HanoiVillan Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 (edited) 3 hours ago, JoshVilla said: The whole thing around the new stadium complex absolutely stinks to me. A big chunk of the £2-3 billion will be loans. In terms of events, there's no way that the NFL are going to move games to Birmingham. It's hard enough to get teams to forfeit a home game to play in London in a league that only plays 17 regular season games - so I highly doubt that they're going to convince more teams to do it. The money is there to be made in London. I'm a Brummie and I'll always be proud of that, but unfortunately, Birmingham just isn't going to be an attractive destination for these sort of events. They'll probably have a few gigs there but nothing on the scale that they think. Their owners aren't going to make any significant money from Blues either. They just don't have the fanbase or the appeal. The club won't own the stadium, and if the owners get fed up and cut their ties after a few more seasons in the doldrums, whoever else comes in will likely have to pay an absolute whopper in terms of rent and likely be forced out. These plans aren't for the benefit of the club. The owners just want to make a quick buck (hence Wagner is so keen to have it all wrapped up in 5 years). It's all very well showing some pretty PowerPoint slides with some shiny stadium mockups, but it all seems like slightly outlandish plans with little to no substance. Like others have said, the idea nowadays is to stop other clubs suddenly turning into Man City, so their dreams of becoming a footballing superpower are purely to take their minds off the very real possibility that they'll be playing Shrewsbury next season. Good post. I don't agree with all of it - in particular, whatever you can accuse someone of making a £2-3bn stadium investment of, it certainly isn't 'making a quick buck' - but the thing I have been thinking about and really agree with you on is the way this has been sold, and the nature of the claims made for how the stadium will be monetised. You lay out correctly why they're unlikely to be able to host more than the (very) odd NFL game even in a best-case scenario, but I keep seeing Wagner talk about 'Euros' and 'World Cups' as well. This is crazy: The World Cup has hosts already awarded out to 2036, England are not one of them. Since European nations are the main hosts in 2032, Europe presumably wouldn't be hosting again until 2048 at the earliest, and no guarantee England will be hosting. The Euros are coming to England in 2028, but host stadia have been assigned and this won't be completed in time anyway. Since the British Isles will have been the hosts in '28, it's likely the Euros wouldn't be coming back for ~30 years again. Of course there are the women's tournaments as well, but even there England have hosted the Euros recently, and the most recent World Cup was in Europe, so there's no short-term prospect of it and they're obviously less lucrative in any case. The stuff around housing and office space seems more plausible, but is even more challenging. Commercial real estate is a tough business, and companies go bust all the time. You're at the mercy of the health of the wider economy and changing social trends like remote working or hotdesking or whatever. It could work well but it's a hard industry and it's a completely different set of competencies than running a football club so it's more management, complication etc. It's normal for people to put a little 'masala' on a big announcement to make it newsworthy, make a bit of a splash etc, but there's also the danger that they're quite deluded about what they're going to be able to achieve with this project. Edited April 12 by HanoiVillan 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S-Platt Posted April 12 VT Supporter Share Posted April 12 The geniuses don't even own the club they have spent the square root of **** all on players. They did spend a couple of million on getting The Sty fixed. So what was the point of that when they can't fill it and are now talking about a 60k stadium. It's going to be fun watching it all unfold for sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post tomav84 Posted April 12 VT Supporter Popular Post Share Posted April 12 (edited) 1 hour ago, UpTheVilla26 said: https://www.bluestrust.org/2024/04/open-letter-to-the-players/ "There are 20,000+ fans at every home match" oh it gets even better... "got home at 1am after my 180 mile round trip" - i thought they all lived next door to the stadium unlike that lot from down the road who all live in the shires?? Edited April 12 by tomav84 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaJ100 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 39 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said: Good post. I don't agree with all of it - in particular, whatever you can accuse someone of making a £2-3bn stadium investment of, it certainly isn't 'making a quick buck' - but the thing I have been thinking about and really agree with you on is the way this has been sold, and the nature of the claims made for how the stadium will be monetised. You lay out correctly why they're unlikely to be able to host more than the (very) odd NFL game even in a best-case scenario, but I