If there’s one promise that Tom Hicks and George Gillett broke that Liverpool fans really, really want them to live up to, it’s the promise to build a new stadium. Back when they took over the club, Hicks & Gillett promised fans that that would be there first priority; now, three years on, and nothing’s really happened on that front. It’s a big problem for Liverpool; Anfield, while full of classic charm, is sorely lacking in capacity. While Manchester United and Arsenal are raking in crowds of 70,000 or more each weekend, Liverpool are barely able to clear 45,000. The lost ticket revenue alone is killing them.
As stories have emerged about the amount of debt the club has managed to rack up, the likelihood of them actually breaking ground on a new stadium has gotten further and further away. Until today. Maybe.
According to the BBC, work on Liverpool’s new stadium at Stanley Park could begin as early as April of this year. That’s based on the timetable they’ve given to Liverpool City Council leader Warren Bradley. According to Bradley, Hicks & Gillett have told him that they’ll be securing finances in the first quarter of 2010 (or, as he astutely points out, between January and March); work could begin after that.
Of course, that’s if you believe the Americans end of it. The issue is going to be where the money comes from; Liverpool are something like £350 million in debt, out of the Champions League, and without a transfer budget. While the stadium is key to their long term development, the reality is that they’ve got huge financial issues looming on the horizon and no real new sources of income to tap into. Love them or hate them, Manchester United are the gold standard when it comes to branding and milking every last dime of merchandising out of their fans; from a marketing sense, Liverpool have never really been on the same level with them.
Still, at least the stadium continues to be talked about; the fact that the council is now starting to set an ultimatum on the club is a positive step, as it could force Hicks and Gillett to do something. Earlier this year, Gillett sold the Montreal Canadiens to the Molson family and sold stakes of Richard Petty Motorsports to Prince Faisal bin Fahd bin Abdullah al-Saud of Saudi Arabia; Tom Hicks, meanwhile, is looking at selling the Texas Rangers. Money from both of those deals could certainly be used to start building a new stadium; it’s just a question of desire.
Liverpool ground start ‘in April’ [BBC]
By my conservative calculations a stadium with a 70-80 thousand person capacity would bring in roughly £15 million a year (just from Premier League fixtures, and with a low estimate of about £25 per seat, It’d probably more like £50 per seat) a more liberal estimate would put it probably at £40-50 million a year. Long term this makes a lot of sense for Liverpool.