New Everton Stadium Discussion

Where has this 1:1.8 ratio come from? I thought the rules say 1:1.
Absolutely. The site itself is a constraint. There is a link between amount of people and concourse/facility provision, concourse provision is more of a constraint than available seats. For example, at Goodison, with todays regulations, even if you stripped out every seat in the ground, you could not increase the capacity by a single person. BMD has been designed to hold a larger number of people than there is seats, the concourses and facilities can service more fans. This is not an accident, it is by design. People want the atmosphere of a Goodison Park under the lights, like it was against Fiorentina. What if, by reducing available seats, installing rail seating and gambling on a ratio of approximately 1.8 being allowed, they could deliver Bayern. I have used the example before, but with Spurs, they have maxed out on capacity by finding the balance between available concourse and available seats. If they installed rail seating in place of every seat, their capacity will remain the same, same at Anfield, same at Old Trafford. Ours can increase, we can be closer, more vocal, more intimidating that it is when all seated and get more people in, potentially increasing capacity to the 60k+ that the concourses have been designed for.
Here Roydo this post explains it.
 
I did some analysis a couple of years back, looked at varuious different trends, and to be honest we show pretty strong evidence that we could sell out 60k fairly consistently, without even an uplift of greater success.

We have sold out 40k every week for years.

However, if they are looking to ush the price point up, which they could be, it makes sense. Yoy have demnad for 60-65k for example, and then fit that into 52/53k. It allows you to push prices up say 30% quite easily.
Tell me what these 'varuious' trends are.

Do you work for the Echo by any chance? Analysis on what? We could pack 60k every game without a problem. No analysis needed there mate. I questioned pages and pages back the cost etc of having extra seating and was met with a fair analysis. Obviously we don't want prices through the roof but have to accept an uplift per ticket per game.
 
Where has this 1:1.8 ratio come from? I thought the rules say 1:1.

They do currently, but the design is the same as the 'Yellow Wall' at Dortmund, which allows a row of 2 standing to one sitting, with an intermediate step. Regs state though that (my numbers may be slightly off) seated widths must be a minimum of 465mm, and standing width must be minimum of 535mmm that means that you can do just less than double the amount people in a row. If you were to simply replace all seats with standing, you would actually end up with a lower capacity, you need the double row.
 
Either way, it shows the point that they had wanted to do it. They’ll probably return to it at some point. City expanded the capacity of the Etihad when they weren’t even filling it every week.

I understand the point about the increase in the concourse facilities allows us to have a greater standing capacity, but it just seems odd that all the top 6 teams are saying ‘we need a 60k plus stadium’ whereas Everton are saying ‘we don’t’.

Like I said if the size of the site dictates the capacity thats fine, but if it’s just caution from the club it seems very very cautious.

City did this fore reasons beyond increasing actual people in eth ground. Its to do with an agreement they have with Manchester City Council and percentages of rent due. They don't want to buy the stadium, which they could do easily, as they have a cosy arrangement with MCC, but by increasing the size, full or not, they increase their share in the stadium and therefore increase takings while not increasing liability or risk. In most stadiums, there would be little point increasing the capacity unless they could fill it, but by city increasing theirs, they have access to more of the existing income.
 

I am still not sure! It was very impressive, thats for sure, but it wasnt a "beautiful" stadium, not in my eyes anyrate.

BMD looks beautiful to me. Would say the same whoever it was built for.
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Architecturally, it'd probably be perceived as an iconic and high-quality design that merges in with the culture of London and the local area.

But for me, it doesn't look like a stadium.
 
Which in itself hammers home the point. I had no idea of that either, because 99% of us have absolutely no idea what a stadium's capacity is, and couldn't care less. I've been to most PL stadiums and I couldn't tell you what any of them hold, or rank them in terms of capacity. You might have a ball park idea - I know The Emirates is somewhere in the region of 60k for example, but no idea if it's 57 or 63 - but nothing like a knowledge of the actual figures.. When I was at school i'd have said haha we've got a bigger stadium than you we're obviously better, now I just don't see why people get so hung up on it.
Your overall point is right.

In regards to Arsenal, I’d wager more than 90% of their fans (as well as the players and manager) would swap that soulless 60k bowl of theirs for 38k Highbury in a heartbeat. I’d also wager they’d have won more than zero titles at Highbury than the bowl, and I don’t mean that because of the financial constraints the new stadium build put on them, I’d say with the same financial outley as they have done at the bowl they’d have won the title at Highbury. The compact pitch (that suited their swift passing style..think of Wilshire and all those more technical players on that tight carpet like surface as opposed to the wider, more physically taxing bowl), the stands being right next to the pitch, playing towards the North Bank (with that woman behind the goal screaming), the clock end with ex players in often stood outside the boxes, the marble halls, the scenic location next to rows of houses lined with trees. Highbury was Arsenal, that new bowl could be anybodies. Stands further away from the pitch (to allow for more access to emergency services), no distinctive goal end, a great big soulless bowl is what they have now. You could remove all the Arsenal signs in the bowl, blindfold someone and put them in the centre circle, remove the blindfold and chances are they wouldn’t know where they were. That club has lost so much of its identity. As Wenger regretfully said, “we got a new stadium, and left our soul at Highbury”.

