Thetownend.com

It appears Scunny are looking to build a new stadium ( GP itself is only 27 yrs old  :eek: )
Anyway there is a link here

http://stadiumdb.com/designs/eng/scunthorpe_united_stadium

The bit that caught my interest was the cost, £18 million for a 12k stadium but up to 50% of that would be covered ny football fund/eu etc

So basically a new stadium for £9 million, compare that to Powers estimate for a training facility of around £4/5M  :hmmm:

Looks somewhat like a smaller version of Brighton's ground.  Not a bad thing as that place is the pretty much the only decent original ground design of the last 10-15 years probably

  The advantage for clubs like Scunny, is that land prices are probably quite low and lots of brownfield about waiting for a use.

They only moving 900 metres so imagine own the surrounding land, as we once did  :badmood:

Town have never owned any land....

I think you've missed something here. Just because somebody else is footing half the bill, it doesn't mean the stadium won't still cost 18M.

That is a nice looking little stadium I would love the CG to be developed similar to that if it was possible.

Although I would prefer a bigger cpacity of somewhere between 17k and 20k because if we do go up then crowds will probably go up as well.

Otherwise it does look very nice, not sure if grants are available for new grounds from the FL/FA like there were a few years ago or if it would all have to be funded by sponsorship/commercializing areas.

As a comparison York City new ground has a capacity of 8k and is going to cost £37m.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-29565797

Well obv will still cost 18m but the way it reads up to 50% will come from funds etc so a 9m cost to the club.
As their current stadium was only built in 1988 it can't be a crumbling wreck surely, from the artists rendering looks like a hotel is included in the build in a stand so am guessing more than match day use only is the intention

As a purely theoretical exercise potential ground capacity is interesting....there really is no evidence from the last 20 odd years to suggest we'd need any more than 15K tops, and even that might be an over estimate.  Space would be better used in facilities rather than capacity.

Take 2 sides who historically are a bit smaller than us, but not by much, Bormuff and Roverum.....both have either a new ground or a re-development and get about 10,000 or a bit less in the Championship....I'd imagine we could get something similar if promoted.

On average, yes. But what about the big games which are necessary to boost that average? It's stupid to say we'd only average 10k so we only need 10k. If we were im the Championship, plenty of sides would bring 2-3k and we'd be foolish not to accommodate for that by building a stadium that held at least as many as the CG.

Personally, I think lower tiers holding 10-12k and upper tiers holding 3-5k are the way to do it, with the upper tiers only open when necessary.

I'd go with 15k, but designed in a way that it will be easy to expand.

As I said, a generous decision would justify a capacity of 15K, to allow for the odd big game...but the main focus should be on how to accommodate the 365 money generators, rather than mainly empty seats.

I think the £37m quoted is for a lot more than just an 8k seat stadium. The complex includes a community hub with health facilities, a library etc., a new sports and leisure centre and a small retail park.

I think the rough rule of thumb for the cost of building a new stadium is around £1,000 per seat.

Yeah....or a mill per thousand.

What about Brighton and Reading? Think both had similar or lower crowds prior to moving to their new grounds.

With a new ground and additional revenue streams, if you keep the ticket prices down the attendances could increase dramatically.

Looking at the "satellite view", there's an alarming lack of pubs in the walk-able area.

I'm out

Surely this shows the need for a larger capacity, Rotherham's new stadium has a 12,000 capacity and this year despite being near the bottom of the league they have averaged 10,259.  Also Bmuff with a 12,000 capacity with 9945 average.  this means that they are operating at 85% capacity.  Bmuff with only up to 2,000 away fans will be missing out on lots of extra tickets from all those Leeds fans wanting to reminisce about trips down on bank holidays to trash the town!  As well as Wolves, Wednesday, Forest, Brighton, Norwich etc.

My thoughts have always been because of the limited size for redeveloping the bank, that this should be given to the home fans and give the new and larger Town End to the away fans when they are replaced to allow all the away fans in one place and have more seats on the side for home fans where they want them  

Brighton used to get decent crowds at the Goldstone, when things were going OK for them. Reading catchment population is twice that of the Borough of Swindon.

Neither was there for Wigan, or Reading, or Swansea, or Cardiff, or any other club that moved up to the next level via good off field management and promotion.

I'm sure we rehearse these same arguments every six months or so.

We do, and are split between possibly the pessimists and the 'build it and they will come' believers, I suspect reality will be somewhere in the middle.

However can we please take Wigan out of the equation, rugby league town that has no and will never have much interest in football - their crowds for what they were in the premiership were always swelled by the fact that if you lived in the NW and wanted to see a premier game you could always be guaranteed to get in at Wigan - plus its on the west coast main line - I worked in Wigan for 4+ years and no one I knew supported the football team!

