KingswellsRed

It is indeed chicken and egg with regards to the revenue v. football quality, or it should be ("more likely") as you say. More of one should mean more of the other, whichever comes first. They should be mutually-dependent but as we've seen in our own history, money was much less influential on our past success than good product management.

 

Have a shite fitba team in a shiny new stadium and nae cunt will be there to see it. Our football team hasn't been able to challenge for the major honours for the whole time Milne has been involved. The only reason our turnover spikes happened - including one of the Calderwood years, £12.2m if I recall) - was European football. Not doing anything in Europe of course, just simply being in it, due to the disproportionate rewards available.

The hope is that the new stadium will attract larger attendances for the first season anyway which will hopefully give us increased revenue to put a good team on the park. Yes, the turnover will be better if we have a good season but having the facilities in place to make money are very much necessary to take advantage of good seasons.

By the way, I have no interest in attending hospitality, boxes etc myself and would far rather be out in a standing section (hopefully there is one) but I recognise the need for it.

You seem determined to ignore my main point?

 

All you're spelling out is what everybody knows.

 

Where does the quality of the football fit in your view?

The quality of football is much more likely to be higher if the club are bringing in much more revenue. The same thing that is happening at the moment where we can spend more on and have a better team than Hearts. I have seen mentions on other sites of the club estimating the new stadium will bring in an extra 150k per home game.

I can assure you that it is as simple as more customers = more revenue.

 

You took one line from my post. I also said that it wasn't PRIMARILY stadium-dependent.

 

Of course improved facilities will attract more customers and everything i.e. commercial sponsorship that goes with this.

 

But the product is all important, which was the main thrust of my post.

I can assure you it is not that simple. 16 thousand fans every couple of weeks with little hospitality would bring in less revenue than 12 thousand fans plus a lot of hospitality, fans bar etc. It is not just match days the facilities can be rented out for money either. The ability to bring in money every day of the week is a big part of running a successful club nowadays.

 

The thing that generates additional revenue is additional customers, more fans.

 

It is not as simple as that these days. You need the facilities in order to make good money from home games. Hearts are selling out most home games but because Tynecastle is basically 3 soon to be 4 sheds or bus shelters with little hospitality facilities their turnover is far less than ours. Even when their new stand goes up, they will still have less facilities than the current Pittodrie and far less than our proposed new stadium. The opportunity to increase our revenue with this new stadium is massive and should put us ahead of the likes of the Edinburgh clubs for years

Excellent post Tom, some great stuff in there. Interesting. Have you ever compared the depth of Hearts/Hibs versus oor Soother? It's be interesting to see the required space and what we're missing.

 

Also, I've never thought we'd actually have to build over roads and so on. Pittodrie street is very wide, there's a lot of space to move a stand back, I'd reckon about 4 metres at least just by removing parking on that stretch of road. That may cause issue on non-match day, but you could just open the DD concourse for parking for shop-visitors (or the mainer car park). That road isn't used for traffic parking on match day, opposition bus, drop-offs aside.

 

Finally, as you mention, our stands are just bolted on terraces, meaning they're really shallow. We could easily gain a few extra rows by making them steeper. Each row adds a few hundred seats.

 

But, again, because we can't see the breakdown of the 12,500 seater suggestion, it's impossible to put it to bed, or to see if it would be possible to eek out an extra few thousand seats with better design. With your architectural experience, do you genuinely believe that we'd lose the entire capacity of the South Stand by re-building the South, Mainer and Merkland? It seems insane. Or a lie. I'm going for the latter.

 

And to the rest of you reading my solo attempts to remain, what sort of capacity would make your decision difficult? Hypothetically, if we were offered a 17-18K stadium at Pittodrie or a 20K one at Westhill, which would you choose? Or, more importantly, which do you think would be best for the club? It's interesting that Tom says that the 20K was a red-line for supporters. My opinion was that the 20K was a red-line for moving stadium in order to make it worthwhile building a new one rather than an actual requirement. I actually think it'll get knocked down to 19K by the time its actually built anyway, but that's just an entirely un-backed suspicion.

My understanding is also that the new stadium will generate a lot more revenue for the club, leading to a better team on the pitch hopefully. I saw mention of an extra £150k per home game being generated compared to the current Pittodrie but that may not be accurate so don't quote me! A redeveloped Pittodrie would likely struggle to generate income in the same way which Tynecastle currently struggles and that is why Hearts have a much lower turnover than us. For me it would be a new stadium over an 18k capacity Pittodrie. (which I don't even think is realistic anyway)

I am not saying the above just because it would be convenient for me. I don't really mind so much where the stadium gets built.

Evening lads. Another former Mad poster here