keep seeing Wagner talk about 'Euros' and 'World Cups' as well. This is crazy: The World Cup has hosts already awarded out to 2036, England are not one of them. Since European nations are the main hosts in 2032, Europe presumably wouldn't be hosting again until 2048 at the earliest, and no guarantee England will be hosting. The Euros are coming to England in 2028, but host stadia have been assigned and this won't be completed in time anyway. Since the British Isles will have been the hosts in '28, it's likely the Euros wouldn't be coming back for ~30 years again. Of course there are the women's tournaments as well, but even there England have hosted the Euros recently, and the most recent World Cup was in Europe, so there's no short-term prospect of it and they're obviously less lucrative in any case. The stuff around housing and office space seems more plausible, but is even more challenging. Commercial real estate is a tough business, and companies go bust all the time. You're at the mercy of the health of the wider economy and changing social trends like remote working or hotdesking or whatever. It could work well but it's a hard industry and it's a completely different set of competencies than running a football club so it's more management, complication etc. It's normal for people to put a little 'masala' on a big announcement to make it newsworthy, make a bit of a splash etc, but there's also the danger that they're quite deluded about what they're going to be able to achieve with this project. One thing Birmingham doesn't need us more office space. There's plenty of Grade A office space in prime locations in the city centre that is disused. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daveburnside Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 Begs the question, if you've got $3bn to throw at football club, why are you farting around with a lower end championship team with little redeeming features? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ender4 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 24 minutes ago, tomav84 said: "There are 20,000+ fans at every home match" oh it gets even better... "got home at 1am after my 180 mile round trip" - i thought they all lived next door to the stadium unlike that lot from down the road who all live in the shires?? also the "hundreds of thousands of bluenoses". I think he meant hundreds OR thousands. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avfc456 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 2 hours ago, HKP90 said: Hahahaha. Brilliant. 'Highly paid footballers, you should listen to me because I had a sales job once....' I like Ed Truman's reply "Excellent letter Jez. Right on the nail" 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pas5898 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 (edited) 1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said: Good post. I don't agree with all of it - in particular, whatever you can accuse someone of making a £2-3bn stadium investment of, it certainly isn't 'making a quick buck' - but the thing I have been thinking about and really agree with you on is the way this has been sold, and the nature of the claims made for how the stadium will be monetised. You lay out correctly why they're unlikely to be able to host more than the (very) odd NFL game even in a best-case scenario, but I keep seeing Wagner talk about 'Euros' and 'World Cups' as well. This is crazy: The World Cup has hosts already awarded out to 2036, England are not one of them. Since European nations are the main hosts in 2032, Europe presumably wouldn't be hosting again until 2048 at the earliest, and no guarantee England will be hosting. The Euros are coming to England in 2028, but host stadia have been assigned and this won't be completed in time anyway. Since the British Isles will have been the hosts in '28, it's likely the Euros wouldn't be coming back for ~30 years again. Of course there are the women's tournaments as well, but even there England have hosted the Euros recently, and the most recent World Cup was in Europe, so there's no short-term prospect of it and they're obviously less lucrative in any case. The stuff around housing and office space seems more plausible, but is even more challenging. Commercial real estate is a tough business, and companies go bust all the time. You're at the mercy of the health of the wider economy and changing social trends like remote working or hotdesking or whatever. It could work well but it's a hard industry and it's a completely different set of competencies than running a football club so it's more management, complication etc. It's normal for people to put a little 'masala' on a big announcement to make it newsworthy, make a bit of a splash etc, but there's also the danger that they're quite deluded about what they're going to be able to achieve with this project. Thanks @HanoiVillan. Just to be clear, I'm not accusing them of making a "quick buck" on the field. I think they wanted the land on the cheap which is what they've achieved (to make a quick buck). Because the commercial viability of SHA / funding doesn't make sense. If Spurs are the "finished article" / dream / aspiration. Best stadium in the country, in London, international fans, huge