Ivan Gazidis says that the club are making good progress with plans for a redevelopment of the Emirates Stadium which will add close to 800 extra seats inside the ground.
The Arsenal chief executive provided the update in a regular missive to shareholders, and outlined details of how the front row of club level would be extended, thus increasing the overall capacity.
“We are making strides on the proposed Emirates Stadium development which will start in May,” he said. “We plan to add approximately 780 extra seats to club level.
“It will involve adding an extra row to the front of club level and will take our capacity to just over 60,600. Construction will be completed in two stages during the summers of 2018 and 2019.
“Alongside this work, we plan to upgrade and refurbish 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.”
It won’t have escaped your notice that the expansion is happening at club level, where the prices are highest, but then that’s modern football for you, we guess.
Gazidis also said that despite a season which has seen a record low attendance, and swathes of empty seats at almost every game, the club are confident they can seal some new commercial deals.
“On the commercial front we continue to make progress,” he said. “We remain highly attractive to potential partners and look forward to launching some exciting new partnerships in the new year.”
As ever, he talks a good game, but let’s see what 2018 brings.
And we thought the club was in crises…
800 new seats will be all it takes to explains another decade of failure under Wenger. Where was the money to bring in players after installing 800 new seats.
#Allpartoftheplan #Sarcasm
lol, the way things are you might want to decrease it
Presumably this is some sort of one upmanship as s***s new stadium is about 500 people more than ours!
Actually, their stadium will be 61,559.
Sp*rs new capacity is actually 61,559 so we will still fall short. If it’s an attempt at that it looks pretty pathetic..
Or maybe they don’t give a shit what sp*rs do – nothing pathetic about that…
Progress on commercial deals? Bollocks. If non-CL participation continues it will the collapse of commercial deals. Apart from that, Arsenal is not a very attractive proposition with Wenger at the helm. How can you sell the future of a club in stasis/decline for over a decade?
You might see a club in decline but from a brand perspective, Arsenal FC is amongst the top 10 teams in the world with a massive worldwide following. Granted most of our Intl fans came between 2000-2005 but today that puts them in their late 20’s – early 30’s so unlike City, Chelsea whose global fans are still kids, ours are income generating, thus adding to the appeal.
We need to look no further than Liverpool who haven’t been competitive for 2 decades now but still perform very well on the commercial front.
Whats the point?
Should they be concerning themselves about an under performing manager and team struggling to remain in the top seven?
What would 800 new seats add to Kroenke’s wealth anyway?
And that is what its all about isn’t it – making Kroenke more wealthy…
Who will occupy said seats?
The few thousand fans who are waiting for season tickets to open up
I’m coming around to Gazidis, the hiring of the dude from Dortmund and the other one from Barcelona are where he should be measured.
Exactly. I always look like a Gaz fan, and granted he does talk PR bollocks, but I think he gets too hard of a time, considering what he has changed and what he’s trying to change. This includes; – Upgrading Hale End, which had because laughable as a top club academy (FFS, our main building at the time was from the 70s/80s) – Upgrading the Academy structure and squad (even shipped out the old guard and modernised it) – Upgraded our medical support and facility. It’s now a huge department, whereas before Wenger wanted it all run by his old… Read more »