Potential New Ground

[Essexyellows]

Wasn’t Reynolds a gangster originally?

Interesting character according to Wiki!
He was arrested with £500k in cash in the boot of his car, alongside safe cracking, handling explosives, several burglary charges and a couple of thefts.
He had amassed a "personal fortune" of £260 million by 2000. He currently operates a vending machine company and works from an E-Cig shop in Chester le Street. ?

 

[Victor1986]

I can see a good film script a la "Get Carter" based on a northern football club Chairman! Now which club can I use ...er Sunderland?

 

[Foley]

So there is a marginal increase between the whole of 2018/19 compared to half of 19/20 not by enough to justify a 20k new build IMHO....... we have never, nor never will be a "big" club.
We are in the small to medium bracket.
If (and its a big if!) we sustain survival in the Championship we would be doing well.

I reckon that Reading, Brighton ( and now Brentford) could have argued exactly the same.
Reading and Brentford were never 'bigger clubs' than Oxford.
Many like you would no doubt have suggested that there was no way that Brighton would fill a 30k stadium.
Brentford's new ground is 18.5k ( it was planned to be 20k, but with various problems with planning the owner decided that attendances weren't important in the PL anyway (!)
A ground of 15k with the option to expand to 20k would work I reckon?

 

[Scotchegg]

It's not that long ago that some were saying that the only way that we would increase our crowds was to give tickets away at £1 a game. We have already seen 5 10k+ crowds this season with a number of big games still to come. Although there were deals over Christmas, there has also been a real drive to engage with the community and to improve communication. Obviously, performances on the pitch also helps.

If we were to get promoted and held our own in a higher league then we would sell out more often than not with around 10k home fans. Many Championship teams would bring far more than the 1200-1800 allocation that we would give them too. So if we had the capacity I think that we could be looking at 15k games on a regular basis - even more if we had a nice shiny stadium with a feel good factor around the city.

We have seen in the last couple of days the intent to compete and I have no doubt that when the stadium deal come through it will match the ambitions of all of those involved.

 

[Northernyellow]

Like the "leisure centre" next door that is an equally soul less concrete dump next to a sewage farm? Seems to do OK.........

That's because...
A) The "leisure centre" has actually been completed and is fit for purpose, and...
B) You don't get 7k people all going to the leisure centre at once, so parking is adequate....and you're not stuck in a car park for 45 minutes after the end of a film!

 

[Oxford1996]

With a decent stadium in the championship..

I think we’d average 15,000 because you’d have to factor in the travelling away support..

A ground like Loftus Road would be a dream

 

[Robie]

Can you explain this to me, as I don't get it.

Presumably you aren't thinking Kassam is going to do any of this for us? So, someone else is going to have to do it. In order to do so, they will have to buy the stadium, build the flats, refurbish the stadium and extend the conference facilities. Is that right so far?

Let's take a (very) conservative figure and say you could do that for £20m, taking into account build costs and Kassam's price for the stadium. Having had a quick look online, commercial loan rates are about 4% and you can get an 80% mortgage. So if someone put down £4m, the loan would be £16m. The interest on that would be £640,000 per year. Of course, you still have to pay off the capital amount. Let's make it easy and say whoever provides the cash is happy to get it back in 20 years. That's another £1m a year to pay back.

As income you then have the rent (or proceeds) from the flats, the rent from the rugby club (shudder), some money from the conference facilities, bits and bobs from catering and advertising and income from events in the summer (maybe a couple of large concerts?). Keeping the club separate, so money from tickets would go as at present to the club.

Let's presume that this is all set up so it is at least no worse for the club than under the current regime (if it is a worse arrangement we might as well start forming the phoenix club now!) - and we have to pay £750,000 a year to play there as now (a guess). That means the profit from the other income would have to be (£1m + £640,000 - £750,000) £890,000 just to service the debt. And that's the profit - you have to account for all the costs (business rates, taxes, staff, maintenance etc) out of the income first. And of course if you wanted to reduce/remove the charge the club has to pay, then you have to find up to another £750,000 per year of income to make it work. If you want to use some of the stadium income to fund the team in addition, that's yet more income to find. Let's say the club is given another £1m a year (which of course is laughably small in Championship terms, and just as an illustration) to bolster the team and pays no rent. That would mean the stadium would have to generate a profit of £2,640,000 per year to fund the team and service the debt.

So we are in a situation where the stadium would have to generate anywhere between £890,000 and £2,640,000 or more per year of (taxed) profit to be sustainable.

Now you can certainly argue with those figures to some degree - but I have tried to underestimate costs, while also making the maths easy! Is it likely that the stadium could generate that amount of profit per year? It seems like a hell of a lot to me. And is the fact that nobody has tried to do it an indication that it is not in fact doable?

