’ve never been to a derby! Loads seem to leave ten minutes before half time for a half hour meal and then leave early so they miss the crush. What was the point in coming?
And they’re putting fucking TV screens on the underside of the upper tier, or something. Worried we can’t see the big screens during the game. Gone are the days when seeing footballers at the football was considered enough.