They took the decision last year not to increase capacity, apparently because we didn’t win the play offs. Not increasing it after this season makes you wonder what it would take to make the decision to increase.
Currently, interest in the club is highest for god knows how long, but people being able to get in and pay to watch is about to level off.
It is a total false economy, because people that start buying-in now are a potential income stream for years and years to come.
Conversion of parts of the ground to
standing(sector of coop plus Stacey West to standing room only) would be a good move and minimal cost to upstream the revenues and capacity.
Furthermore the space between the Selenity and Stacey West is totally under utilised plus add in the repositioning of the tv gantries and all these changes would give additional revenue/capacity.
I`m sure we could also knock up a few extra khazis and handbasins over the summer period to cope with the extra numbers attending.
Crowd numbers have moved ahead rapidly and the infrastructure is not keeping apace with demand.(2500 to 10,000)..up 300%
Quite simply a
minor low cost solution could accommodate a further 2000 fans which would be a good economic move for the club and enable our
current fan base to be retained plus cope with the increased numbers of away fans attending the Bank next season in league 1
Portsmouth/Bolton/Doncaster/Scunthorpe/Peterborough/Ipswich/Charlton/
Coventry etc.........Millwall..?
Doing little to increase the capacity creates a few issues
Allocating 10% of tickets(efl requirement) to the away fans prohibits casual home fans access to attend a match when you are operating at the margin of capacity.
Next season it is possible some visiting sides could take more than 2000 tickets if we could make them available but,we won`t deliver that in the current set up and the revenue is gone forever plus plenty of home fans other than season tickets holders will get slowly disillusioned over lack of access to games through ticket restraints.(they are the long term future)
If we could only come up with an increased capacity of 2000 for next season that would be a
realistic approach to coping with the current demand of our own fans(granting higher number of season tickets+good revenue)) plus those of extra visiting supporters.
I`m not sold on the idea of doing very little on the capacity issue,as it`s upstream revenues we need and the options are limited, playing/staff costs are rising and the new ground pipe dreams are a long way off.
I`m sure Clive Nates has a rabbit he will pull out of the hat,he is a top banana and will employ the the right heads for the solution to the capacity problem.
PS:....... yes i have got my season ticket for 2019/2020.