Capacity

[nopigfansintown]

If you dont move forwards you go backwards

Precisely. The amount of fans from other clubs that have moved on that would look at this thread and laugh at our fans naivety and backwardness speaks for itself. A look at the top two divisions tells it's own story. The first Sheffield club that makes these improvements will steal a big march on the other. I hope it's us.

 

[CarlMcBlade]

We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

 

[S64 Blade]

It's a myth that United couldn't head towards those numbers. For a start you can give the whole of the Lane end to away fans like we used too, including some of those that are now not sold due to segregation. Then where would you put the home fans that used to sit there?

I don’t even think we necessarily need to give away teams a bigger allocation (not in the PL anyway). There’s still a lot of untapped potential, locally, in terms of expanding the fan base further.

We can expand fairly incrementally and take it one step at a time. When we expanded last time we were absolutely nowhere near the crowds we get now.

 

[Kizmet]

I don’t even think we necessarily need to give away teams a bigger allocation (not in the PL anyway). There’s still a lot of untapped potential, locally, in terms of expanding the fan base further.

We can expand fairly incrementally and take it one step at a time. When we expanded last time we were absolutely nowhere near the crowds we get now.

When you think about it in those terms a new owner with a few quid and a bit of ambition and foresight could really build something here

 

[nopigfansintown]

West Ham the shammers average gate just over 30,000 not always filled moved into bigger stadium 60,000
Sunderland another example just saying

From the top of my head:

Brighton (new stadium), Southampton (new stadium), Fulham (stand), Bristol City (new stand), West Ham (stadium), Liverpool (stands) , Man United (huge expansions and new stadium speculation), Arsenal (stadium), Man City (stadium and mooted new stand), Forest (mooted new stand), Watford (stand), Villa (stand in the works), Rotherham (stadium), Brentford (stadium), Leicester (stadium), Coventry (stadium), Wolves (mooted stand), Everton ( new stadium currently being built), Stoke (stadium), Cardiff, Reading, Wigan, Huddersfield, Sunderland, Derby, Bolton (all new stadium), Luton (mooted new stadium).

 

[nopigfansintown]

I don’t even think we necessarily need to give away teams a bigger allocation (not in the PL anyway). There’s still a lot of untapped potential, locally, in terms of expanding the fan base further.

We can expand fairly incrementally and take it one step at a time. When we expanded last time we were absolutely nowhere near the crowds we get now.

Yeah, I only said that as it's patently obvious that if the expansion idea was a huge flop it could just be filled with more away fans.

 

[Keen Blade]

West Ham the shammers average gate just over 30,000 not always filled moved into bigger stadium 60,000
Sunderland another example just saying

Wet Sham had outgrown the Boleyn well before they moved - always had thousands waiting for STs.
Plus they are the closest club to the 'City' money boys & Essex boys.
Plus they are in London , pop. 8m .. endless potential to fill their free stadium.
We can't possibly compare dem Blades to Wet Sham in terms of potential support.
Sunderland a phenomenon like Burnley - half the population go to the football , again , Sheffield has never been like that.
Pointless examples.
Yes we've grown our support steadily and might push up another few thousand if we stay PL or high Championship , but the architecture of the Lane means that even small additional capacity is awkward & expensive.
Those who would like to see a 40k gate probably have to accept a move away from the Lane.
But that's not going to happen anytime soon - don't forget that we still owe £35m of the mortgage we took out just to pay Kevin for the (inadequate) Lane & and the other crap assets such as the embarrassing hotel.
There is just no point talking about ground improvement, let alone expansion , when we are clearly sailing so close to the wind financially.
Every spare penny is going to be needed to refresh the squad into something :
Lower average age & higher average quality,
On longer contracts
to see us through the next few years

 

[Keen Blade]

It's a myth that United couldn't head towards those numbers. For a start you can give the whole of the Lane end to away fans like we used too, including some of those that are now not sold due to segregation. Then where would you put the home fans that used to sit there?

