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SOL expansion

Lord Nigle said:
There’s a complete lack of ambition and aspiration in your posts. The club have a wonderful opportunity to take the club forward and compete at the highest level. The SoL would project this to the rest of the world .
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So are we saying that the club lack ambition when they obviously won't extend this summer?
 

JackL said:
Can't help but think the people saying "build it and they will come" must be on a wind up. Its already been built in its current form for over 20 years and they're not coming :lol:
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I largely agree with the sentiment.

However the same things were said when we built a 42k seater stadium. We weren’t selling out a 22k capacity at Roker in 96/97 in the top flight. It’s a bigger jump from 21k to 42k than it is 47 to 55k! (Bit of devil’s advocate!)
 
Sea to Shining Sea said:
I largely agree with the sentiment.

However the same things were said when we built a 42k seater stadium. We weren’t selling out a 22k capacity at Roker in 96/97 in the top flight. It’s a bigger jump from 21k to 42k than it is 47 to 55k! (Bit of devil’s advocate!)
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Yes but, I feel we've peaked. Back in the 90s, we hadn't.
 
Weststand said:
the footbridge was rubbished my a load of naysayers, it was always that the wearmouth bridge is only 2 mins walk so whats the point...now that you see it, now that its built, now that you see how it fits in with the keel line, now that it brings the sheepfolds into the city centre, now that its bringing millions of investment in, now that it 'makes sense'....I dont think anybody is saying that its a bad idea!

feasibility studies, vision, ambition and forward thinking!
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Are the lanes on the Wearmouth bridge reduced on match days to allow the crowds of people to cross over?

That in itself should have been enough reason to think about alternatives.

Back on the topic of the SOL. Hospitality definitely needs to be expanded somehow when the majority of packages have already sold out for next season that is a very good indicator we could be doing more.
 
1more said:
Sunderland has a population of 275k
Tyne and Wear population is approx 1.1m
County Durham's population is 530k
Northumberland is 320k

That's a fairly large catchment any for 2 PL clubs

I'd say now is the right time to extend the stadium
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Add to that North Yorkshire. The M1 /A19 /A1 has loads of SAFC travelling up from further South too
 
johnlights said:
As is stands, in one year time, this thread will look pretty stupid.
Many seem to be unaware of just how hard it will be next season and relegation is very, very likely.
We'll need every signing to be a hit.
Even ''smaller clubs'' such as Brentford and Bournemouth are light years ahead of us, as it stands.
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You’re right, so we need to do everything we possibly can to make sure we can compete and overtake these clubs.

We are owned by billionaires who bought the club for next to nothing and spending to improve the infrastructure won’t have any effect on money available for team building. The worst that could happen would be we’d have empty seats if relegated, but would have ready made capacity for a return.
 
Sea to Shining Sea said:
I largely agree with the sentiment.

However the same things were said when we built a 42k seater stadium. We weren’t selling out a 22k capacity at Roker in 96/97 in the top flight. It’s a bigger jump from 21k to 42k than it is 47 to 55k! (Bit of devil’s advocate!)
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No I'm not sure that right at all. The general feeling was the capacity was about right and certainly a lot of optimism that our crowds would greatly pick up moving to the new ground. Middlesbrough were getting 30,000 each week in their new ground so the common view at the time was that we would comfortably be able to get more than that.
 
Mr B said:
You’re right, so we need to do everything we possibly can to make sure we can compete and overtake these clubs.

We are owned by billionaires who bought the club for next to nothing and spending to improve the infrastructure won’t have any effect on money available for team building. The worst that could happen would be we’d have empty seats if relegated, but would have ready made capacity for a return.
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Which is the big, big challenge.
There will only be around 14-16 games next season that actually count for us. The rest are write offs.
 
Mowgli said:
So are we saying that the club lack ambition when they obviously won't extend this summer?
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Bit of a daft statement. No one is saying they'll be whacking an extension on one of the stands this summer. But to shoot down the suggestion that it is something they could/should/are planning for the coming few years is pretty brain dead. Bob Murray even said he had seen blueprints, or terminology to that effect, for the stadium and was impressed
 
JackL said:
Can't help but think the people saying "build it and they will come" must be on a wind up. Its already been built in its current form for over 20 years and they're not coming :lol:
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Absolutely mate. It's better to stay as we are in my humble opinion. If we do well then we'll create demand for seats. I'd much rather have a stadium were the demand for tickets is high as there's not lots and lots of spare seats.
If we have a successful team for a few years then that demand may force the club to look at increasing capacity.
Only my opinion 👍
 
johnlights said:
Yes but, I feel we've peaked. Back in the 90s, we hadn't.
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There are peaks and troughs throughout our history in terms of attendances and they’re aren’t always logical.