BTW I haven't read any of the link that started this thread, but why the bloody hell do Scunthorpe need another new ground?

I am doing a project just outside Scunthorpe at the moment and it is nowhere near bloody anywhere - site meetings are essentially a bloody day out - although if you do go there, there is a massive Rainham Steel factory - who must be one of the biggest supporters of football in this country over the years considering the advertising hoardings they seem to have at most grounds - have they ever been at the County Ground!

Yes and I never tire of pointing out the bleeding obvious, like Swansea and Wigan get used for rugby, arguably... certainly in the case of Wigan the bigger sport in the Town.  When Ospreys play Scarlets in the egg chasing local derby, they get just about 20,000.

You use readings catchment area as an example but not Swindons catchment area!! Are you trying to say that all town fans come from the Swindon borough.we have a huge catchment area as far as Gloucester to the north west and right down into whiltshire to the south.

...all of which has no bearing whatsoever on the average attendances of the football clubs playing on those stadia.

The graph below (bizarrely, back to front) shows Swansea's average attendances over the last 100 years.

(https://scfcheritage.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/graph.jpg)

Consistently in the 4,000 to 5,000 range from the mid 1980s to the early 2000s.  And then they trebled.

A similar effect was seen in Reading a few years before that.

There is no reason at all why our own attendances would also not see a step change if the fortunes of the club were also to take an upturn.

Edit:
Should have added that the graph is now a few years out of date, and that they're now averaging over 20,000.  Yes, they're in the Prem and, no, I doubt we'll be there ourselves any time soon.  But nevertheless it does illustrate that even a club like Swansea - who were nothing other than a bog standard lower league side for years with crowds well below ours - can transform themselves with a little effort and a little luck.  There is nothing to suggest that Swindon is uniquely incapable of doing this also.  Nothing.

No doubt if the CG facilities were upgraded to a 15,000 capacity, then there would be plenty of room for an increase on the current 8,000.

The proposed Scunthorpe stadium is designed upgradable to 18k from the initial 12k

Their current home holds 9183

Average Attendance:
2013-2014: 4,013 (League Two)
2012-2013: 3,465 (League One)
2011-2012: 4,339 (League One)

According to http://www.footballgroundguide.com/scunthorpe_united/

I'm not sure that "historically" either of those two clubs are only "a little smaller than us". I'm pretty sure if you compared our average attendances since say 1960, we'd look significantly bigger.

I don't think either has ever had a period like that Swindon went throught in the60's and early 70's where we regularly had crowds of 15k - 20k.

Compare for example the 1969 season. Swindon vs Rotherham at the CG attracted a crowd of over 23k. The Millmoor away game less than 10k. Swindon vs Bmouth that season a similar story.

OK I'll grant you that was one of our most successful season ever, but the previous season our home game against Bmouth had over 11k while the corresponding fixture had less than 7.5k there. The season before that more than 14.5 thousand at the CG, whereas that lot from Boscombe could drag in a poxy 6.3k. Similar story in 65/66. In the 64/65 season for some reason the home and away games against Rotherham were played on Good Friday, and three days later on Easter Monday. Over 17k turned out at our end, less than 6k at theirs.

Neither of those two have ever played in the top flight, neither have ever won a major trophy. Bournemouth have barely moved out of the third tier in their entire history other than 2/3 season in the 90's in the second division, and their current run.

On the subject of which, they're top of the Championship and they can still barely scrape 10k to 11k. Even for their League Cup quarter final against Liverpool.

I'm pretty sure we'd be attracting more support in that position.


 

I'm fully aware of our history 50. 40, 30 years ago, but times change and for a number of reasons our historic support has dwindled....so that you can take a season like 02/03 and find us averaging 5,400 and Bormuff a division below 5,800 and Roverum 7,500.

It's factoring in the our ancient history, which makes me suggest we may be a little bigger than Bormuff and Roverum, this of course has no impact on the modern history which suggest otherwise.

I'm not sure there is some latent pool of fans out there, who are waiting to return, but rather new people who might be attracted...so called plastics.

The Ospreys have had two crowds over 10,000 this season, both local derbies.  Every other crowd has been less than 8,000 (sound familiar?).  Over the decade or so at the Liberty, they've averaged around 8,000 - which fuels an ongoing soul searching in Welsh rugby - has it been choked by regionalisation? 

All most interesting, but there's no question as to who the top dogs at and biggest beneficiaries of the upgrade to the Liberty are....

And London to the west..

If we were to redevelop the CG, then we would assume to keep the DRS and Arkells which is around 11,000 of current capacity. We would assume that the Town End would be the most suitable to increase from say 2000 to 4000 to build a stand of the height of the other 2 stands with some executive type facilities and maximise the space behind for revenue generation.

