OutByEaster? Posted January 2 Moderator Share Posted January 2 11 minutes ago, fruitvilla said: Yes ... the loss of perhaps two seasons of premier and perhaps Champions League football which was not anticipated. I wasn't thinking so much of the loss of revenue by having one stand missing for a couple of seasons, more that if V-Sports have a target revenue figure which allows us to compete with the likes of Spurs and Chelsea, then our sudden emergence as Champions league qualification contenders, with all the money that might bring (both directly and in sponsorship terms) might make the whole purpose of replacing the North Stand seem much less urgent or necessary. If we needed to redevelop the North Stand to increase our revenues in order to compete, then perhaps the sudden influx of money from on-field success might mean that, well, we really don't need to do that anymore? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Fun Factory Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 28 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said: Which I suspect is the right answer - but the question then becomes about the process. The ROI must have been worthwhile when Mr Edens and Mr Sawiris decided to do it, it must have been worthwhile when they drew up the plans, it must have still been worthwhile when they amended the plans in the autumn, in fact, it was still worthwhile in November while they were still working with the council on it. The change seems to have come suddenly, and I'm not sure why - there's certainly nothing to suggest that Mr Edens or Mr Sawiris suddenly needed the funds elsewhere, and in fact the opposite is true - they've secured new investment in Villa that could have been used for this - so I'm guessing it's something within the project itself. If I had to guess then to me there are two main suspects in this whodunnit: The cost and availability of suitable construction companies and materials - my understanding is that this cost has rocketed in recent years, and although the forest of cranes in the City centre suggests that it's not stopping people in other sectors, the problems Liverpool had show that things aren't easy in stadium building. The unexpected (and lovely) arrival of the potential for Champions League money meaning that the club can increase it's revenues more effectively through it's on-field success than off field growth at the moment. All that lovely lucre from elsewhere creating a reduction in the urgency to maximise stadium revenues and giving the board cold feet perhaps. None of those are 'fortress' Villa Park, none of those are atmosphere, or related to not selling 200 tickets - the club hasn't helped itself with fairytales. Whatever, I suspect we'll never know and frankly it's not something we can do anything about, I just wish the whole thing had been done more professionally, we're not kids, we care and we understand - you can tell us why you're not redeveloping, hell, if you're feeling brave you could even tell us the attendances at our games - we don't need the soft soap and when it's done badly it just causes friction. Ah well, see you in 2030 for another go. None of it makes any sense. We have had about 2 years of plans and consultations about it in which it was repeatedly said that the current north stand is not frit for purpose. And on the other hand we have a 20 second nonsensical soundbite from our new CEO it bin it off all. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted January 2 Moderator Share Posted January 2 1 minute ago, Captain_Townsend said: I reckon we will lose the euros. I can't see that, I think we're too far in as it is and there really isn't another suitable venue within the region - geography and the desire of government to see the whole country included is with us on that one - plus, in terms of capacity, we're still alright in terms of what UEFA demand. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Fun Factory Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 2 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said: I can't see that, I think we're too far in as it is and there really isn't another suitable venue within the region - geography and the desire of government to see the whole country included is with us on that one - plus, in terms of capacity, we're still alright in terms of what UEFA demand. If we start getting wisy washy on any potential redevelopment with no fixed timescales, I can easily see Coventry or Leceister taking on the token midland ground for 3 group games. Well at least it would be consistent with us being hosts and then not hosts for the 2012 olympic football and the 2022 commonwealth games rugby sevens. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fruitvilla Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 1 minute ago, OutByEaster? said: If we needed to redevelop the North Stand to increase our revenues in order to compete, then perhaps the sudden influx of money from on-field success might mean that, well, we really don't need to do that anymore? Quite ... but I can't see a business walking away from even more profit. End of the day NPV is king, but one better make sure the assumptions that go into calculating the NPV are accurate/safe. If Villa plays an entertaining brand of football, bums on seats will be a safer bet than Champions League revenues (I think). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted January 2 Moderator Share Posted January 2 2 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said: If we start getting wisy washy on any potential redevelopment with no fixed timescales, I can easily see Coventry or Leceister taking on the token midland ground for 3 group games. We aren't wishy washy on redevelopment - there is no scheduled redevelopment before the EURO's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Fun Factory Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 4 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said: We aren't wishy washy on redevelopment - there is no scheduled redevelopment before the EURO's. I thought they wanted to push up to 45k somehow by seat reconfiguration? