The pinkun article......I have some concerns over some of the McNally comments

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I dont disagree with what David McNally says but I question some of the numbers.

He says we would need 35,000 to be self-sustainable and 27,000 would not.

I find this very strange comment for several reasons.

What revenue would the extra 8000 seats generate over 19 league games (I think we can assume they wouldnt be needed for cup games)

Just for chuckles lets assume we fill every seat in every game and they generate 25 quid in total revenue (seat and consessions)

Thats 200,000 per match or 3.8million a season.

Sounds great until we give it some thought

I would assume that to totally rebuild the stand and all the facilities it would take 20 million (has to be 25 million after interest payments)
So it would take 8-10 years of filling every single seat to pay back the money for the stand.

Its also a huge assumption that we have a big enough fan base to constantly fill such a stadium.

While we seem to have little problem filling 26,000... anything over 28,000 might be a problem.
Anything over 30,000 might just not be possible for most games as we just dont have the fan base for it. (or enough fans who can afford the current prices)

You would assume that demand this season would be incredible yet we are still seeing a few tickets being sold to the general public.
Assuming we stay in the PL, will the demand decrease over the next few years when the novelty wears off?

I like the idea that McNally is shooting high. I also like the fact he is delaying things by insisting 3 years of PL status.

By which time we would have a clearer idea of our core fan base and what is sustainable going forward. (plus the economic situation)

The bit that I dont understand is why they think 35,000 is self-sustainable when it only generates "at most" an extra 3.8M a year which is small potatoes compared to the 40M PL TV money and the 25M income from the 27,000 stadium, especially when you factor in the cost of building such a stand.
Couldnt you be self-sustainable by just spending around 2M per year less and not spending 20M on a stand we might not need?

Posted By: usacanary, Oct 14, 22:56:17