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We could easily increase the capacity to 40k and fill it and it’s all down to ticketing. If you charged £30 or £20 a ticket Norwich will become the default place for away fans to travel to if it was the one away game to go to a season. Give Man Utd 7,500 tickets they’ll sell them no problem. That would leave us with the problem of selling 3-5k seats and at £20 per go which bearing in mind the teams we will be playing will be easy.

Yes we’ll lose some revenue via ticket sales compared to what could be charged but I’d rather have a full ground in the Premier League rather than half empty soulless stadium in The Championship.

The sale of Max Aarons next season will pay for the upgrade. Job done. We don’t need to worry about it for 50 years. 😁

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2 hours ago, ThorpeCanary said:

Because it's not absolute.

The stand would be a financial benefit in times when we are selling more tickets than we do right now while offering a chance to make prices more reasonable when the time comes giving the opportunity to people or families who currently won't go on the current pricing.

Essentially I believe the stand will more than pay for itself over a sensible timeline. The fact that tickets may be reduced at a point of time doesn't make this untrue.

The stand shouldn't be built at a time like now, where the chance to stay in the league is massive and narrowly missing out because you sunk a load of money Into bricks rather than the squad which now means you lose out on hundreds of millions would be stupid. But give it a couple of years with the squads wage bill  rising year on year the longer we stay up the club will surely accept it's time and the support is there 

1 hour ago, ricardo said:

Oh well, I give up. I'm obviously wasting my time trying to explain the economic realities. If a shiny new stand was presently feasible we would already be building it.

Yeah if thats what you took out of what I wrote i'd agree the discussion isn't really worth continuing.

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3 minutes ago, nutty nigel said:

So build it and the man Utd supporters will come.

Is that a reason for or against?

I agree they would be an undeserving beneficiary of a bigger stadium and would be currently queuing up for their season tickets. My Facebook feed has been full of people who have once again remembered they are Norwich fans after a couple of years out supporting their childhood big teams.

But I don't want Carrow Road extended for them, I want it done to give a chance for our football club to grow it's support which I'm sure it can do and help move us up a level. It would need to be done at a sensible time and now clearly isn't it.

Interestingly Newcastle (who usually mostly fill there ground) averaged 43k back in 2010 in the championship while averaging 51k in 2017, I'm not sure what caused the big difference between those years is down to but It shows how quickly things can change

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12 minutes ago, ThorpeCanary said:

 

Yeah if thats what you took out of what I wrote i'd agree the discussion isn't really worth continuing.

Because the rest is just pie in the sky much like the statement based on nothing more than your belief.

Essentially I believe the stand will more than pay for itself over a sensible timeline

We have had the Chairman stand up at an AGM and say that it wouldn't

and this one

offering a chance to make prices more reasonable when the time comes giving the opportunity to people or families who currently won't go on the current pricing.

The only time to consider reducing pricing is when the product is so poor that lots of seats are left empty. Its a natural process of success and failure. Nobody is going to invest in a stand so that prices can be reduced.

 

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I base it on the feasibility study the club commissioned stating an expansion of 7,000. As for the last bit yes, I wouldn't expand Carrow Road if i knew we were going to spend 19 of the next 20 seasons in the championship. I believe it will be worthwhile because if we are going to try and move onto the next level it's something that will help us get there. 

I bought a bike two years ago to commute to work, it saves me about €4 in petrol a day. I didn't buy it for it to sit at home each time theres rain (or like there will be soon - a storm) but it's still paid for itself 5 times over. (I appreciate a stand won't be quite so quick)

To reiterate I don't believe we should be extending right now or even in the next couple of years, but after a few seasons of successive premier-league football that's when I believe the time will be right. The truth is teams like us - or anyone who isn't the big 6) are never truely safe at the top table anyway, just look at Villa, Newcastle and Sunderland.

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10 minutes ago, ThorpeCanary said:

I don't believe we should be extending right now or even in the next couple of years, but after a few seasons of successive premier-league football that's when I believe the time will be right. The truth is teams like us - or anyone who isn't the big 6) are never truely safe at the top table anyway, just look at Villa, Newcastle and Sunderland.

Yes, if we stay in the PL more than a couple of years we could try and put some of that money aside for stadium expansion. The longer we stay up the more feasible it becomes to do something with the stadium. 

The big thing is to see if we can sustain as a PL club with the methods we are using at the moment - ie not spending big on players. If we can, then money will accrue and the club will benefit from that and be able to further develop it's infrastructure three, four, five years down the line. 