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted January 2 Moderator Share Posted January 2 7 minutes ago, fruitvilla said: Quite ... but I can't see a business walking away from even more profit. End of the day NPV is king, but one better make sure the assumptions that go into calculating the NPV are accurate/safe. If Villa plays an entertaining brand of football, bums on seats will be a safer bet than Champions League revenues (I think). Safer, but much less significant - get through the group stages of the Champions league once and you'll make the money that the new North Stand would over a decade. TV money is king to the point where unless you're the absolute top of the pile, stadium incomes aren't a great differentiator. I dunno, it feels that maybe the incremental growth of matchday revenues will now take a back seat to the opportunity for Champions league qualification and a doubling of our TV and sponsorship revenues. I'm sure we'll come back to the stadium - but for now, perhaps they're just concentrating on the extremely juicy lowest hanging fruit? In fairness, that approach fits in a little bit with the post-Gerrard approach - something clicked and we went from looking for slow but consistent growth and being a developing project into getting the best we can to win right now - perhaps the prioritisation of revenue streams fits into that. I dunno, I'm just fishing for something that makes sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAMAICAN-VILLAN Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 2 hours ago, Captain_Townsend said: Well aware. Assumed the new Stand would be much, much more corporate and that as we grew the Holte would return to its roots as the more reasonably priced part of the ground In comparison to the other stands. If you are OK with our stadium falling 8-10k seats behind the likes of Everton, Spurs, West Ham, Sunderland, Newcastle- clubs we always had a bigger capacity than - then that is your perogative but I believe it will pinch us long term and prevent us truly growing into the club we know we can be. Fair play. No i was legit asking the question just based on the bits I see from people with regard to ticket pricing. ( I'm an overseas fan so doesn't really affect me the same ) I saw someone mentioning prices on one of previous pages so the thought popped in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted January 2 Administrator Share Posted January 2 1 hour ago, Captain_Townsend said: Look, this has really angered me. I am so disappointed they cancelled the new stand. I haven't been able to get over in 5 years. Completely off topic, but perhaps your local Lions club could help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ender4 Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said: TV money is king to the point where unless you're the absolute top of the pile, stadium incomes aren't a great differentiator. I dunno, it feels that maybe the incremental growth of matchday revenues will now take a back seat to the opportunity for Champions league qualification and a doubling of our TV and sponsorship revenues. Spurs with no CL/european football - £100 million matchday revenue. Villa with no CL/european football - £16m matchday revenue. I’d say matchday revenue can be extremely useful for FFP purposes. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted January 2 Moderator Share Posted January 2 25 minutes ago, ender4 said: Spurs with no CL/european football - £100 million matchday revenue. Villa with no CL/european football - £16m matchday revenue. I’d say matchday revenue can be extremely useful for FFP purposes. Spurs are the absolute top of the pile. We had £36.4m in our last accounts, with two cup games - this year I'm guessing it'll be over fifty - with the loss of European football at Spurs, the difference will be a whole lot less. Man City made £71.9m. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ender4 Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 53 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said: Spurs are the absolute top of the pile. We had £36.4m in our last accounts, with two cup games - this year I'm guessing it'll be over fifty - with the loss of European football at Spurs, the difference will be a whole lot less. We had £16m in 2021/22 accounts. 2022/23 accounts are the ones we are expecting shortly, so is the £36m an estimate of what is going to show for 22/23? 2023/24 is our current season which includes a European campaign but we won’t see those figures until early 2025. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted January 3 Moderator Share Posted January 3 8 hours ago, ender4 said: We had £16m in 2021/22 accounts. 2022/23 accounts are the ones we are expecting shortly, so is the £36m an estimate of what is going to show for 22/23? 2023/24 is our current season which includes a European campaign but we won’t see those figures until early 2025. Sorry @ender4 you're quite right, I'd mistakenly taken an estimate figure from a site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted January 3 VT Supporter Share Posted January 3 16 hours ago, OutByEaster? said: Heck isn't daft, and he's not going to be able to cancel a £120m project on a whim without the full backing of our owners, who also aren't daft. The club isn't run by stupid people, it's run by very smart people - the problem is that the communication we've had on this doesn't ring true and that leaves us all wondering why this has been cancelled - especially as that sounds, at this point, to be a daft decision. It's hard to imagine another business that would cancel their biggest single investment project in 25 years by slipping it into a fluff piece with their CEO, entirely on their own channels, where he talked about how much he was enjoying being here, how much he'd learned about our culture and then "oh and by the way, did I mention I'm stopping the biggest project this century? Anyway, everyone has been really nice and hey look at this new badge thing I drew for our birthday!". It wasn't even accompanied by a written piece to my memory, or an official statement to the press - it was just a really, really strange way to do it. So, if we see something daft being done by people that we know aren't daft, then there's confusion, and that means that it's most likely that there's a piece of this puzzle missing - whether that be the increase in construction prices, a move to another phase in terms of our investment, or the surprise possibility of Champions league football meaning that there are simpler avenues open to increase revenues or....whatever. I don't know, I'm just a fan, and I'm much less sure that I'm not daft than I am about Mr Edens and Mr Sawiris - but the gap in our understanding and the really weird way that the club announced, then kinda re-announced the cancellation of this project has caused an anxiety that seems (at least to me) almost entirely unnecessary. As a fan, I wanted a new stand, so that more people could come see us, and because it was beautiful, because it increased our standing in the game and because it delivered a clear message of ambition and progress - but as a fan, unless I can find a couple of billion pounds behind the sofa, that isn't my choice. Still, it'd be nice if someone explained it to us properly. Equally puzzling is that this very baffling / odd way of communicating it has been made by an apparent brand expert! He's left a confused fanbase in his wake. The complete opposite of what you'd expect from such a man. