London: Chelsea wants to rule the football world, but its current stadium at Stamford Bridge is only just in the top 100 in Europe in terms of size.
At 42,000 seats, the stadium is less than half as big as Barcelona’s Camp Nou, and that is before a plan by the Catalans to boost their capacity further.
“It is just too small,” said one person close to Chelsea. “We are the eighth biggest in the Premier League but when Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham move to their new grounds that will push us down further. We need the size to compete with the rest of the Premier League and the rest of Europe.” Stamford Bridge reached 99 per cent capacity last season.
West Ham will move to London’s Olympic stadium next year, with a capacity of 54,000, and Tottenham finished buying the land for its new stadium in March.
Roman Abramovich, Chelsea’s Russian owner, made the plans for the stadium to cope with the effects of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations, which stated that clubs should balance their transfer spending with their revenues.
“Under FFP a new stadium was very important. It looked like they would struggle in the long term,” said Stefan Szymanski, the author of ‘Money and Football’.
Those regulations have now been watered down and have been challenged by a court in Belgium. But a new stadium could still represent Abramovich’s legacy, a chance to reduce Chelsea’s long-term dependency on his spending power.
The new build also gives Chelsea the chance to increase its corporate hospitality, a key revenue stream, said Prof. Szymanski. “On the footprint they are building it could have been 80,000 seats but that is not what you want because you can build huge corporate hospitality capacity,” he said. Chelsea is planning 60,000 seats.
“It will pay for itself, it is a slam dunk,” he added. “The model is Arsenal. Their revenues rose hugely when they opened the Emirates stadium. Arsenal has one of the highest debt levels of any club but no one blinks because it is all very safe and financed in the long term by stadium revenues,” he said.
Chelsea’s stadium ambitions have been complicated by the club’s corporate structure. In the 1970s and 80s, while trying to redevelop Stamford Bridge, Chelsea ran into financial difficulties and had to sell the stadium.
After winning it back in 1992, then chairman Ken Bates put the pitch in the hands of the fans, who own the 18,000-odd shares in the Chelsea Pitch Owners company.
In turn the fans have blocked attempts by Chelsea to relocate the stadium. Without their approval, Chelsea football club would lose the rights to its name. A spokesman for Chelsea Pitch Owners declined to comment on the redevelopment plans for Stamford Bridge, but the fans are likely to be delighted to be able to stay at the ground.
— Financial Times