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15 minutes ago, ThorpeCanary said:

 

To reiterate I don't believe we should be extending right now or even in the next couple of years, but after a few seasons of successive premier-league football that's when I believe the time will be right. The truth is teams like us - or anyone who isn't the big 6) are never truely safe at the top table anyway, just look at Villa, Newcastle and Sunderland.

And that is exactly why the Board have approached this topic with caution.The finance and logistics have so far prevented them from taking it forward. At some stage I would hope and expect these problems to be overcome and the Main stand redevelopment to take place.

But I'm not holding my breath.

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22 minutes ago, ThorpeCanary said:



I bought a bike two years ago to commute to work, it saves me about €4 in petrol a day. I didn't buy it for it to sit at home each time theres rain (or like there will be soon - a storm) but it's still paid for itself 5 times over. (I appreciate a stand won't be quite so quick)

 

To take the analogy further, I also expect that you didn't buy it so that you could give walkers a cross bar every time they fancied a lift because the sun was shining.

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17 minutes ago, ricardo said:

 

Because the rest is just pie in the sky much like the statement based on nothing more than your belief.

Essentially I believe the stand will more than pay for itself over a sensible timeline

We have had the Chairman stand up at an AGM and say that it wouldn't 

and this one

offering a chance to make prices more reasonable when the time comes giving the opportunity to people or families who currently won't go on the current pricing.

The only time to consider reducing pricing is when the product is so poor that lots of seats are left empty. Its a natural process of success and failure. Nobody is going to invest in a stand so that prices can be reduced.

 

Really? I can imagine a chairman saying extra tickets sales would not each year cover the cost of the annual loan repayments (ie capital and interest). Bowkett in effect doubted they would six years ago. And I would be surprised if they would. My calculations have never been based on that happening, although there are happy circumstances in which we would not have to fund the project entirely from debt, and it might then be possible.

That depends on whether the board sticks to the new mantra of financial prudence and not spending every last penny trying to stay in or get back to the Premier League. We should be able to assess this better next summer. If we have stayed up and the board keeps to that plan then the financial circumstance (which are not set in stone for all eternity, as Norwich City have shown, for good and ill, over recent times) will be more amenable (although still not necessarily amenable enough) to pay for expansion than at any time in decades.

But if this chairman said expanded capacity would not more than pay for itself over the lifetime of four or  five decades of the new/expanded stand, which is the question at issue here, then that goes against the experience of the South Stand expansion, which has already more than paid for itself.

It would also raise the question of why chairmen and CEOs have consistently said they would like to expand, on the basis that it made long-term sense. For example, at that same AGM McNally, while acknowledging the problem of funding such a project, said this:

“You’re more likely to be a consistent Premier League club with average gates of 35,000 then you are with crowds of 26,800 so it’s something that we would wish to do in the mid-term."

The only possible way to read that comment is that greater capacity would end up being profitable and so provide extra money to improve the squad.

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You keep saying the same thing Purple. I am merely reporting what Bowkett said.

Nobody would argue with McNally's statement and I expect Sheepshank made a similar calculation for them lot down the road.

“You’re more likely to be a consistent Premier League club with average gates of 35,000 then you are with crowds of 26,800 so it’s something that we would wish to do in the mid-term."

But that isn't the problem. It's whether you believe those two things ( Premier League & 35k gates) are likely or even possible. I look to history to give us the answer and in both cases its a No.

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53 minutes ago, ricardo said:

 

But that isn't the problem. It's whether you believe those two things ( Premier League & 35k gates) are likely or even possible. I look to history to give us the answer and in both cases its a No.

We probably wont win a trophy this year either some might as well not bother trying?

I'm up for expanding as soon as the funds are available to do it near to debt free and without shafting the playing side. I dont see an extended stay in the PL as a prerequisite.

If its debt free it would matter to me if it took a while for the investment to be paid back as I think the object of expansion should not be primarily for the income but to increase accessibility,  improve the match day experience, raise prestige and secure the club well into the future. Generally make carrow road for the many and not the few.

If we are taking lessons from history perhaps the better one is that expansion is a much lower risk strategy than an £8million splurge on another number 9 with skyrocket wages and long contract to match.

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Wanting things that you can't pay for and probably don't really need is a very human trait that we all suffer from at sometime in our lives. The idea that we can in some way secure the future is another. Reality usually comes with a hard lesson.

