New Everton Stadium - Hill Dickinson Stadium


TraffordBlue said:
That's been a debateable issue among our fanbase for years. The club and architect had explored 60K+ for a while but it was decided for various reasons to go with just under 53K for a variety of reasons including: the restrictions around the site, to retain a close and intimidating design and atmosphere, and I believe to create a scarcity of tickets to ensure high demand. I think the last one is an American concept as the Architect is American.

I personally would have liked it to have been in the 55-58K region as feel like that would have been a better compromise, and given our lack of success in the last 30 years, I feel 60K+ would have been too big whilst we are an unsucessful club, which sadly we are in the modern era.

But the media and the modern day fan seriously underestimates the devotion of our fanbase, often overlooking our "loyalty" home and away at the expense of bigging up fans like the Geordies. The difference between them and us in the last 25 years is quite simply that they upgraded their stadium in to the modern era, enabling an extra 15K+ of their supporters to attend home matches, whilst our ground got increasingly dated and we were restricted to 39K with thousands of awful obstructed views.
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Seems a bit of a strange capacity your new place but somebody somewhere must know, or think they know what they're doing. I remember the 80s Everton 53k wouldn't be anywhere near big enough. Still seems like exciting times and was pleased this last season wasn't the all too familiar from previous seasons when you struggled. Definitely onwards and upwards.
 
MickMackem72 said:
Seems a bit of a strange capacity your new place but somebody somewhere must know, or think they know what they're doing. I remember the 80s Everton 53k wouldn't be anywhere near big enough. Still seems like exciting times and was pleased this last season wasn't the all too familiar from previous seasons when you struggled. Definitely onwards and upwards.
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All sorts of arguments were made about capacity.

Atmosphere was the number-one consideration in design, and the theory goes that the bigger your ground is, the more likely you'll have empty seats or have to fill them with tourists who film throw-ins on their phone.

As many fans of the teams with bigger grounds bemoan, the latter dilutes the atmosphere.

I remember Juventus kept being brought up as an example. Their ground is 41,500.
 
Dublin blue 75 said:
Correct. It also was not three tiers on all sides or continuos. I suspect three tiers can still be achieved on both sides of BMD, especially the plaza side.
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Indeed. They've made a big virtue out of the plaza, but if the club has a future need to add another 10k on to capacity, I could see that side being explored. There is plenty of space there. If all the lofty talk of "fan space" and the ability to hold other events on the plaza turns out to be optimistic, I can see them extending that side. I've always felt 53k was a relic of Kenwright pluckiness, where our Chairman for Life had downgraded and shrunk this club so much over the last 30 years that he thought getting us to a level that would only just about have housed a big crowd in 84/85 was "expansion". In reality, our ground will be a similar size to that of Newcastle and Leeds...with the Geordies set to expand again. We're basically running to stand still after Kenwright.
 
MickMackem72 said:
Seems a bit of a strange capacity your new place but somebody somewhere must know, or think they know what they're doing. I remember the 80s Everton 53k wouldn't be anywhere near big enough. Still seems like exciting times and was pleased this last season wasn't the all too familiar from previous seasons when you struggled. Definitely onwards and upwards.
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Tbf..... we had 52k capacity in the mid 80s and only filled it a few times during the glory years. Attendances dropped dramatically across the board during the 80s. Even LFC's gates were very low at that time. The local Economy had collapsed and the population was dropping like a stone. Success brought the crowds back to some extent, but we still only averaged low 30's, less than we averaged only a few years earlier in the late 70s under Gordon Lee, and well below our averages in the 60s. Of course, the other lot's success in the 70s and 80s didn't help us one bit.

Of course, it's boom time for football at the moment.... and we have been posting the full-house signs for several years now, but that has been largely with a high proportion of reasonably priced season tickets and concessions. With only a few matchday tickets available, squeezing that demand. As shown by our relatively low match day income. In recent years our tkt prices have been getting slowly ramped up in anticipation of the new stadium. I'm not sure how price-elastic the demand is for our fanbase. A great onus has been placed on getting far more corporate and corporate-lite in, as you'd expect..... I just hope that we do not price-out many of those who want seats in the General Admission areas too.
 

Tom Hughes said:
Tbf..... we had 52k capacity in the mid 80s and only filled it a few times during the glory years. Attendances dropped dramatically across the board during the 80s. Even LFC's gates were very low at that time. The local Economy had collapsed and the population was dropping like a stone. Success brought the crowds back to some extent, but we still only averaged low 30's, less than we averaged only a few years earlier in the late 70s under Gordon Lee, and well below our averages in the 60s. Of course, the other lot's success in the 70s and 80s didn't help us one bit.

