Vhero wrote:Very nice but do they have enough fans regularly visiting to even fill it? I know Emirates has like a 2 year waiting list for season tickets or something daft but I never heard spurs fans having problems getting tickets for matches before.. What's the point of a bigger stadium if you cannot fill the existing one?
The demand for seats is much higher with the Emirates stadium. There are more people willing to pay more money for a seat in a bigger stadium for a team that has been winning less since the stadium opened.
Despite adding over 20k seats, it seems to be harder to get tickets. That's the dream for any stadium development and it happens because fans are so happy with their match-day experience in a state-of-the-art stadium. Arsenal have essentially constructed a 60k seater stadium selling only premium seats. It's an astonishing achievement and one that could see Arsenal becoming the richest club in England if they can sustain current trends for long enough to pay down their debt to reduce interest levels and can again dominate football here for a spell.
Spurs are hoping to do likewise, generate a new tradition of match attendance by introducing a new stadium. This strategy looks different though in several key ways. Being closer to central London, Arsenal have a huge advantage in expanding their base of people intending to start attending matches. This is absolutely key for home Champions League fixtures on weekday nights. They also have been a lot more successful and appear likely to be for the future (and certainly did when they built the stadium).
The single tier changes things for them. They're unlikely to use it as an away area so they'll have to find somewhere else for that. With areas like that there's a normal expectation of lower ticket prices, it's been a key part of such development. This makes the issue of filling the larger stadium that bit easier but runs the risk of cannibalising sales of more expensive seats. It would appear that the plan would be to raise ticket prices to the point where many existing ticket holders and young vociferous fans would buy seats in the single tier stand (and create a wall of noise) while many more affluent fans would take up seats elsewhere.
If the new stadium is really on the same site there could be some issues there unless Spurs can pull some trickery off, like borrowing Wembley, Twickenham or the Olympic athletics track (which is supposed to be temporary but could always stick around for a year or two).
