Liverpool could join FSG’s £100m club when they open at Anfield Road Liverpool saw the second largest
increase in income from the match of
the Premier League 23.11.2023 at 15:05 Updated 23.11.2023 15.06 bookmark A
general view of the interior of the stadium ahead of the Premier League
match between Liverpool FC and AFC Bournemouth at Anfield on August 19
(Photo: George Wood/Getty Images) During the current campaign,
Liverpool’s match revenues are not as high as the club had hoped. The
Buckingham Group, which is working on the £80m redevelopment of the
Anfield Road End, has fallen into administration and the Reds have been
forced to hire another contractor to complete the work at Preston-based
Rayner Rowen, so work continues. So far, the Liverpool saga has seen a
maximum attendance of around 50,000, around 11,000 less than planned and
4,000 less than last season, while work continued around the previous
structure. . On Thursday, the club announced that a major milestone had
been reached when part of the upper level of the Anfield Road End was
opened for the match against Manchester United on December 17,
which will see an internal emergency trial in conjunction with Liverpool City
Council. . and a public testing event scheduled for December 11th. Further
work is required to complete the renovations and make the stand fully
functional, but the clarity of the partial opening of the stand indicates that a full
opening is not too far away, meaning the higher the demand for tickets and
the club can accommodate. is to break the £100 million mark, which only
Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur have managed to achieve so
far. The collapse of the Buckingham Group and the subsequent delays in
completing the renovations had a financial impact on the club, with a
capacity 18% below the normal £4.2m per game, or approximately £750,000. a
possible loss of every game compared to what would have been expected at the
start of the season. Liverpool chief executive Billy Hogan initially
expressed hope that the club’s schedule could continue into October, although
the schedule had to be revised after Rayner Rowen’s workload was assessed
and Test events taken into account. to the hope of January. The club’s owners,
Fenway Sports Group, have been looking to boost matchday revenue
since they bought the club for £300m in 2010. A major £120m refurbishment was
completed in 2016, increasing capacity from 45,500 to 54,000. state-of-the-art
facilities and significantly raise the bar on hospitality. When completed, the
Anfield Road End will have a capacity of 61,000, around 34% greater than when
FSG arrived at Anfield 13 years ago. A
look at what the other so-called ‘big six’ have done over the past decade shows
the financial impact of stadium investment – only Tottenham Hotspur’s
£1 billion world-class new 63,000-seat home offers a greater return. increase
match day income outside Liverpool. One of the biggest decisions FSG had to
make when buying the Reds was whether to keep the team at Anfield or
look for a new stadium. Faced with a similar decision when they bought the
Boston Red Sox in 2002 and decided to stay at the iconic, if somewhat tired,
Fenway Park, the ownership group began a project to increase revenue by
developing the existing environment. At the Sportico Invest in Sports
conference in New York last year, where the ECHO was present, FSG
partner and Red Sox chairman and CEO Sam Kennedy said: “We’ve found an
incredible location, a location that means so much more to the community
than football. . . . .It is literally a place where generations have shared
memories and created bonds and connections unlike any other sport
when you think about what Anfield means to Liverpool. “That said, when
we got there it required significant investment. There was no premium
offering, not much focus on food and drink and, to put it mildly, the fight day
experience. andquot;There was talk of possibly a twin building with Everton
and possibly building one venue for both clubs. I can assure you that it was a
bad idea, it would have been a bad idea for us to support it for reasons that may
now seem obvious to people who understand global football. andquot;We
made the decision to do exactly what we did at Fenway Park to preserve
Anfield, protect it and expand it. We’ve invested hundreds of millions of pounds
into the facility, created a new main stand at Anfield Road that comes online.
All of this is happening on site to get people to the games sooner and
improve the experience there. andquot;Obviously it’s a lot harder to
manage design and build when you’re 4,000 miles away, so we’ve opened a
commercial office in Liverpool and London to manage the process.
andquot;I think it is well received. We are still small in the Premier League in
terms of venue size and demand for tickets and access continues to be
disappointing, but we think that is good
considering how special the venue is. andquot; In the 2021/22 financial season,
the Reds generated matchday revenue of £87m, behind only Spurs (£106m) and Manchester United (£111m). FSG and
Liverpool will aim to break the £100m mark once they realize a complete
rebuild is complete. Over the past decade, the Reds’ investment has risen
from £45m to £87m and is likely to be over £100m by the time the 2024/25
financial year is announced. Let’s look at the period (through analysis
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