Of course, it's boom time for football at the moment.... and we have been posting the full-house signs for several years now, but that has been largely with a high proportion of reasonably priced season tickets and concessions. With only a few matchday tickets available, squeezing that demand. As shown by our relatively low match day income. In recent years our tkt prices have been getting slowly ramped up in anticipation of the new stadium. I'm not sure how price-elastic the demand is for our fanbase. A great onus has been placed on getting far more corporate and corporate-lite in, as you'd expect..... I just hope that we do not price-out many of those who want seats in the General Admission areas too.
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That's the problem, if your every day supporter is left behind and can't afford to go. I get you have to move with the times but as along as everything is done as fairly as possible, last thing you want is a stadium half full of corporate and tourists.
 
allen said:
All sorts of arguments were made about capacity.

Atmosphere was the number-one consideration in design, and the theory goes that the bigger your ground is, the more likely you'll have empty seats or have to fill them with tourists who film throw-ins on their phone.

As many fans of the teams with bigger grounds bemoan, the latter dilutes the atmosphere.

I remember Juventus kept being brought up as an example. Their ground is 41,500.
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Juventus is a bit of an outlier in some respects. It was planned when their gates had fallen through the floor and Italian footy attendances generally had been falling for years. At 41k construction costs were quite reasonable and they knew that they could still squeeze demand to maximise tkt prices. The other end of the scale is the West Ham effect, where they had to sell thousands of very cheap tkts to fill the new place.... which is easy to do when you've sold the old place and got the new one for next to nothing.

We went for 53k at over £800m costs....I'm not sure where that sweetspot is for us. Hopefully much of that debt was written off in the sale of the club and the remaining restructured debt allows reasonable ticket pricing strategy beyond the new stadium effect, and novelty years.
 
Tom Hughes said:
Tbf..... we had 52k capacity in the mid 80s and only filled it a few times during the glory years. Attendances dropped dramatically across the board during the 80s. Even LFC's gates were very low at that time. The local Economy had collapsed and the population was dropping like a stone. Success brought the crowds back to some extent, but we still only averaged low 30's, less than we averaged only a few years earlier in the late 70s under Gordon Lee, and well below our averages in the 60s. Of course, the other lot's success in the 70s and 80s didn't help us one bit.

Of course, it's boom time for football at the moment.... and we have been posting the full-house signs for several years now, but that has been largely with a high proportion of reasonably priced season tickets and concessions. With only a few matchday tickets available, squeezing that demand. As shown by our relatively low match day income. In recent years our tkt prices have been getting slowly ramped up in anticipation of the new stadium. I'm not sure how price-elastic the demand is for our fanbase. A great onus has been placed on getting far more corporate and corporate-lite in, as you'd expect..... I just hope that we do not price-out many of those who want seats in the General Admission areas too.
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Football hooliganism and the fact that there was a tv strike in the 80s that cut the umbilical cord of exposure contributed too.
 
Drico said:
Indeed. They've made a big virtue out of the plaza, but if the club has a future need to add another 10k on to capacity, I could see that side being explored. There is plenty of space there. If all the lofty talk of "fan space" and the ability to hold other events on the plaza turns out to be optimistic, I can see them extending that side. I've always felt 53k was a relic of Kenwright pluckiness, where our Chairman for Life had downgraded and shrunk this club so much over the last 30 years that he thought getting us to a level that would only just about have housed a big crowd in 84/85 was "expansion". In reality, our ground will be a similar size to that of Newcastle and Leeds...with the Geordies set to expand again. We're basically running to stand still after Kenwright.
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I think that the original 60k+ stadium would've probably been an east west arrangement. The plaza wouldn't have even existed. The graphics of the internal standa used for the original consultation were of that arrangement, with 3 tiered format on the side stands.

The latest from the Geordies is that they're looking at 65-70k.... depending on whether they redevelop or move.
Leeds were originally looking at 53k, but this may have been revised up to 56k. Villa are also hoping to go to 50-52k in time for the Euros.... with further expansion possible after that. The most "ambitious" scheme is probably Birmingham City's plans for a 60k stadium. If all of those reach fruition, 53k may seem a bit "conservative".... we'll see!
 
PhilM said:
Me too, but I have a feeling that some games will get towards that bracket. We're already roughly at £50 a game, so a similar % increase as STs is about £67.
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This season just gone it was £55 for a standard game, £60 for a cat 'a' one.

Towards the end of last season I paid £60 for utd, arsenal, city and Southampton all in relatively short succession.
 

davek said:
Football hooliganism and the fact that there was a tv strike in the 80s that cut the umbilical cord of exposure contributed too.
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Yes, it was probably the height of hooliganism and that certainly affected attendances. Most grounds were well over half empty. Which on the flip side allowed for some massive away followings when we eventually did come-good! I can remember us out numbering the home fans a few times.
 
Tom Hughes said:
Yes, it was probably the height of hooliganism and that certainly affected attendances. Most grounds were well over half empty. Which on the flip side allowed for some massive away followings when we eventually did come-good! I can remember us out numbering the home fans a few times.
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Our away following has been one of the few remaining signs of just how big Everton have been (and could possibly be again). Every non-former Everton manager we've had during the slump decades have been almost incredulous when noting the numbers Everton attracts on the road. It's out of whack with almost all of the rest of this football club.
 

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