 

 

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2 hours ago, ricardo said:

To take the analogy further, I also expect that you didn't buy it so that you could give walkers a cross bar every time they fancied a lift because the sun was shining.

Pretty rubbish analogy Ricardo - the whole point of what Jersey Canary said was that the fans of Man Utd/other well supported visiting clubs would PAY to use our extended capacity - thereby financially benefiting Norwich City. 

Edited by Thirsty Lizard

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Very interesting debate that goes on and on!

 

Like I've said before, Norwich City's home ground is in the perfect place cause it can be made bigger, near the train station and walking distance from the City centre. All this is much better than a soulless ground on a retail Park on the A47 which would be logistically more difficult to get to and exit!

 

The crowd figures of the last 16 years (including averaging just under 25,000 in the 3rd Division) firmly indicate that Carrow Road could justifiably be made bigger when the clubs had a couple of consecutive seasons in the top flight, that's not pie in the sky, good old black and white fact! Norwich have got the proven attendance figures to justify increasing capacity despite what some say and that's not taking into account the "build it and they will come" factor where new supporters seemingly come out of nowhere!

 

Adding 5000-10,000  extra spaces to Carrow Road would be mega expensive, hence why it hasn't done yet although since the early 00's the ground has gone from 21,000 to the current 27,000. 

 

There's no doubt financing a Carrow Road expansion would be difficult and would have to be carefully thought out but for the club to progress, fulfill its potential and not be left behind by smaller and similar sized clubs who have invested in bigger grounds it needs to done at some point.

 

It's laughable those who think Norwich don't need to do it when you look at the average crowds and how clubs with smaller fanbases (EG Cardiff, Southampton, and Brighton have bigger grounds than us so get bigger crowds in the top flight) do it and benefit. To many Norwich fans are blinkered by the "little ole Norwich" bulls*it urban myth and are quick to ignore facts and figures, particularly clubs with smaller fanbases with bigger grounds.

 

I'm amused how many Norwich fans make out its impossible we'd get regular 30,000 crowds in the top flight yet Cardiff last season, a club with a smaller fanbase than us averaged 31,000! - Cardiff in the Championship will get smaller crowds than us. Southampton and Leicester also normally get smaller crowds than Norwich outside the Premiership!

 

Go back 20 years, when we were getting 16-18,000 crowds when Carrow Road held just under 22,000, I'm sure many of those "Norwich don't need a bigger ground brigade" would of said the same thing about building a bigger South stand!

 

Likewise I predict 25 40 years into the future after Carrow Road has been potentially increased to 32-35,000 and the Board of the time are looking to push the capacity closer to the 40,000 mark, many Norwich fans will start going on about how unrealistic it is even thinking about it!  

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A self sufficient club like Norwich with a proven fanbase that fills one the highest %'s of their home stadium in the Country could do with investing in extra capacity cause it would definitely get bigger crowds if able to while in successful times and also a bigger/ new stand would have more revenue opportunities further strengthening the self sufficiency!

 

The 2004 finished South stand has done exactly what is said in the above paragraph. 

A new bigger City stand I suggest would also do the same!

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Purple Canary is totally correct to highlight the example of the South Stand. It's long forgotten now, but I can remember that there were lots of people at the time the present stand was built complaining that the money should be spent on the team and saying that the Club were repeating the mistakes of the Chase era by spending money on the ground and not on the team, etc, etc, etc. 

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Exactly Thirsty lizard! 

 

I remember the outcry in 1979 when the old River End terrace was replaced by the current stand which then was state of the art. If we'd of kept the old open terrace we'd of spent lots having to kept it in a useable state, wouldn't of had the extra income from the restaurants and corporate facilities and eventually in the early 90's we'd of had a massive, expensive rebuilding/ renovating job after the Taylor report!

 

Likewise in 1992, I loved the old Barclay terrace but by then it was outdated and needed replacing.

 

You imagine now if we'd of kept them 2 stands and then had to bolt seats on them in order to comply with all seater rules!

 

We'd now be on a par with Peterborough United at best!

 

Essentially you have to keep on pushing forward in order to keep up and improve. A bigger City stand will be needed in the next 10 years in order to keep on a forward motion for the club!

 

Stay up this current season and if I was the board I'd give serious consideration to doing it! 

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40 minutes ago, ricardo said:

Wanting things that you can't pay for and probably don't really need is a very human trait that we all suffer from at sometime in our lives. The idea that we can in some way secure the future is another. Reality usually comes with a hard lesson.

 

 

But we can pay for it. And whether or not we need it is a matter of opinion.   