Not that what happened to Arsenal correlates to other teams, as most clubs are right to move. But Arsenal (and West Ham) have really shown how it’s not done.
 
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Tell me what these 'varuious' trends are.

Do you work for the Echo by any chance? Analysis on what? We could pack 60k every game without a problem. No analysis needed there mate. I questioned pages and pages back the cost etc of having extra seating and was met with a fair analysis. Obviously we don't want prices through the roof but have to accept an uplift per ticket per game.

I don't work for the ECHO mate.

I am saying the same thing as you though, which is we could easily sell out 60k.

The trends I looked at, from memory were:
1) Everton's historical position on attendences through history (generally top 5/6)
2) The number of games we were selling out
3) The standard increase levels clubs who have moved ground tend to get (if I remember it's around a 60% uplift)
4) The general inflationary pressure on attendences (I.E football attendences have been increase year on year for 30 years)
5) As alongside this, we started averaging 36k in the mid 90's and never dropped below though. This is nearly full occupancy, and is full aside from obstructed view seats. Footballs attendences have increased around 20% since then. So even if we stood still, had we have had a bigger Goodison we would be averaging mid 40's at the very least.
6) If we were to become successful, there's a likely 25%+ increase in fans that could be expected to come (as per the mid 90's after we won the cup). Qualifying and maintaining position in the CL would reflect this.

So as a summary,the measure would state on historical evidence we would have a ground 60k ish. Also on inflationary pressures you would have assumed we would sell out a ground that was 45-48k most weeks now. Most teams then get a 60%+ increase on that number. To me there was never any sense in not building 60k.

The ground will be too small. It will be great to have a new ground, but it is too small.
 
Obviously before building begins we need to drain and infill the dock.
This is a process that I expected would take 6 months or more, so I was pleasantly surprised to read this about the construction of the water treatment and sewage plant.

Sand infill
Before construction could begin, 31,000m3 of silt was removed from the base of the Victorian dock. This was undertaken by WD Mersey, a trailing suction hopper dredger operated by Westminster Dredging. Once the silt removal had been completed the dock gates were closed and a concrete filled sheet pile cofferdam was installed across the entrance to form a permanent water tight seal. Wellington Dock was then filled with over 206,000m3 of sand reclaimed by dredger from the nearby Morecambe Bay. A floating/sunken temporary feed pipe system was laid from a connection point within the River Mersey, over Sandon Half Tide Dock bed through to a pipework distribution system within Wellington Dock, negating the need for access through the dock system by boat.
This removed the restriction in vessel size created by the dock system and enabled 24-hour continuous operation for Westminster Dredging to pump sand and seawater solution down an 800m pipeline, via a spreader pontoon, into the dock filling an area of 29,000m2 to a depth of 8m. The sand was then dewatered and the water pumped back into the Mersey Estuary. Following this, the surface was compacted hydraulically and then mechanically using earth moving equipment. The entire operation took just 20 days, well ahead of programme. The innovative method of sand infill saved 25,000 vehicle movements dramatically reducing the carbon footprint of the works and avoided major disruption to the city traffic system and neighbours.

Link to full brochure - https://waterprojectsonline.com/wp-content/uploads/case_studies/2013/Liverpool-WwTW-2013.pdf
 
Hahah can’t believe we’re building a a new state of the art stadium in a world famous and historic location and it’s gonna be smaller than Spurs’ ground lol lol lol

State of us lol absolute joke
Out of interest, why would you expect us to have a bigger stadium than Spurs?
They have a bigger worldwide fan base than us and are much better positioned geographically to fill their stadium.

No point building a stadium too big that we wouldn't fill.
 
I don't work for the ECHO mate.

I am saying the same thing as you though, which is we could easily sell out 60k.

The trends I looked at, from memory were:
1) Everton's historical position on attendences through history (generally top 5/6)
2) The number of games we were selling out
3) The standard increase levels clubs who have moved ground tend to get (if I remember it's around a 60% uplift)
4) The general inflationary pressure on attendences (I.E football attendences have been increase year on year for 30 years)
5) As alongside this, we started averaging 36k in the mid 90's and never dropped below though. This is nearly full occupancy, and is full aside from obstructed view seats. Footballs attendences have increased around 20% since then. So even if we stood still, had we have had a bigger Goodison we would be averaging mid 40's at the very least.
6) If we were to become successful, there's a likely 25%+ increase in fans that could be expected to come (as per the mid 90's after we won the cup). Qualifying and maintaining position in the CL would reflect this.

So as a summary,the measure would state on historical evidence we would have a ground 60k ish. Also on inflationary pressures you would have assumed we would sell out a ground that was 45-48k most weeks now. Most teams then get a 60%+ increase on that number. To me there was never any sense in not building 60k.

The ground will be too small. It will be great to have a new ground, but it is too small.
We sold more tickets when it was cheap to go. When I started going in the mid 70s I think capacity was 52,000, which we got for derby games and the occasional other game, but you could pay on the gate pretty much any other time. When we make it cheap these days for League Cup games etc we get 20,000 people in who can't afford to go to league games. So, in an ideal world you build a massive stadium and sell tickets to those people in the top tiers at £5 each. However, economics dictates that it's too expensive to build that big, you would never get your money back. Also, site constraints mean that emergency egress is probably impossible for more than a certain number due to there being water on one side of the ground. All in all I think capacity is about right.
 

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