As I said - can someone who thinks we can make this work explain to me? I must be missing something!

Alternatively you could sell 80 flats at 250k each to fund the 20 million. Easy

 

[LondonRoader]

You're ignoring just how awful the current match day 'experience' is. Hopeless transport links. Next to a sewage farm. Quite appalling catering. It's basically a cheap, half built concrete shell. You have to pretty keen to go there. Like it or not, we are competing with cinemas, shopping centres, pubs (especially the ones that show football). It's just a dump.

Is that the feed back the club get ?

 

[carefreeoufc]

Without wishing to go too far off on a tangent I do find the ‘hopeless transport links’ argument that gets used for our current stadium to be a little over the top.

Parking spaces around the ground and in the estate are good, regular buses from the city centre and train station stop a short walk from the ground, a taxi is approximately £7 from the city centre, it’s not far from the M40 nor the ring road round to the A34 and so on.

Unless we move to the city centre I’d struggle to suggest other areas in Oxfordshire where we’d find much better transport links.

 

[holdsteady]

Without wishing to go too far off on a tangent I do find the ‘hopeless transport links’ argument that gets used for our current stadium to be a little over the top.

Parking spaces around the ground and in the estate are good, regular buses from the city centre and train station stop a short walk from the ground, a taxi is approximately £7 from the city centre, it’s not far from the M40 nor the ring road round to the A34 and so on.

Unless we move to the city centre I’d struggle to suggest other areas in Oxfordshire where we’d find much better transport links.

It’s no worse than any other ground in that respect and a new one won’t be much better. Plenty of reasons to dislike the place but not due to transport/parking. I don’t know what people expect from 8 to 10 thousand all leaving a small area at the same time.

 

[Kamal]

Without wishing to go too far off on a tangent I do find the ‘hopeless transport links’ argument that gets used for our current stadium to be a little over the top.

Parking spaces around the ground and in the estate are good, regular buses from the city centre and train station stop a short walk from the ground, a taxi is approximately £7 from the city centre, it’s not far from the M40 nor the ring road round to the A34 and so on.

Unless we move to the city centre I’d struggle to suggest other areas in Oxfordshire where we’d find much better transport links.

Whilst I agree that the transport links aren't as bad as people make out to be, a taxi from the city centre definitely isn't £7 lol.

 

[carefreeoufc]

Whilst I agree that the transport links aren't as bad as people make out to be, a taxi from the city centre definitely isn't £7 lol.

I paid £7 with 001 from All Bar One before the Wycombe game.

 

[Essexyellows]

I reckon that Reading, Brighton ( and now Brentford) could have argued exactly the same.
Reading and Brentford were never 'bigger clubs' than Oxford.
Many like you would no doubt have suggested that there was no way that Brighton would fill a 30k stadium.
Brentford's new ground is 18.5k ( it was planned to be 20k, but with various problems with planning the owner decided that attendances weren't important in the PL anyway (!)
A ground of 15k with the option to expand to 20k would work I reckon?

Bit like the one we are in now? ?
I get the comparison with Reading & Brentford.
Brighton have an immense catchment area and have generally been more successful than both Reading, Brentford & Us.
It is what we could, with some imagination, aspire too.......... anyone got a spare chalk pit to drop a ground in?
Think population wise Oxon is 35th out of the 48 counties so we probably have a reduced catchment and, ironically, good transport links to go and watch other teams!
I would love for us to be akin to Brighton, its a gorgeous ground but its all a bit "chicken and egg" ........ stadium then success or t`other way around?

 

[horseman]

It's not that long ago that some were saying that the only way that we would increase our crowds was to give tickets away at £1 a game. We have already seen 5 10k+ crowds this season with a number of big games still to come. Although there were deals over Christmas, there has also been a real drive to engage with the community and to improve communication. Obviously, performances on the pitch also helps.

If we were to get promoted and held our own in a higher league then we would sell out more often than not with around 10k home fans. Many Championship teams would bring far more than the 1200-1800 allocation that we would give them too. So if we had the capacity I think that we could be looking at 15k games on a regular basis - even more if we had a nice shiny stadium with a feel good factor around the city.

We have seen in the last couple of days the intent to compete and I have no doubt that when the stadium deal come through it will match the ambitions of all of those involved.

was it stated as the "only way" or more a case of worth a try?

You are also stretching the 10k crowds argument given 2 were against premiershi*e clubs 2 at Holiday period which traditionally sees an increase in crowds and the other needed a big promotion push against the biggest team in this league.

Given how well we played against Man City in front of a wide audience why was the place half empty against Hartlepool in the biggest domestic cup competition?

