Newcastle have a major decision to make when it comes to their stadium
Newcastle United have a major decision to make when it comes to their stadium. The choice facing the Magpies is whether to expand on the current St James' Park site or build a new state of the art stadium on nearby Leazes Park.
Tottenham Hotspur demolished their White Hart Lane Stadium and built the Tottenham Hotspur stadium on the same site, which opened in April 2019.
It is widely seen as the benchmark for modern stadiums in England and its multi-purpose status allows Spurs to bring in huge amounts of extra revenue through non-football events.
A dividing retractable grass surface enables the staging of a variety of major events in addition to Spurs matches, including NFL, boxing, rugby and concerts, creates a recurring source of revenue for the club with up to 30 non-football events per year.
That is crucial as they look to maximise their ability in the transfer market against the backdrop of the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules.
"If we weren't able to transition in 36-48 hours from football into NFL, it will be a complete disaster for us to either postpone, reschedule or cancel an event," Jon Babbs, Tottenham Hotspur's stadium director, told the Wall Street Journal.
"The more events we stage, the more money we can put into football. We sell about 60,000 pints of beer for a football game, we sell about 120,000 pints of beer for an NFL game.
"As well as having a stadium that is truly multi-functional, host all of the events that we want it to hold, generate the income that we need to be able to put back into our football club, it's the people that really make it happen."
And while multi-use stadiums are common in America, they are more rare in Europe, which gives Spurs an extra financial advantage to some of their competitors.
Ryan Norys, Tottenham's chief revenue officer, added: "It's a multi-purpose stadium so while it's very common in the US with new builds - Hard Rock Stadium, MetLife, SoFi stadium, Allegiant, even Levi's, it's very rare in the rest of the world, and specifically in the UK, because a lot of times stadiums are built specifically for football."
The stadium debate at Newcastle is much more nuanced than just whatever solution will bring in the most revenue. St James' Park is an iconic venue and there has to be a major financial benefit of uprooting to a new stadium rather than just building on the current premises.
St James' Park has held concerts in recent years, too, with Sam Fender, Ed Sheeran and Kings of Leon among the bands playing at the home of the Magpies in recent years.
it has also held Super League's magic weekend where the nation's best rugby league sides play at St James' Park.
But if there is a way for any new stadium to maximise the amount of non-football events at a new stadium which, in turn, allows the club to reinvest significant money to improve on and off the pitch, that has to be a consideration in their thinking.
Spurs made £255.2million in commercial and off-pitch revenue in 2024, which made up 48% of their total revenue for the year. A large slice of that came from third party events. Newcastle's commercial and off-pitch revenue for the same period was £90million, with Newcastle relying more on broadcasting revenue (€215million) in their accounts.
Tottenham have shown it works and they have a model that every club should be looking to follow with a new stadium build.