Stadium and facilities redevelopment post KMC

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Last season we only gave away teams a large proportion of the BL lower tier. This is proof positive that our crowds have grown since our last foray in the prem. We also froze out Sheffield's student population and made it extremely difficult (bordering on impossible) for new fans to get tickets for games. Part timers also had a lot of hoops to jump through - you often couldn't access tickets until a few days before games, which rules out a fair proportion of any club's support.
The South stand seats were often all full for many games in the Championship - never mind the prem - meaning the business is effectively turning away clientele that want to pay more for the product. Our commercial facilities are also full for many games in the Championship, meaning we are effectively turning away big money every game. We haven't even considered catering for the premier league tourist fan as we can't cater for the Sheffielder who has a few quid. The Lane has staged some lucrative events over the last few years which would also have proved even more lucrative with these facilities.If you look at our corporate income in the Championship, it lags behind most clubs; particularly those with new grounds.It is better than Wednesday's though, and in the typical insular Sheffielder mentality some view this as some grand achievement. The Bramall Lane footprint is huge, but a lot of it makes no money whenever a match or big event takes place at Bramall Lane.
Despite this, I view upgrading the category to Cat one as the more important short term goal in making us no worse than a yo yo team. Bringing top class youngsters through regularly bolster the team and the bank balance, and is effectively the only type of financial doping allowed in the Championship.
A visionary is needed. Preferably one with big pockets.
 

nopigfansintown said:
Last season we only gave away teams a large proportion of the BL lower tier. This is proof positive that our crowds have grown since our last foray in the prem. We also froze out Sheffield's student population and made it extremely difficult (bordering on impossible) for new fans to get tickets for games. Part timers also had a lot of hoops to jump through - you often couldn't access tickets until a few days before games, which rules out a fair proportion of any club's support.
The South stand seats were often all full for many games in the Championship - never mind the prem - meaning the business is effectively turning away clientele that want to pay more for the product. Our commercial facilities are also full for many games in the Championship, meaning we are effectively turning away big money every game. We haven't even considered catering for the premier league tourist fan as we can't cater for the Sheffielder who has a few quid. The Lane has staged some lucrative events over the last few years which would also have proved even more lucrative with these facilities.If you look at our corporate income in the Championship, it lags behind most clubs; particularly those with new grounds.It is better than Wednesday's though, and in the typical insular Sheffielder mentality some view this as some grand achievement. The Bramall Lane footprint is huge, but a lot of it makes no money whenever a match or big event takes place at Bramall Lane.
Despite this, I view upgrading the category to Cat one as the more important short term goal in making us no worse than a yo yo team. Bringing top class youngsters through regularly bolster the team and the bank balance, and is effectively the only type of financial doping allowed in the Championship.
A visionary is needed. Preferably one with big pockets.
Click to expand...

Excellent post especially regarding the wasted space in the area. I think we should build behind the Kop and move the pitch say, 30 meters towards Shoreham Street so we can extend the Lane End. Similar in a way to what Spurs did. Their stadium is brilliant now.
There's huge potential for corporate and other facilities at the Kop End - I've no idea what is happening to the land vis-a-vis McCabe of course. Time will tell I guess? The Academy has to be upgraded to Cat one first though IMO
 
Just spotted this on the OS - interesting when you read the body of the text as to why they are doing this eventually

www.sufc.co.uk

Memorial Garden to be moved

Sheffield United have always had a fine reputation for the way in which the passing of members of its special family are remembered and paid tribute to upon their passing to a higher league. The memorial garden, with its wall remembering those past, is a feature where we have been able to allow some
www.sufc.co.uk www.sufc.co.uk
 
Berkshire Blade said:
www.sufc.co.uk

Memorial Garden to be moved

Sheffield United have always had a fine reputation for the way in which the passing of members of its special family are remembered and paid tribute to upon their passing to a higher league. The memorial garden, with its wall remembering those past, is a feature where we have been able to allow some
www.sufc.co.uk www.sufc.co.uk

Well this seems like there are plans...
Click to expand...
"In the near future, we anticipate that there will be extensive development of Bramall Lane's facilities to improve our historic home."

Interesting.
 
BornOnShorehamStreet said:
Excellent post especially regarding the wasted space in the area. I think we should build behind the Kop and move the pitch say, 30 meters towards Shoreham Street so we can extend the Lane End. Similar in a way to what Spurs did. Their stadium is brilliant now.
There's huge potential for corporate and other facilities at the Kop End - I've no idea what is happening to the land vis-a-vis McCabe of course. Time will tell I guess? The Academy has to be upgraded to Cat one first though IMO
Click to expand...

That's it, we've got that much space behind the Kop and the South Stand that we can easily build a good proportion of a new stand without touching the existing stands until we need to knock them down and finish off during the off season/early part of the new season. The ultimate goal should be to move the pitch closer to the corner of Shoreham Street/Cherry Street giving us further options to develop John Street and Lane End.
 
I think moving the Memorial Garden could be a good thing, irrespective of the proposed redevelopments. I think they are potentially nicer locations that could be used than the current one, which looks a bit like an after thought (well, I guess it was!).

