Manchester United’s new field of dreams at risk of repeating the Tottenham trap
Build it and they will come – but you should be aware that you will be left with significant debt repayments, an element of the story to which Kevin Costner took a characteristically cavalier attitude. Which may be why Field of Dreams was about building a baseball stadium in Iowa for Shoeless Joe Jackson and the ghosts of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox rather than, say, Daniel Levy constructing a football stadium in Haringey for Vincent Janssen and the remnants of the 2019 Tottenham Hotspur team.
In the past week, Manchester United have revealed plans for a new £2bn stadium, capacity 100,000, next to Old Trafford, while Newcastle are reported to be looking to move from St James’ Park to a 65,000-capacity stadium on Leazes Park. Everton will move into a new stadium at Bramley-Moore dock next season. Wrexham are building a 5,500-capacity Kop. New stadiums suddenly are fashionable again after a period in which they came to seem almost an afterthought. That, perhaps, is an unintended consequence of profitability and sustainability rules (PSR).
Most clubs find that moving to a new stadium works out in the long term – at least in terms of attracting fans. Perhaps the biggest single reason for Manchester United’s status as the largest club in England – albeit Manchester City’s revenue is now higher – is that in 1910 they moved into Old Trafford, at the time the biggest and best stadium in the country.
Arsenal’s average attendance these days is a little more than 60,000, while Highbury’s capacity was just 38,000. Tottenham similarly get about 61,000 as opposed to 36,000 at White Hart Lane. There have been times when Sunderland’s Stadium of Light, capacity 48,000, has felt pretty empty, but average attendance is about 40,000 as opposed to 21,000 in the final season at Roker Park, despite being a division lower. Even West Ham, whose fans have a distinctly ambivalent attitude to the London Stadium, have seen attendances climb to 62,000 from 35,000 since leaving Upton Park.
Look at the emptiest grounds in England – MK Dons, Port Vale, Tranmere Rovers, Colchester United and Wigan Athletic – and there tend to be specific issues that have caused the disparity between stadium size and support that go beyond the hubris of building an overly large stadium.
Perhaps it could be argued that Colchester were overambitious in building a stadium with a capacity double their average attendance even when they were in the Championship, but 10,000 hardly seems excessive for somewhere that markets itself as Essex’s largest entertainment venue and has hosted Elton John, Lionel Richie and Olly Murs.
But there is a cost. Arsenal always offered the cautionary tale. It was their misfortune that they made the bold decision to leave Highbury – which, for all its charms, simply wasn’t big enough to allow them to compete with Manchester United – at just the wrong time. It took nine years from beginning the process in 1997 to the first game at the Emirates and, by the time they got there, the financial landscape had changed utterly.
Not only had broadcast revenues increased to reduce the significance of gate receipts and corporate hospitality, but Roman Abramovich had taken over at Chelsea. Just as his money, unchecked by any form of financial fair play (FFP), was transforming the Premier League, Arsenal were having to curtail their spending to meet interest payments on the stadium debt.
The precise moment at which Arsène Wenger’s gifts began to wane can be debated, but Arsenal’s struggles to keep up with Chelsea and United after winning the title in 2003-04, at least initially, were caused in large part by the financial restrictions they were operating under.
That was a not unfamiliar story. Nottingham Forest had taken a similar gamble in 1979-80, beginning work on a new stand that took a decade to pay off and was, in its way, just as responsible for Forest’s failure to build on their two European Cup successes as the falling-out between Brian Clough and his longtime assistant Peter Taylor.
Tottenham’s league form was already in decline when they reached the Champions League final in 2018-19, a season in which, thanks to the cost of their grand new stadium, they didn’t make a single signing.
But FFP regulations mean the sort of splurge undertaken by Abramovich is no longer possible. Domestic television rights have plateaued and while overseas rights continue to climb, the sense is they are nearing their peak. Clubs having to generate their own revenues for PSR purposes have turned to two exigencies: the sale of homegrown talent and revenue generated by the stadium.
Commercially, Tottenham’s new ground has been a huge success. Last year’s financial results show match receipts up to £117m and commercial revenues, which include sponsorship, merchandising, visitor attractions, conferences and events at the stadium, up to £227.7m of a total revenue of £549.6m.
As Spurs have scratched around the lower half of the Premier League this season there has been much sneering at the emphasis given to American football, boxing and concerts, but the problem is less the way revenue is generated than the fact so little of it ends up being spent on players.
For Newcastle, the new stadium would seem to come with few risks. Investment in infrastructure is exempted from PSR calculations, so a new revenue-generating stadium is a way for Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to put significant money into the club that would yield a return and be within the regulations. The benefits may take a few years to be felt, but far less time than they would if the stadium were funded by a standard loan.
And that’s where Manchester United must be careful, however powerful the case for moving after two decades of neglecting Old Trafford. They already have interest repayments of about £50m a year, so, even if public funding is secured, it is hard to see how they would not at least be doubling that at a time when money is required for a complete overhaul of the squad.
Build it and they would almost certainly come to a new Old Trafford, but as Tottenham have found, as Arsenal and Forest found in the past, some thought has to be given to what they would be watching once they are there.