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted January 3 VT Supporter Share Posted January 3 16 hours ago, OutByEaster? said: Which I suspect is the right answer - but the question then becomes about the process. The ROI must have been worthwhile when Mr Edens and Mr Sawiris decided to do it, it must have been worthwhile when they drew up the plans, it must have still been worthwhile when they amended the plans in the autumn, in fact, it was still worthwhile in November while they were still working with the council on it. The change seems to have come suddenly, and I'm not sure why - there's certainly nothing to suggest that Mr Edens or Mr Sawiris suddenly needed the funds elsewhere, and in fact the opposite is true - they've secured new investment in Villa that could have been used for this - so I'm guessing it's something within the project itself. If I had to guess then to me there are two main suspects in this whodunnit: The cost and availability of suitable construction companies and materials - my understanding is that this cost has rocketed in recent years, and although the forest of cranes in the City centre suggests that it's not stopping people in other sectors, the problems Liverpool had show that things aren't easy in stadium building. The unexpected (and lovely) arrival of the potential for Champions League money meaning that the club can increase it's revenues more effectively through it's on-field success than off field growth at the moment. All that lovely lucre from elsewhere creating a reduction in the urgency to maximise stadium revenues and giving the board cold feet perhaps. None of those are 'fortress' Villa Park, none of those are atmosphere, or related to not selling 200 tickets - the club hasn't helped itself with fairytales. Whatever, I suspect we'll never know and frankly it's not something we can do anything about, I just wish the whole thing had been done more professionally, we're not kids, we care and we understand - you can tell us why you're not redeveloping, hell, if you're feeling brave you could even tell us the attendances at our games - we don't need the soft soap and when it's done badly it just causes friction. Ah well, see you in 2030 for another go. I know a little about this and whilst I can't say anymore the issues at Liverpool were not a cause, the were simply the result of the contractor going bust. Liverpool did not "cause" the situation, the stand could have been delivered just fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted January 3 Share Posted January 3 3 hours ago, sidcow said: I know a little about this and whilst I can't say anymore the issues at Liverpool were not a cause, the were simply the result of the contractor going bust. Liverpool did not "cause" the situation, the stand could have been delivered just fine. However, my understanding is that the work at Craven Cottage *did* play a role in the contractor going bust. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted January 3 VT Supporter Share Posted January 3 (edited) 5 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said: However, my understanding is that the work at Craven Cottage *did* play a role in the contractor going bust. Yeah. Like I said I can't really say anymore. I look forward to a current Premier League team getting relegated and dying a slow death though. Edited January 3 by sidcow 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted January 3 Moderator Share Posted January 3 I wasn't suggesting Liverpool were to blame, more that they were the victim of the same sort of circumstance we could have found ourselves in - to my understanding, there are a limited number of companies that specialise in stadium construction or have the wherewithall to deliver on it - and I read that it took Liverpool longer than they'd hoped to find someone who could finish off the work that was left on the Anfield Road End as a result of the original contractors demise. If there are a limited number of companies that can, and one of those has disappeared and one of those is working on Everton then I guess that might have an effect on the tendering process for a new North Stand in that whatever company or companies are left would be able to put in tenders that might not otherwise be competitive. If you're the only company that's free to deliver it, you can charge what you like, and Villa might not have liked that particular option. Again, I don't know any of that for sure - just fishing for the logic. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted January 3 Share Posted January 3 36 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said: I wasn't suggesting Liverpool were to blame, more that they were the victim of the same sort of circumstance we could have found ourselves in - to my understanding, there are a limited number of companies that specialise in stadium construction or have the wherewithall to deliver on it - and I read that it took Liverpool longer than they'd hoped to find someone who could finish off the work that was left on the Anfield Road End as a result of the original contractors demise. If there are a limited number of companies that can, and one of those has disappeared and one of those is working on Everton then I guess that might have an effect on the tendering process for a new North Stand in that whatever company or companies are left would be able to put in tenders that might not otherwise be competitive. If you're the only company that's free to deliver it, you can charge what you like, and Villa might not have liked that particular option. Again, I don't know any of that for sure - just fishing for the logic. I'm not an expert but I think this is basically right as a summary of the landscape in stand-and-stadium construction. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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