Only get more than 3k away fans if we stay in PL

 

[originaltrueblade]

Wet Sham had outgrown the Boleyn well before they moved - always had thousands waiting for STs.
Plus they are the closest club to the 'City' money boys & Essex boys.
Plus they are in London , pop. 8m .. endless potential to fill their free stadium.
We can't possibly compare dem Blades to Wet Sham in terms of potential support.
Sunderland a phenomenon like Burnley - half the population go to the football , again , Sheffield has never been like that.
Pointless examples.
Yes we've grown our support steadily and might push up another few thousand if we stay PL or high Championship , but the architecture of the Lane means that even small additional capacity is awkward & expensive.
Those who would like to see a 40k gate probably have to accept a move away from the Lane.
But that's not going to happen anytime soon - don't forget that we still owe £35m of the mortgage we took out just to pay Kevin for the (inadequate) Lane & and the other crap assets such as the embarrassing hotel.
There is just no point talking about ground improvement, let alone expansion , when we are clearly sailing so close to the wind financially.
Every spare penny is going to be needed to refresh the squad into something :
Lower average age & higher average quality,
On longer contracts
to see us through the next few years

Depends on the new owner and we do have potential Burnley pop 80,000 Sunderland 277,000 so half the populations certainly don’t go to football. Sheffield just over 600,000 catchment area 1.3 million…huge potential and now the premier League is more famous than ever.
Expand the Lane when we are financially secure not before and no never move from the Church

 

[Keen Blade]

We could build a standing area at the back of the kop

Do you mean within the same footprint or extending it backwards ?
If extended , the whole roof has to come off at enormous expense
Can anyone put a £figure on reroofing with no posts + with a new area at the back for standing ?
What happens to the 10k who are shut out of the kop during construction ?

 

[nopigfansintown]

Only get more than 3k away fans if we stay in PL

On most occasions, yes. Exceptions would be derbies and localish clubs. Maybe a few other exceptions e.g. Sunderland.

There'd be the bonus of segregation being easier as the whole of the Lane end would be away fans only. We'd also reap from hospitality, more away tickets sold at walk up prices (even in the Championship), and bonus revenue from whatever else they'd do with the new/developed stand (matchday and non matchday income). The bad points would be losing fans behind both goals and potentially losing the Westfield or part of it for segregation and safety purposes (great views on both stands)..

 

[Keen Blade]

Depends on the new owner and we do have potential Burnley pop 80,000 Sunderland 277,000 so half the populations certainly don’t go to football. Sheffield just over 600,000 catchment area 1.3 million…huge potential and now the premier League is more famous than ever.
Expand the Lane when we are financially secure not before and no never move from the Church

I look forward to the day when we are financially secure !

 

[nopigfansintown]

Do you mean within the same footprint or extending it backwards ?
If extended , the whole roof has to come off at enormous expense
Can anyone put a £figure on reroofing with no posts + with a new area at the back for standing ?
What happens to the 10k who are shut out of the kop during construction ?

The post removal alone was supposedly going to cost 15 million. It was scheduled to happen if we stayed up one more season. Source: fan forum.

 

[Houston_Blade]

We’ll never get 40k

You could have stopped here. We sold out 32k a couple of times in the season cut short by covid.

Haven’t seen anybody suggesting 40k plus, only that we could do with a few extra seats for home fans, which would then in turn allow for more away fans in the upper tier.

Its not deluded to think we could fill 35-37000 when we are currently getting 29000 in the Championship and are limited to about 30500 average in the Premier League.

I just don’t get why anyone thinks we can’t average a few more when in the Premier League, we pretty much sell out every match despite the ticketing restrictions we impose on those who wish to get a ticket but are not allowed to.

I’m all for improving facilities and if it results in a couple more thousand on the capacity then we might sell out for big games, but we’d need to offer a lot more tickets to visiting fans for it to happen on anything like a regular basis.

