• The forums will be unavailable for a few hours on Saturday 6th June, when they do return they will initially be in a degraded state with some features missing, but normal posting/reading will be possible. The main website will not be affected by these updates.
    New user registrations are currently disabled.
    Some other features of the forum are also currently disabled.

SOL expansion

JackL said:
Yeah I'd agree it could be modernised but some just seem obsessed with increasing the capacity when it's simply just not needed. Talking about symmetry and some sort of dortmund wall like there's a business case for that 😂

For some it very much seems to be about extra seats
Click to expand...

Some people seem obsessed with not adding extra seats but want to stick two tiers of boxes in the east stand.

I’ve said it before. You cannot increase hospitality available without building new stands and additional seating.

It’s not feasible to do it any other way and makes zero sense.

If the club truly want to excel in the top flight, then we will need better facilities, more hospitality and more seats.

We’re only a few thousand off capacity now. In the premier league it’ll sell out. It just will.
 

darius said:
No. I was thinking symmetrical with the West Stand. Make it a mirror image.
Click to expand...
As I've said ^. It's all about whether adding those boxes vs the added costs of servicing them being worth it.

I'm thinking that it must be worth expanding still, otherwise we wouldn't be seeing so many clubs doing so.

I'd love to see the day when I've parked up in a spacious car park, without needing a bank loan, then I'm walking over the new footbridge, or even better on a Monorail, looking at our amazing stadium.

The whole of the approach to the stadium looking less like a wasteland and more like a modern collection of food and drink outlets, bars, restaurants and maybe even hotels.

I'd then like to enter the stadium a couple of hours before the match. Once inside, I'd like affordable food and drink without queuing for longer than 5 minutes.

I'd like much much wider concourse areas, with seating for the elderly and frail and space for kids to not feel intimidated and feeling like they're Lilliput inhabitants.

Access to smoking areas would be great too, but done so that you don't feel like a leper.

I'd like access to retail opportunities too, such as ticketing, betting, club shop (preordering?) with unmanned outlets using IT EPOS systems maybe being the solution here.

I'd like proper large screens everywhere in the concourse and or a decent app that broadcasts everything you'd want, media wise i.e. highlights/replays, team sheets, live betting, half time activities streamed so you could actually tell what's garn on, close ups of players before and after the match and manager statements/interviews almost real time. You could even have daft interviews with fans. This would need 5g of course.

I'm more than happy with seating and the actual match experience, although moving the away fans so that we can improve the atmosphere and maximise our capacity better is a must.

Afterwards I'd like to be able book a seat at a restaurant within half a mile and as an exile, maybe even book a close by hotel.

Meanwhile, back in Sunderland, we can't even acknowledge that for many, digital tickets and SCs simply don't work.
 
Blyth said:
Some people seem obsessed with not adding extra seats but want to stick two tiers of boxes in the east stand.

I’ve said it before. You cannot increase hospitality available without building new stands and additional seating.

It’s not feasible to do it any other way and makes zero sense.

If the club truly want to excel in the top flight, then we will need better facilities, more hospitality and more seats.

We’re only a few thousand off capacity now. In the premier league it’ll sell out. It just will.
Click to expand...
Well, we hardly sold out last time we were there. As for top 6 finishes that warrants extra seats, last time we hit those lovely heights was in 1955. Extra demand? Look at our cup match attendances………
 
Blyth said:
Some people seem obsessed with not adding extra seats but want to stick two tiers of boxes in the east stand.

I’ve said it before. You cannot increase hospitality available without building new stands and additional seating.

It’s not feasible to do it any other way and makes zero sense.

If the club truly want to excel in the top flight, then we will need better facilities, more hospitality and more seats.

We’re only a few thousand off capacity now. In the premier league it’ll sell out. It just will.
Click to expand...
Good post and you are right.
RichDevoto said:
Well, we hardly sold out last time we were there. As for top 6 finishes that warrants extra seats, last time we hit those lovely heights was in 1955. Extra demand? Look at our cup match attendances………
Click to expand...
We sold out a cup match and played a reserve team.

