It is perfectly true that the Ricoh is a cash cow, but whichever member of the permanent staff up there told you the bit about concerts was way off the mark.
The Stadium complex raises around 30m a year in revenue; that is aside from match day revenues earned by the Wasps.
They have a hotel and casino as residents paying good rental income and a huge conference centre which is used by all manner of customers, and two huge car parks which are always full at £10 a time.
They only get the ground rent when the big concerts are on; all of the money from concessions and the other spin offs go to the music promoters.
The guy who used to run it when ACL was in charge, told me that the money they got from the parking was more than they got from the promoters, when you factored in pitch repairs and cleaning up outside the stadium after the events had finished.
A number of Clubs have gone down the concert route, including us, and decided it was not worth the bother.
The hotel and casino are quite small compared to some. The Jaguar conference centre is quite large and bled well in advance. Didn’t think about the car parks which are twice the size of the arena. To fill car parks you have to put events on. Even so they are empty 90% of the time. Assume the Ricoh owners own the car parking as well. Something Forest can’t do on present site.