West Ham the shammers average gate just over 30,000 not always filled moved into bigger stadium 60,000
Sunderland another example just saying

Both sold out their existing grounds on a regular basis prior to moving. Sunderland are a one team town, West Ham are in London where there are tonnes of floating fans ready to watch any old team, see Fulham and their ‘neutral zone’ for an example.

 

[Terry Starlight]

Let's just add 10 new seats per game and see how we get on

 

[Houston_Blade]

From the top of my head:

Brighton (new stadium), Southampton (new stadium), Fulham (stand), Bristol City (new stand), West Ham (stadium), Liverpool (stands) , Man United (huge expansions and new stadium speculation), Arsenal (stadium), Man City (stadium and mooted new stand), Forest (mooted new stand), Watford (stand), Villa (stand in the works), Rotherham (stadium), Brentford (stadium), Leicester (stadium), Coventry (stadium), Wolves (mooted stand), Everton ( new stadium currently being built), Stoke (stadium), Cardiff, Reading, Wigan, Huddersfield, Sunderland, Derby, Bolton (all new stadium), Luton (mooted new stadium).

Most of the ones you mention outside of the PL have half empty grounds. We won’t be a long term PL club, if we are and start to sell out regularly then it might be worth a few thousand more.

 

[nopigfansintown]

Most of the ones you mention outside of the PL have half empty grounds. We won’t be a long term PL club, if we are and start to sell out regularly then it might be worth a few thousand more.

I'd say that if you take the big six clubs out of the equation all of them have had comparable crowds to United in the Championship, and most of them have seen increased crowds when they've dropped back into the second tier or on occasion below the second tier, as a result of these expansions. If they've gone to the Premier League that has been even more pronounced. This isn't scientific though, admittedly. I'd have to get the average attendances and compare and contrast

 

[itsinyerblood]

I hope the new owners have ambitions to expand the lane.

In principle I agree, a larger capacity suggests a club on the up...but before we commit to something this impactful let's make sure that certain other essential bits of infrastructure are in place.

Today's game requires any club to be able to absorb a drop in funds and is somehow able to adjust and gradually maintain a place at the top table. Not easy I agree, but somehow we have to not simply be resilient but have the necessary motivation to push forward. Reading that I know it might seem fanciful, but for as long as I've supported the Blades we've been a yo-yo club, and as we now seek a new owner wouldn't it be nice if we managed to find that elusive individual who was in a position to support these ambitions?

 

[Houston_Blade]

I'd say that if you take the big six clubs out of the equation all of them have had comparable crowds to United in the Championship, and most of them have seen increased crowds when they've dropped back into the second tier or on occasion below the second tier, as a result of these expansions. If they've gone to the Premier League that has been even more pronounced. This isn't scientific though, admittedly. I'd have to get the average attendances and compare and contrast

Brighton - one club town no local competition
Southampton - one club town no local competition
Fulham - Chelsea fans 2nd team
Forest - PL for first time in ages, crest of a wave fans, will drop off, City rivals are in the National League
Brentford - Astronomical rise, London Club, novelty factor
Leicester - Won a PL and attracted fans, didn’t sell out prior to this
Wolves - 1 club town
Everton - if they drop out of PL will have good gates for a year or so then nothing, new ground could end up half empty

The others are either top 6 PL so have the demand for capacity or shit Championship or league one with half empty ground apart from Sunderland and Derby, both 1 club towns.

Not sure any are decent comparators.

 

[oldblade]

I don’t agree that gate income is ‘very insignificant’.

Television income is of course the biggest source of revenue but Matchday income will still be in the millions for us next year.

Agreed. If match day income is so worthless why would Everton be building a new stadium, why would Spurs have invested millions in their stadium, why did Man City move, why did Man Utd increase the size of their stadium several times, why did Arsenal move to the Emirates so that they could accommodate more people, etc.