Stratton Bank you would probably want to keep at least theame number or maybe up to around 3000. You could split that 1500 away for most games and then for bigger games give it all to away.

That would take you to 17000 which would cover our needs in if we were in the Championship or big cup games. It wouldn't make the ground look too out of place with the existing footprint and give it a balanced feel.

Isn't it at about 15,500 now? That would seem to be a lot of outlay for little return, if my memory is correct.

It's 14500 now, but the outlay, as has been done to death, is about 7-day-a-week revenue, not capacity.

If we get to the championship then we'd easily average over 10k a game,  given the promotion factor,  the increase in away support, the fact that fans that use to attend might have a sniff of interest. Yes, I'm one of those latent fans Reg. 13 to 14k crowds would be more common at that level.
I think we're very similar to a club like Swansea.

Ha there is allsorts over the web, from 14700 to 15700. I thought it was 14600 and then Jed put some shooting sticks in the pitch to make it over 15k for the Chelsea game. I guess I'm saying the amount we would expect in the Championship if we get there, is he ground is sufficient, unless we d really well.

Surely the fact we can only attract 8000 when top of the league and playing some of the best football for years puts the kibosh on thinking we'd get much more than 10,000 in the Championship...

We should be getting 10,000 now

We averaged a touch under 7k last time we were in the Championship, ok that was a car crash of a season but none of the 3 seasons before that produced a 10k average either.

Completely disagree.  We have been outside of the top 2 divisions for 15 years, and have done nothing to the ground for 20 years.  Averaging 8,000 at home for a club in that position is impressive.  I think a lot of folk seriously under-estimate the effect that getting back to the 'big time' (it's all relative) will have.  It's been that long that we've lost sight of what football at that level is all about.

Exactly. Plus most clubs in this division bring less than 500 fans.

Lets have a think about this, asking your mates if they fancy going to watch town against any of the following:

Crawley, Rochdale, Colchester, Fleetwood etc etc. You could probably list the majority of league 1 to be honest

vs:

Leeds, Fulham, Norwich, N Forest, Cardiff etc. We have shown time and again in the cups etc that we have enough fans to come out of the woodwork for big games. The championship would have that feel most weeks.

People, in the main, don't go to watch the opposition - glam FA Cup ties notwithstanding.

If any increase in attendances comes about just because there are more away fans defeats the object.

The club will only progress on the back of an increase in Swindon fans  attending.

People around here are pretty much apathetic about most things - not just football

Doubtless there'd be a bit of bounce, due to novelty...but we've played most of these relatively recently....Leeds game got 14508, for a midweek, Norwich 11972, when they like us were going well.  A bit back Forest 8,108, Cardiff 7,500.

If we did go up for  next season, I reckon average gate would be around 9,000.

We would 100% average 10k in championship even if home numbers stay the same, away followings are so much larger. We usually get 300-400 most weekends, that number would be at least 1000 for everyone and add in a few 2500 followings.

If we went up, more of our fans would watch as I'm bored of watching us against the likes of crawley, colchester etc

With the same ground, you'd probably see us peak at around 10k average gate, that's fair.  However, a new ground mixed with a new league could well push that higher but more importantly would allow the ground works for improving as a team.  That's where the success stories come from with new/developed grounds.  They don't guarantee anything, but without them, nothing much changes.

I'd reckon a redeveloped ground would need between 15k and 18k with the ability to expand.  Not least because it's the sq footage underneath that is needed for the non matchday revenue.

A new ground has to have the following;

A hotel/Conferencing centre
Cinema + Frankie & Bennies + Halfords + PC Word
Stuff that can be used when we're not playing at home
Proper toilets, loads of things that get people to come early to games
A capacity 18-22,000 that could enable us to host other sports events, Eng U21's, Womens team, Egg chasing, Jehovah Witness gatherings etc

If you were a betting man, Reg, I'd accept the bet.

Think you're well wide of the mark.

Hopefully we'll get to find out...

Hopefully.

There's almost nothing in that post that I wouldn't dispute. Better class opposition always attracts more fans. Any casual perusal of attendance figures at any point in our history will tell you that. Our worst attendances are invariably against poor, unattractive sides. What did we get against Oldham in our season in the PL? 11,000 or so.

And you're mental to be dismissive of a growth in attendances based on higher numbers of away fan. It could easily put 750 - 1000 on the gate each game in the Championship. And they all pay their money. More per punter than home fans do. How the fuck is that a bad thing?

It's not a bad thing.

But, surely, the aim is to increase the home fans - not just relying on the increase in attendances laying with more away fans.

It shouldn't be too much to expect 10,000 home fans for Championship football