We have never really taken the cups seriously over the past 25 years as we have either been in relegation or promotion battles. That has been reflected in the attendances.
 
Last edited:
UaeExile said:
People who talk about extending are absolutely delusional.

Improve, absolutely.
Expand... Absolutely not.
Click to expand...
Rubbish. We don’t need success for big crowds. If we played entertaining football , scoring goals and giving teams a run for their money every week we could easily get 55k.

What puts people off is mediocre football where we get beat.
 
Brian Griffin said:
Rubbish. We don’t need success for big crowds. If we played entertaining football , scoring goals and giving teams a run for their money every week we could easily get 55k.

What puts people off is mediocre football where we get beat.
Click to expand...

Not consistently we couldn’t. Certainly not outside of the top flight
 
Brian Griffin said:
Rubbish. We don’t need success for big crowds. If we played entertaining football , scoring goals and giving teams a run for their money every week we could easily get 55k.

What puts people off is mediocre football where we get beat.
Click to expand...

I agree with this.

Plus if we sorted out the situation with reduced allocations for away supporters that is another instant boost. We could have had an extra 2,000 onto the crowds for some matches.

We have been averaging 40,000 in the championship after a complete shitshow in recent years and reduced numbers of travelling supporters. Amazing really.
 
RedandWhiteRebel said:
I agree with this.

Plus if we sorted out the situation with reduced allocations for away supporters that is another instant boost. We could have had an extra 2,000 onto the crowds for some matches.

We have been averaging 40,000 in the championship after a complete shitshow in recent years and reduced numbers of travelling supporters. Amazing really.
Click to expand...
We often have Dutch and Germans over too. Not enough to make any material difference really, but a little success could raise our profile a little.
 
Really can’t understand why some people are against the expansion of the East Stand. Compared to other grounds, the extension would be as cheap as chips. It would increase corporate facilities, increase the size of the current concourse and provide additional seating that would probably be required should the club achieve promotion.

The extra corporate facilities would provide much needed additional revenue not only from football, but also from money making concerts. A decent size concourse may also encourage more people to actually use it and spend more. Extra seats would allow prices to be kept down for kids, who we should be encouraging to attend. There must be thousands of kids in mixed areas of the northeast who would love to attend a live game and at present their only real opportunity would be at Sunderland. We need to get them in while we can. Additional capacity would also allow the opportunity to create a more satisfactory away section.
 
RichDevoto said:
Well, we hardly sold out last time we were there. As for top 6 finishes that warrants extra seats, last time we hit those lovely heights was in 1955. Extra demand? Look at our cup match attendances………
Click to expand...
Football has changed. When we were top of the leagues 20 odd year ago you’d be lucky to get 22k.

Attendances are massively up across the board.

We’re at 42/43k now in the championship and despite what the negative cabal told us that we’d lose thousands this year we haven’t.

If we get promoted it’ll be sell outs next year.

Simply put a well ran, exciting Sunderland with a bit of positivity behind it will outgrow the current capacity.
Mr B said:
Really can’t understand why some people are against the expansion of the East Stand. Compared to other grounds, the extension would be as cheap as chips. It would increase corporate facilities, increase the size of the current concourse and provide additional seating that would probably be required should the club achieve promotion.

The extra corporate facilities would provide much needed additional revenue not only from football, but also from money making concerts. A decent size concourse may also encourage more people to actually use it and spend more. Extra seats would allow prices to be kept down for kids, who we should be encouraging to attend. There must be thousands of kids in mixed areas of the northeast who would love to attend a live game and at present their only real opportunity would be at Sunderland. We need to get them in while we can. Additional capacity would also allow the opportunity to create a more satisfactory away section.
Click to expand...
Cos they’re scared of what the mags would say if it wasn’t a sell out every week.
Northumberland Rocks said:
Good post and you are right.

We sold out a cup match and played a reserve team.