 

[Kizmet]

Brighton - one club town no local competition
Southampton - one club town no local competition
Fulham - Chelsea fans 2nd team
Forest - PL for first time in ages, crest of a wave fans, will drop off, City rivals are in the National League
Brentford - Astronomical rise, London Club, novelty factor
Leicester - Won a PL and attracted fans, didn’t sell out prior to this
Wolves - 1 club town
Everton - if they drop out of PL will have good gates for a year or so then nothing, new ground could end up half empty

The others are either top 6 PL so have the demand for capacity or shit Championship or league one with half empty ground apart from Sunderland and Derby, both 1 club towns.

Not sure any are decent comparators.

Everton have a huge support
Cant agree that it would be sny less regardless of division
Their fans are certainly not glory hunters

 

[YES Blade]

We need to do something in order to help us to compete with clubs of a similar size as us. That should be building the best stadium and facilities possible for a club our size.

Unfortunately, I can just see us continuing to go with the cheap options and either doing nothing to the Lane or going for rubbish bolt on to our current outdated stands.

 

[Houston_Blade]

Everton have a huge support
Cant agree that it would be sny less regardless of division
Their fans are certainly not glory hunters

5 years in the Championship and they’d be well supported but not selling out a big new ground. Their support is based on being a perennial PL club.

It’ll never happen as they won’t go down and if they do they’ll bounce back and have a fun year or 2 seeing new grounds.

You only have to look at Man U and the fact that people who couldn’t get near a ST for years are now able to get one because they haven’t won the league for a few years.

 

[EddieColquhoun]

Makes me absolutely piss myself when people go on about making the ground bigger.
It's exactly the right size for when everyone wants to go, and that's including a few cheeky Liverpool or Man United fans in the home end when we play them.
If we can't sell 32,000 for an FA Cup semi final then we don't need more than 32,000 capacity for other games.

Our following was fairly close to Man City’s ( who average over 53,000).

 

[jono_t2000]

Right now not a priority. But if we did somehow stay up for 5 years+ our current capacity definitely wouldn't be big enough.

 

[Balham]

Ideally, based on the last 5 seasons, we'd have a capacity about 10% bigger than we have currently. However, given the expense required to get there and our current cashflow issues we're going to have to go with what we've got for the medium term. No big deal but we will miss out on some revenue next season because of that.

 

[nopigfansintown]

We need to do something in order to help us to compete with clubs of a similar size as us. That should be building the best stadium and facilities possible for a club our size.

Unfortunately, I can just see us continuing to go with the cheap options and either doing nothing to the Lane or going for rubbish bolt on to our current outdated stands.

The biggest threat to United moving from Bramall Lane is doing nothing. The longer the status quo exists the more salient the argument will be for leaving BL in the future. Too much to do at too high a cost will be the obvious rationale. Hillsborough has already arrived at that station imo.
I now see this as a likely scenario unless we get a Bloom like figure running us in the next few decades.

 

[ancientblade]

a new kop with cantilever and 15k seats would be enough would take our capacity to roughly 36k

 

[reedy63]

I am pretty sure if The Blades can stay in the Premier League for a long time. we might be able to redevelop The Kop and Tony Currie stand. It would have to more or less look like St James Park Newcastle. I don't think the other two stands can be redeveloped. but I'm not a builder and no to a new stadium. we must have one of the easiest grounds to get to. edge of the city center.a capacity of 60k.at the moment no chance. we need a takeover like Man City have be lucky enough to have. need about 6 billion to get to that level. Don't hold your breath on that happening.

 

[ReeceofBDTBL]

If we’d had a big enough ground we’d have averaged almost 30,000 this season, especially when you consider how a bigger ground gives you the chance to offer more season tickets and a bit more manoeuvrability in terms of one off offers, plus a few teams would bring 5 or 6 thousand.

We’re already at the stage where we’re selling out for the prem and the main thing holding the gate back is away fans for the smaller clubs like Bournemouth not selling out, segregation and restricted view seats.

Cantilever the Kop for now and go with the more financially lucrative option of expanding the south stand and building a load of new boxes. Absolute money making machines