revenue, CL etc. They are "only" worth 2.5-3billion. So why would you risk 2-3 billion for a 1 percent chance of creating a club worth 2.5 billion? Edited April 12 by pas5898 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fightoffyour Posted April 12 VT Supporter Share Posted April 12 26 minutes ago, avfc456 said: "Excellent letter Jez. Right on the nail" 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stewiek2 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 2 hours ago, UpTheVilla26 said: https://www.bluestrust.org/2024/04/open-letter-to-the-players/ "You've got the power to write some history." Damn right they do 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fightoffyour Posted April 12 VT Supporter Share Posted April 12 (edited) 35 minutes ago, avfc456 said: I like Ed Truman's reply "Excellent letter Jez. Right on the nail" Quote Will it make a difference? We'll see over the next three weeks How is it that they are going to deduce if the letter made a difference? Actually I can tell you now: it won't. Edited April 12 by fightoffyour Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genie Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 7 hours ago, pas5898 said: He'd cost at least treble that. He's an England U21 international, even starting ahead of Rodgers. Their owners have naively made a song and dance about how much they have to spend, Fulham will rip them off. Assumes he wants to stay. I dare say he is using them for a shop window to get to a much better club. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 31 minutes ago, fightoffyour said: How is it that they are going to deduce if the letter made a difference? Actually I can tell you now: it won't. I think it's fairly safe to say the players aren't going to be poring over a blog post before they take the field, yes. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaJ100 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 1 hour ago, avfc456 said: I like Ed Truman's reply "Excellent letter Jez. Right on the nail" Yeah the last nail in the coffin hopefully Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post rbcuk Posted April 12 Popular Post Share Posted April 12 10 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genie Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 2 minutes ago, rbcuk said: Alexa, what does desperation look like in the football sense? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UpTheVilla26 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 I'm at the point with these lot where I'm convinced the owners, staff, players and supporters are all in on some weird, media stunt. Why on earth would you invite fans from another team into your home stands? Who they gonna invite next week, Leverkusen fans? Unreal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Follyfoot Posted April 12 VT Supporter Share Posted April 12 12 minutes ago, UpTheVilla26 said: I'm at the point with these lot where I'm convinced the owners, staff, players and supporters are all in on some weird, media stunt. Why on earth would you invite fans from another team into your home stands? Who they gonna invite next week, Leverkusen fans? Unreal Trevor 'Tom Daley' Francis played for them 21 times................................... Yes, I know Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 18 minutes ago, UpTheVilla26 said: I'm at the point with these lot where I'm convinced the owners, staff, players and supporters are all in on some weird, media stunt. Why on earth would you invite fans from another team into your home stands? Who they gonna invite next week, Leverkusen fans? Unreal If Lille had of won last night then the fans might have got a guard of honour 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
useless Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 At these fans forums Wagner and Cook have been telling their fans to not listen to the haters in reference to fans of other clubs and parts of the media, and saying it will only get worse the more succesful they become, Wagner even had 'FEA' as part of his presentation the other day, and made a big deal of it meaning 'F*** Em All' again in reference to the haters and doubters, all seems very propagandary to me, as if they're trying to condition their fans into not believing any media criticism that might come, also interesting to see them say there are going to be some decisions with regards to St Andrews that might not be popular, but their fans have to trust them, they're apparently spending a lot of money on it, despite the proposed ground move He's a legit operator so it seems, they've partnered up with Oak View Group, got Tom Brady on board, Nike going to be making bespoke kits for them over the next two season, they've already done a lot of work on their training ground and stadium, I think it was something like £15m on the stadium with a further £20m planned before next season, and so and so on, so not saying he's some Tony Xia type me wouldn't have a clue about that anyway, but if was a fan of theirs I'd be slightly concerned by the amount of talking he does, usually the real besty owners just stay quiet in the background 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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