West Brom: New stadium build mooted as takeover agreed at The Hawthorns
Dan Plumley has suggested that an alternative to increasing the capacity at The Hawthorns would be for West Brom to build an entirely new stadium.
Adrian Goldberg recently suggested the plans after Shilen Patel agreed his takeover of the club, with the ground currently sitting at just above 26,000 capacity.
The football finance expert admitted that taking the current ground to 40,000 capacity would be a massive immediate jump, but even building a new stadium comes with its risks.
“It’s really big,” he exclusively told West Brom News.
“You’ve got to factor in the planning side of that, is that possible within the location that it is in currently? I’m not so sure, I haven’t seen the planning details on the land surrounding that stadium if there is even space to do that.
“If you’re going to go to that big of an uplift then there are considerable questions to be asked about how you do it, of course, the alternative is you build a new stadium in a new location, but that has its risks as well.
“I think the principle of increasing capacity is there for everyone to see and obviously, if you can do that, you can squeeze more out of your matchday operations.
“You can then look at adding in hospitality offers and what you do with that stadium if it’s not in use on matchday, but that does seem like a big leap to go from 26,000 to 40,000.
“A lot of that will depend on league status as well, as you’ve got to prove you can match that capacity with demand as well so it will be interesting to see.”
West Brom to build new stadium over The Hawthorns?
This is certainly something to watch, but likely not an immediate concern of Patel after the takeover.
With Patel only set to pay £5million to Guochuan Lai in 2024 ahead of other payments down the line, money looks to be available immediately.
Just don’t get your hopes up over any new build any time soon.
In other West Brom news, “catastrophic” issues have emerged amid the ongoing takeover.
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