In order to sell out a stadium of 47-55k capacity regularly we would need relative success and favourable economic conditions. Both of those are unlikely.

I’ve absolutely no doubt that we could increase the capacity to 55k and have the odd sell out in the top flight. But people don’t like being on the end of piss taking about empty seats and whether it’d be financially viable to increase capacity for the odd sell out and concerts is questionable.

No reason it shouldn’t be modernised and improved. For me, that’s going to be a necessity as opposed to a nice to have in the not too distant future. Tastes and expectations are changing and the club will have to move forward with that or risk not securing custom (which is sadly the way football has gone)
 
Sea to Shining Sea said:
There are peaks and troughs throughout our history in terms of attendances and they’re aren’t always logical.

In order to sell out a stadium of 47-55k capacity regularly we would need relative success and favourable economic conditions. Both of those are unlikely.

I’ve absolutely no doubt that we could increase the capacity to 55k and have the odd sell out in the top flight. But people don’t like being on the end of piss taking about empty seats and whether it’d be financially viable to increase capacity for the odd sell out and concerts is questionable.

No reason it shouldn’t be modernised and improved. For me, that’s going to be a necessity as opposed to a nice to have in the not too distant future. Tastes and expectations are changing and the club will have to move forward with that or risk not securing custom (which is sadly the way football has gone)
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Modernised, definitely.
Extended, waste of money at this time and for the foreseeable.
Lord Nigle said:
Completely disagree. We’re not in the 90’s. Football is a world wide phenomenon thanks to the Premier League
SAFC have yet to reach their full potential. We had crowds of 70 thousand plus locals watching games decades ago. The potential is huge.
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Those people are largely dead now.
NUFC have sucked up the mixed areas.
 
North Yorks Mackem said:
No I'm not sure that right at all. The general feeling was the capacity was about right and certainly a lot of optimism that our crowds would greatly pick up moving to the new ground. Middlesbrough were getting 30,000 each week in their new ground so the common view at the time was that we would comfortably be able to get more than that.
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Hmm I’m not sure that was the common view at all. There were comments about it being a white elephant and not necessary. It even gets a mention on Premier Passions iirc.

We can agree to differ like.
 
Mowgli said:
So are we saying that the club lack ambition when they obviously won't extend this summer?
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They won’t extend this summer obviously. However the club should be planning to do so. The layout of the SoL is not fit for purpose. The concourses need to be widened and due to current demand hospitality needs to be increased. That’s just for starters. The SoL sits in the middle of a redevelopment area. The potential is there to develop the ground further
 
fixxxer said:
We really need to stop being so blinkered by this being solely extra seats, mind. If you can't see that the stadium is falling woefully behind in the corporate side of things and we desperately need to catch up, then I don't really know what to say. The playing side of the club and the off the field side will be completely different budgets.

The semi final leg at the stadium was the first time in over a decade or more that we felt like a big, proper, professional outfit. Everything they did was perfect. Absolutely inch perfect. I can understand some pessimism given the shit we've had to endure but we have needed to get our act together off the field, business wise, for a long long time, and it finally looks like we might be tracking in the right direction. Improving the playing side goes without saying but that doesn't mean we stand still off the field. Improvements need to be made across the entire board. Just wish more people would embrace it, whatever it is
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Yeah I understand the facilities could be improved, but that's a different argument to increasing capacity, which is already too big
 
Sea to Shining Sea said:
Hmm I’m not sure that was the common view at all. There were comments about it being a white elephant and not necessary. It even gets a mention on Premier Passions iirc.

We can agree to differ like.
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99% knew we had to move. There was a small number that thought we could redevelop roker park but was pie in the sky stuff as the space simply wasn't there.

The majority weren't looking at boro getting 30k thinking we'd struggle to match that.
 
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