That said, I don't personally know of anyone commemorated there, so would fully appreciate if people felt upset by this. But I think that the club have an area to those who have passed, which is much nicer.
 
Bristol Blade said:
"In the near future, we anticipate that there will be extensive development of Bramall Lane's facilities to improve our historic home."

Interesting.
Click to expand...

Get kop done now. Won't need it imo all season due to lack of crowds.

Re position exits of South Stand (hence memorial garden). Makes more space for kop exits.

I'm purely guessing. But given SD restrictions we won't need kop space. So might as well do it now. Rather than having to restrict crowds in future.


Or it's a new betting kiosk.
 

nopigfansintown said:
Last season we only gave away teams a large proportion of the BL lower tier. This is proof positive that our crowds have grown since our last foray in the prem. We also froze out Sheffield's student population and made it extremely difficult (bordering on impossible) for new fans to get tickets for games. Part timers also had a lot of hoops to jump through - you often couldn't access tickets until a few days before games, which rules out a fair proportion of any club's support.
The South stand seats were often all full for many games in the Championship - never mind the prem - meaning the business is effectively turning away clientele that want to pay more for the product. Our commercial facilities are also full for many games in the Championship, meaning we are effectively turning away big money every game. We haven't even considered catering for the premier league tourist fan as we can't cater for the Sheffielder who has a few quid. The Lane has staged some lucrative events over the last few years which would also have proved even more lucrative with these facilities.If you look at our corporate income in the Championship, it lags behind most clubs; particularly those with new grounds.It is better than Wednesday's though, and in the typical insular Sheffielder mentality some view this as some grand achievement. The Bramall Lane footprint is huge, but a lot of it makes no money whenever a match or big event takes place at Bramall Lane.
Despite this, I view upgrading the category to Cat one as the more important short term goal in making us no worse than a yo yo team. Bringing top class youngsters through regularly bolster the team and the bank balance, and is effectively the only type of financial doping allowed in the Championship.
A visionary is needed. Preferably one with big pockets.
Click to expand...
I agreed with every word of this until the academy section, which costs a lot of initial investment for results in many years down the line.
That is a long term goal with long term results, upgrading the South Stand delivers results immediately and will pay for itself before the academy gets into it's stride.
We'd be better continuing our current approach of picking up youngsters that have been in Cat1 academy systems elsewhere but have been released and we get them further down the line and try to develop them into our first team. Our higher league standing should make us more attractive to better talent now.
If we created more seats in the South Stand at the higher pricing as well as better conferencing facilities, that returns better revenues that allows us to grow while leaving Shoreham as the cheaper option and maybe even removing the columns or further expansion put in place further down the line.

I'm certain we could get another 4-5k easily, based on all the things you've listed above, infact we'd probably get close to those numbers just in season tickets, and that's without us opening the whole of BL for away fans as we did the last time we were here.
 
It's a massive improvement on the 70's bare concrete (never been a fan of Brutalist architecture), but I think it looks a bit weird in black. I can't help thinking it would have looked better brightened up in white.
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
I agreed with every word of this until the academy section, which costs a lot of initial investment for results in many years down the line.
That is a long term goal with long term results, upgrading the South Stand delivers results immediately and will pay for itself before the academy gets into it's stride.
We'd be better continuing our current approach of picking up youngsters that have been in Cat1 academy systems elsewhere but have been released and we get them further down the line and try to develop them into our first team. Our higher league standing should make us more attractive to better talent now.
If we created more seats in the South Stand at the higher pricing as well as better conferencing facilities, that returns better revenues that allows us to grow while leaving Shoreham as the cheaper option and maybe even removing the columns or further expansion put in place further down the line.

I'm certain we could get another 4-5k easily, based on all the things you've listed above, infact we'd probably get close to those numbers just in season tickets, and that's without us opening the whole of BL for away fans as we did the last time we were here.
Click to expand...

I think the cost of the academy would be a lot less than the new South Stand. An extreme example is Liverpool, who's main stand expansion was double the cost of the new mega academy.I think our academy would be a lot more modest - so maybe 20-30 million instead of 50 million. I think the stands are much more expensive and cost prohibitive. I agree that the stands offer a more clear ROI in the short term. Academies are notoriously difficult to predict when it comes to ROI. I do see the trend for value from cat 2 and three academies continuing on a downward trend, which is why so many clubs have shut or are shutting them. We've been a bit of an antidote to that, but I wouldn't bank on it continuing.
 
nopigfansintown said:
I think the cost of the academy would be a lot less than the new South Stand. An extreme example is Liverpool, who's main stand expansion was double the cost of the new mega academy.I think our academy would be a lot more modest - so maybe 20-30 million instead of 50 million. I think the stands are much more expensive and cost prohibitive. I agree that the stands offer a more clear ROI in the short term. Academies are notoriously difficult to predict when it comes to ROI. I do see the trend for value from cat 2 and three academies continuing on a downward trend, which is why so many clubs have shut or are shutting them. We've been a bit of an antidote to that, but I wouldn't bank on it continuing.
Click to expand...
The issue with the academy is to move to Cat1 we need to move into somewhere with significantly more room. That's expensive, on top of that it's the ongoing cost year on year and if you are counting young talent that the Cat1 has produced you're looking at least 10 years from us getting them at 8. The other products we find between now and then would already have been here. I can see value of picking up the Cat1 players who do not quite make it elsewhere and giving them another chance and its considerably cheaper and us moving to another site and building a new complex.
Just to be clear, I do think we should do this eventually, but I think there are more pressing issues for structural investment and that starts with the ground initially.
 
