Stadium A Money Maker
After spending a week working at Coventry City’s Ricoh Arena I realised why so many teams want new stadiums, they can generate so much money these days.
Gone are the days of gate receipts every two weeks & a hut for a club shop open once a week being a clubs only way of potential income from their home.
Take the Ricoh Arena as a model template, although I know it is owned by Coventry City Council, there are so many new ways to get more money out of stadia.
1st off you sell the naming rights, Japanese technology firm paid £10m to have the stadium named after them for 10 years. But obviously the bigger the club & stadium the higher the fee, at Arsenal they sold the name of their new stadium to Emirates Airlines for £100m over £15 years, the deal also included an 8 year shirt sponsorship deal.
At the Ricoh Arena they have three of the stands sponsored, they have the Tesco Stand, The Lloyds Pharmacy Stand & The Coventry Evening Telegraph Stand. The stadium also accommodates a 3 hall exhibition centre sponsored by Jaguar. So when there is no football they can hold conferences, functions, weddings & concerts.
There is also a hotel, complete with 46 bed rooms overlooking the pitch. Then there is the casino, two bars, coffee house, club shop open 6 days a week & loads of car park space. The Ricoh seems a great model to follow if you want to make money.
How can clubs afford to follow suit?
Sell your current stadium to a supermarket chain or a major property developer, save cash on land by going into partnership with the local council. Then let out the hotel & business/retail space plus land for car park spaces. Add the 30000+ capacity every two weeks you should generate a lot of cash.
Liverpool & Spurs should take note.
Posted on October 17th, 2010 by scott
Filed under: Article
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Very interesting article – clearly a lot of lucrative business opportunities in new stadia which will be particular welcome for clubs at this time of economic uncertainty. Though at what stage does it go too far? As a rangers fan how would you feel if the club sold the naming rights to ibrox? The pepsi arena rather than ibrox stadium, the tesco stand rather than the broomielaw?
It would be a lot harder to rename an existing stadium as you have said loyal fans would not like it. I think a stand would be different though as long as there was a massive cheque for the privilege.
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