The Debate at the time was about ways to attract much needed new fans and at a time when many were not only slating the team but the manager was being called all sorts of names..i recall stating at the time it is the games against perceived less attractive clubs that need the promotion push as the Pompey's Bristol Rovers etc take care of themselves to a larger extent. Clubs like Accrington, Wombles, Southend, Blackpool and MK dons are still to visit and i Guarantee they will not be 5X 10k crowds.

so feel free to continue your little digs but all i and 1 or 2 others have done is offer suggestions, whereas you continue to talk about the bigger attendances but unless i've missed it you have yet to offer a reason why it's not worth trying or indeed offered your own suggestion as to how you fill 5k empty seats.

The more you sit back doing nothing then those you need to attract are finding other things to do ----The clocks ticking

 

[ZeroTheHero]

Alternatively you could sell 80 flats at 250k each to fund the 20 million. Easy

You could. Of course that would be for 250K each after build costs, and you'd have to be pretty sure that flats in the corner of a football ground close to a sewage farm were going to go for that sort of money. Amazing that Uncle K hasn't thought of that and made himself another £20m really!

 

[Scotchegg]

was it stated as the "only way" or more a case of worth a try?

You are also stretching the 10k crowds argument given 2 were against premiershi*e clubs 2 at Holiday period which traditionally sees an increase in crowds and the other needed a big promotion push against the biggest team in this league.

Given how well we played against Man City in front of a wide audience why was the place half empty against Hartlepool in the biggest domestic cup competition?

The Debate at the time was about ways to attract much needed new fans and at a time when many were not only slating the team but the manager was being called all sorts of names..i recall stating at the time it is the games against perceived less attractive clubs that need the promotion push as the Pompey's Bristol Rovers etc take care of themselves to a larger extent. Clubs like Accrington, Wombles, Southend, Blackpool and MK dons are still to visit and i Guarantee they will not be 5X 10k crowds.

so feel free to continue your little digs but all i and 1 or 2 others have done is offer suggestions, whereas you continue to talk about the bigger attendances but unless i've missed it you have yet to offer a reason why it's not worth trying or indeed offered your own suggestion as to how you fill 5k empty seats.

The more you sit back doing nothing then those you need to attract are finding other things to do ----The clocks ticking

Of course some games will attract greater interest than others. But it's about looking at trends and our home attendance figures have been growing this season even for the less attractive games. You ask why we had a half empty stadium against non-league Hartlepool in the first few days of a wet and windy January? But we did sell nearly every home seat in the parts that were open which was probably 1000+ up on expected sales. This should be seen as a positive and not something to knock the club for.

I suspect that this season will see our average league attendance figures increase on last season by around 1000, which is significant. The figure of £13 is given for the average ticket, so that equates to just shy of £300k more in ticket sales this season (without looking at the cup games). But I suppose we should just be giving tickets away instead?

 

[horseman]

You must be in politics

 

[Scotchegg]

You must be in politics

No, I just prefer to recognise the huge positives around our club right now rather than moaning about not selling out to Hartlepool!!!

 

[Manorlounger]

There appears to be a very short sighted approach being advocated by some on here in respect of the capacity of any stadium, new or existing. Part of the process to enhance the stadium is to open it up to the community at large and endeavour to run the stadium as a commercial success. In order to achieve that, the capacity needs to be in the 20K region. The stadium would also need to be able to cater for conference, exhibition etc functions, something the present ground cannot achieve given the shortcomings of the facilities. FK never intended building anything more than was necessary to get his other ventures accepted at planning and licencing level. Had he wanted a state of the art stadium he could have done so but there was no financial gain evident at the time. He made his profit by moving the club (out of town to the delight of the then local authority) and selling the Manor, something that should never have been allowed given the covenants in place but, like so many other hindrances, they were swept aside with the cooperation of the local authority.
The present board will have looked at all avenues for any potential investment and, given the background and experience of some, I would expect that they have a very good idea of how to balance a football ground with commercial success. The recent progress with community cooperation is a sign of how things are likely to proceed. The change in political attitude towards OUFC has brought optimism to the efforts being made to secure a suitable site for development and I, for one, feel more confident that by season end, we will have some concrete(!) updates.

 

[Foley]

Given how well we played against Man City in front of a wide audience why was the place half empty against Hartlepool in the biggest domestic cup competition?

Mmm. Although you nearly made me all dewy eyed about the FA Cup, I reckon that the crowd against Hartlepool was a very good one ?
Cardiff's crowd in the same round was 5,800, Burnley 8,000 and Birmingham v Blackburn 7,300.
Playing against a team 2 leagues lower in what is a much less important game, I reckon the crowd was higher than would have been expected