So I think we will see training ground/academy improvements first for a number of reasons rightly or wrongly. First, it’s clear wilder wants more space and facilities for the first team he references shirecliffe being like a working men’s club several times in interviews. To do this the academy has to be moved off the site because there isn’t space there for an improved first team training facility and an academy which is of the same quality it is now. So if you are going to move the academy to a new site you may aswell aim for cat 1 as opposed to building one that’s cat 2. Also the women’s team need training facilities and pitches so combines the women’s and academy site in a facility which can later be expanded to include the first team makes sense. Shirecliffe can then be improved in the short term and maybe then comes stadium improvements before moving the the first team elsewhere also. Secondly being cat 1 isn’t just about bringing youngsters in at 8 I believe it means we can approach any youngster at a lower cat academy that haven’t signed professional terms and bring them in for nothing whilst also preventing other doing this with our 13/14 year olds so it could pay off in as little as 2 years. This is in line with wilders ambitions which he talked about with Colin Murray on his at home with podcast where he talks about dominating the city. You could expand this to include the whole region tbf as us being cat 1 effectively makes all other local clubs academies defunct as we can skim the cream of the top.
 
Yogi said:
So I think we will see training ground/academy improvements first for a number of reasons rightly or wrongly. First, it’s clear wilder wants more space and facilities for the first team he references shirecliffe being like a working men’s club several times in interviews. To do this the academy has to be moved off the site because there isn’t space there for an improved first team training facility and an academy which is of the same quality it is now. So if you are going to move the academy to a new site you may aswell aim for cat 1 as opposed to building one that’s cat 2. Also the women’s team need training facilities and pitches so combines the women’s and academy site in a facility which can later be expanded to include the first team makes sense. Shirecliffe can then be improved in the short term and maybe then comes stadium improvements before moving the the first team elsewhere also. Secondly being cat 1 isn’t just about bringing youngsters in at 8 I believe it means we can approach any youngster at a lower cat academy that haven’t signed professional terms and bring them in for nothing whilst also preventing other doing this with our 13/14 year olds so it could pay off in as little as 2 years. This is in line with wilders ambitions which he talked about with Colin Murray on his at home with podcast where he talks about dominating the city. You could expand this to include the whole region tbf as us being cat 1 effectively makes all other local clubs academies defunct as we can skim the cream of the top.
Click to expand...


The main appeal of being a Cat 1 is that you can pick players up nationwide, rather than a local catchment.

In addition, you can poach players from "lesser" academies, for what some might call an unreasonably low fee.

If you can't beat them, join them.
 
Yogi said:
So I think we will see training ground/academy improvements first for a number of reasons rightly or wrongly. First, it’s clear wilder wants more space and facilities for the first team he references shirecliffe being like a working men’s club several times in interviews. To do this the academy has to be moved off the site because there isn’t space there for an improved first team training facility and an academy which is of the same quality it is now. So if you are going to move the academy to a new site you may aswell aim for cat 1 as opposed to building one that’s cat 2. Also the women’s team need training facilities and pitches so combines the women’s and academy site in a facility which can later be expanded to include the first team makes sense. Shirecliffe can then be improved in the short term and maybe then comes stadium improvements before moving the the first team elsewhere also. Secondly being cat 1 isn’t just about bringing youngsters in at 8 I believe it means we can approach any youngster at a lower cat academy that haven’t signed professional terms and bring them in for nothing whilst also preventing other doing this with our 13/14 year olds so it could pay off in as little as 2 years. This is in line with wilders ambitions which he talked about with Colin Murray on his at home with podcast where he talks about dominating the city. You could expand this to include the whole region tbf as us being cat 1 effectively makes all other local clubs academies defunct as we can skim the cream of the top.
Click to expand...
Leeds have a Cat1 academy.
 
Flatulent_Bob said:
Leeds have a Cat1 academy.
Click to expand...
Tbf I was thinking South Yorkshire but yeah they do and so do derby I think and both have been very productive in recent years but like Kanye says it gives us national reach and a chance to dominate the region
 

Yogi said:
Tbf I was thinking South Yorkshire but yeah they do and so do derby I think and both have been very productive in recent years but like Kanye says it gives us national reach and a chance to dominate the region
Click to expand...

We could go east and take some out of Lincolnshire. They probably end up at Boro or Norwich, and Norwich have been getting some good players in.

Leeds only got their cat 1 status this July, so if we hurry up we can minimise their advantage.
 
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