We have never really taken the cups seriously over the past 25 years as we have either been in relegation or promotion battles. That has been reflected in the attendances.
Click to expand...
This. As if cup attendances are a reason not to extend
 
Last edited:
Father Larry Duff said:
It’s simple. We are getting 40k in the championship. It’ll be up towards 45k as the season goes on if we continue our promotion push. We’ll sell out when we get to the prem, we also don’t have enough boxes and hospitality facilities available for the prem. We also need these things for gigs so we don’t miss out on the bigger events. Extending it to about 55,000 and adding more hospitality makes perfect sense.
Click to expand...
Our last consistent run in the Prem, was a 10 year period from 2007 - 2017 and we a averaged about 42,000 over that period. There wasn't a need for a bigger ground then. If this is a promotion season, then attendances will inevitably go up, and stay up during the first part of the first Prem season. But if we struggle, like we usually do in the Prem, get beat a lot etc, the attendances will taper off. The only way we'd need a bigger ground, is if we are regularly competing in the top 10 of the Prem.
 
Roker Magic said:
Our last consistent run in the Prem, was a 10 year period from 2007 - 2017 and we an averaged about 42,000 over that period. There wasn't a need for a bigger ground then. If this is a promotion season, then attendances will inevitably go up, and stay up during the first part of the first Prem season. But if we struggle, like we usually do in the Prem, get beat a lot etc, the attendances will taper off. The only way we'd need a bigger ground, is if we are regularly competing in the top 10 of the Prem.
Click to expand...
Attendances have all gone up since then. We’re nearly averaging 42k now.
 
Father Larry Duff said:
It’s simple. We are getting 40k in the championship. It’ll be up towards 45k as the season goes on if we continue our promotion push. We’ll sell out when we get to the prem, we also don’t have enough boxes and hospitality facilities available for the prem. We also need these things for gigs so we don’t miss out on the bigger events. Extending it to about 55,000 and adding more hospitality makes perfect sense.
Click to expand...
Correct imho
Roker Magic said:
Our last consistent run in the Prem, was a 10 year period from 2007 - 2017 and we a averaged about 42,000 over that period. There wasn't a need for a bigger ground then. If this is a promotion season, then attendances will inevitably go up, and stay up during the first part of the first Prem season. But if we struggle, like we usually do in the Prem, get beat a lot etc, the attendances will taper off. The only way we'd need a bigger ground, is if we are regularly competing in the top 10 of the Prem.
Click to expand...
We had a semi average team, I don't really think there was much of a good will factor, once Keane went. We then constantly struggled, apart from the 10th place. With a decent side we'd get 50k+ every other week, plus we'd have 3k+ away fans. Whether people like it or not, we'd not match the mag's crowds and that purely down to population size and catchment area.
 
Last edited:
RedandWhiteRebel said:
I agree with this.

Plus if we sorted out the situation with reduced allocations for away supporters that is another instant boost. We could have had an extra 2,000 onto the crowds for some matches.

We have been averaging 40,000 in the championship after a complete shitshow in recent years and reduced numbers of travelling supporters. Amazing really.
Click to expand...
We really need to increase away allocations and as stated it could easily increase our average attendance. Additionally it would help us getting increased allocations.
 
Julio Mackemo said:
Correct imho

We had a semi average team, I don't really think there was much of a good will factor, once Keane went. We then constantly struggled, apart from the 10th place. With a decent side we'd get 50k+ every other week, plus we'd have 3k+ away fans. Whether people like it or not, we'd not match the mag's crowds and that purely down to population size and catchment area.
Click to expand...
The only concern though is that ever since the 1950s we've always been a yo-yo club. Clubs that have 50 and 60 thousand capacities are usually solid Prem clubs with little risk of relegation. Attendances are solid now because there is a feeling that the club is building something and we have an exciting young team. But we were in financial trouble not too long ago and the way modern football is, this could happen again in the future. I think a packed-out 49k SOL is fine. Just my opinion though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top