Arsenal Stadium, widely referred to as Highbury, has been Arsenal's home
since the club's move to North London in 1913. The original stadium was built by
the renowned football architect
Archibald Leitch, and had a design common to many football grounds in the UK
at the time, with a single covered stand and three open-air banks of
terracing. In
the 1930s, the entire stadium was given a massive overhaul, with new
Art Deco
East and West stands constructed, and roofs added to the North Bank and Clock
End terraces. At its peak, Highbury could hold over 60,000 spectators, and had a
capacity of 57,000 until the early 1990s. The
Taylor Report and
Premier League regulations forced Arsenal to convert Highbury into an all-seater
in 1992, reducing its capacity to the current total of 38,500; this capacity has
to be reduced further during
Champions League matches to accommodate additional
advertising hoardings. Expansion has been restricted because the East Stand
is now a
Grade II listed building.
These limitations in Highbury's capacity have prevented the club from
maximising the revenue that their domestic form could have brought in recent
seasons. Although the club remains highly profitable, Arsenal are currently in
the process of building
Emirates Stadium, a new 60,000-seater stadium at Ashburton Grove, about 500
metres south-west of Highbury. While this project was delayed by red tape
(including final approval of the necessary compulsory purchase orders by
Deputy Prime Minister John
Prescott) and rising costs, construction is now nearly complete and the
stadium is expected to be ready for the start of the
2006–07 season. The stadium is named after its sponsors, the airline company
Emirates,
with whom the club signed the largest sponsorship deal in English football
history, worth approximately £100 million over the term of the deal. As a part
of the deal the stadium will be known as Emirates Stadium for at least the first
15 years, and the airline will be the club's shirt sponsor from 2006 until the
end of the 2013–14 season.
The New Emirates Stadium
The Emirates Stadium is a
football stadium, being built for
Arsenal
Football Club in Ashburton Grove,
Islington,
north London,
England. It
was informally known as Ashburton Grove before a naming rights deal with
the airline
Emirates was announced, and that name is still used by some people. The
stadium is scheduled to open in the summer of
2006, and will have
an all-seated capacity of 60,000, making it the second biggest stadium in the
Premiership after
Old Trafford. The overall cost of the project is £390 million, but not all
of this is for the actual construction of the stadium.
Name
Arsenal announced on
October 5,
2004 that the
Emirates Stadium will be known as such for at least the first 15 years due to a
£100m sponsorship deal with the
Emirates
airline company. This sum also includes payments for an eight year shirt
sponsorship by Emirates, starting in the
2006-2007 season.
Development
Arsenal spent a number of years looking to develop a larger stadium as their
existing ground at
Highbury has a capacity of 38,500, which is lower than the grounds of almost
all other European football clubs of comparable stature, and little room for
expansion as one stand is built right up to a public road and the other three
back onto housing. They had a season ticket waiting list which had been closed
for some time with over 20,000 members, and were missing out on a great deal of
potential revenue. However finding a site for a new stadium in London was
extremely difficult. The club was willing to consider a location close to the
M25
motorway if necessary, but had a strong preference for a location in the
London Borough of Islington close to Highbury.
Eventually the club selected an industrial estate at Ashburton Grove, which
was just a few hundred metres from Highbury as the crow flies. The plan was
announced in November 1999. The target opening date for the new stadium was
summer 2004, though this would later slip back to summer 2006 due to planning
and financial difficulties. In order to develop this site it was necessary to
buy out the existing occupants. This was very expensive and some of them took
legal action to attempt to block the stadium, which was ultimately unsuccessful.
There was further opposition from some residents groups, although there was also
a lot of local support for the scheme. Arsenal had difficulty obtaining finance
for the project, and work ceased just after it had begun, before starting again
when a loan package was obtained from a consortium of banks.
The most significant occupant on the Ashburton Grove site was
Islington Council's recycling plant. In order to relocate this Arsenal
purchased 10 acres (40,000 m²) of former railway lands at Lough Road off
Caledonian Road. A modern recycling plant was built here, which opened in
2004. Other occupants at Ashburton Grove included the
Royal Mail
Holloway Delivery Office, which was relocated to
Highbury
Delivery Office, at Hamilton Park, and many private companies.
Arsenal director
Danny Fiszman admitted that if they could have foreseen the difficulties
they have faced, they would not have pursued the development of Emirates
Stadium. "Looking back we were probably crazy," he said.
The remainder of the Lough Road site is being used for new housing, as are
the surplus areas around the stadium at Ashburton Grove. Highbury will also be
converted into apartments after the club moves to the Emirates Stadium. In total
more than 2,000 homes will be built at the three sites, and the club is counting
on the profits from these developments to make a major contribution towards the
costs of the stadium. Other sources of finance include a £30 million payment
from Granada Television for a 5% stake in the club received in the 2004/05
season (far more than the market value of the shares at that time, but Granada
had made a commitment to subscribe for them at the height of the football
investment bubble, when it had bought its first tranche of shares in the club)
; a £15 million contribution towards the capital costs of
the stadium's catering facilites from catering firm Delaware North, which has a
20 year exclusive contract to run the stadium's catering operation
, and up-front payments from sponsorship deals with
Nike and Emirates.
Some fans have been concerned that the stadium project has reduced Arsenal's
transfer budget, but the club has insisted that this is not the case because the
finance for the stadium is separate from the football side of the business, and
it would not have borrowed to buy players in the absence of a stadium project as
it has a long-standing commitment to run itself at break-even or better. It
argued that only by moving to a new stadium could the club join the elite of
European football clubs on a permanent basis, and the success of the
Arsène Wenger era amounted to sustained overachievement given that the club
did not have the same level of financial resources as the top few clubs. Wenger
himself commented in 2005, "The project was vital.... It was that or die over
the longer term at the top level. It is as simple as that."
Seating
The stadium will be a three tiered bowl with roofing over the stands but not
over the pitch. The upper and lower tiers will be "standard seating", while the
middle tier known as the "club tier" will be premium priced corporate seating.
There will be 6,700 seats at this level, which are being sold on multi year
licences. The cost of club tier seats for 2006-07 ranges from
£2,500
to £4,750 per season including
VAT. This covers
admission to 19 league games and any home games Arsenal play in the
UEFA Champions League and
FA Cup. Club
Tier season ticket holders will be required to pay for
Carling Cup
tickets separately. The £3,500 "midfield" seats sold out with more than a year
before the opening date and the club claims that sales at other prices are going
well. Immediately above the club tier there will be a ring of one hundred and
fifty 10,12 and 15 seats boxes. Box prices start at £65,000 per annum plus VAT,
and in this case admission to Champions League and FA Cup games is not included.
By taking advantage of the high demand to see them play and relative wealth of
their London fan base, Arsenal expect to make more money per season from their
premium seating and corporate boxes than many of the smaller Premiership clubs
make in gate receipts from their whole ground.
The stadium topped out in August 2005, and is reported to be on schedule and
on budget. The club has announced that all of the hospitality boxes have been
taken.
Refinancing
In August 2005 Arsenal announced plans to replace most of the bank debt taken
on to finance the stadium with £200 million of
bonds and a £60
million
loan note. The club's chief executive commented that the new stadium is
expected to increase Arsenal's turnover from around £115 million to around £170
million.
This will close or possibly even eliminate the turnover gap
with
Manchester United.