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Everything I've just been saying in recent posts about our over 90% of capacity attendance figures, how smaller clubs with bigger grounds like Cardiff can average 31,000 last season, the requirement of a self sufficient football club to increase avenues of that self sufficiency and the need to keep pushing the club onwards in order to just keep up with the others firmly indicate we need it!

 

Anyone who don't see that need to take their "little ole Norwich" blinkers off!

 

And no I'm not some naive under 25 year old!

Edited by kingsway

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5 hours ago, ricardo said:

Oh well, I give up. I'm obviously wasting my time trying to explain the economic realities. If a shiny new stand was presently feasible we would already be building it.

Again ric, your argument is based on building now, nobody else is demanding a time line, merely that it should be considered and remain under consideration. 

The 'banks of empty seats ' line is laughable, if we add another 4-6 thousand seats, there is potential to encourage more Season Ticket Holders, more regular fans and the likelihood to attract new fans as well as some who'd given up trying. 

I know that you live close to the ground, ride there on your bike and probably have a season ticket, I, on the other hand, fly half way around the World, drive up from London and hope that there'll be a few tickets available when I get there and I'm not the only one. 

The argument put forward by long term Season Ticket Holders that we don't need expansion is a selfish one and points to an 'I'm alright Jack' mentality. 

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32 minutes ago, splendidrush said:

 

The argument put forward by long term Season Ticket Holders that we don't need expansion is a selfish one and points to an 'I'm alright Jack' mentality. 

Again!

Who are these selfish long term season ticket holders and what have they said pointing to an 'I'm alright Jack's mentality?

Just to reiterate, season ticket holders stand to gain if the stadium is expanded. If not they certainly won't lose. Because as it stands the only advantage they have is being assured of the tickets they paid for. There's now no saving in match day prices. No advantage in buying away tickets (not that I ever believed there should be but it was a benefit). No advantage in buying another home ticket. (I agree with that too but it was a benefit). Some of the people criticising them are probably pontificaters who won't be buying tickets anyway.

 

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When I first went in the 60s Carrow Road was a 40,000 stadium. Ideally we'd still have that capacity. Unfortunately, even though the stands are bigger and better, the best we can do is 27,000. 

I think one of the problems we have now is that we could fill a 40,000 stadium but, and I think this is part of Rickyyy's historical point, I'm not convinced our average gate over a period of time would be much different to the present capacity.

I say do it but it surely has to be a complete rebuild of the city stand. What to do with all those season ticket holders while it's built? If they're selfish ones tell them tough t1tty! Otherwise buy them sky subscriptions and ifollow or whatever it is now...

 

(That last bit was not serious BTW. Most of them are old soooo.....

That's not serious either)

Edited by nutty nigel
People might think I'm selfish....

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3 minutes ago, nutty nigel said:

When I first went in the 60s Carrow Road was a 40,000 stadium. Ideally we'd still have that capacity. Unfortunately, even though the stands are bigger and better, the best we can do is 27,000. 

I think one of the problems we have now is that we could fill a 40,000 stadium but, and I think this is part of Rickyyy's historical point, I'm not convinced our average gate over a period of time would be much different to the present capacity.

I say do it but it surely has to be a complete rebuild of the city stand. What to do with all those season ticket holders while it's built? If they're selfish ones tell them tough t1tty! Otherwise buy them sky subscriptions and ifollow or whatever it is now...

The reason it's 'the best we can do' is it's an all seater Stadium today and the replacement stand was built at a time of low attendances. 

I wouldn't be advocating a capacity of 40,000 at this point anyway but it's clear that supply and demand have not been matched for a considerable amount of time. 

I agree the City Stand needs a complete rebuild. As for the Season Ticket Holders, I  asked Delia that question when the Jarrold was announced, something about unpopular decisions and the fact that the stand would be condemned eventually. 

Who'd be an owner?

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Kingsway, if some of the posters on here were in charge of the Glastonbury festival they'd be saying "Thank goodness the 200k people who want to come to our festival get themselves organised to buy tickets in the 20minutes they are on sale, and nobody is left disappointed!". There are of course thousands who would like to go but know they probably won't get a ticket,so don't include it in their plans. Same at City over the last twelve years.

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12 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

To be fair  we dont know that there will be banks of empty seats. Your assessment is that there will be, others will argue that there won't.  

Nutty, it is you making black and white claims about the future. This is from my first post:

"There is no way of knowing our potential support untilit becomes easier for groups of people to get tickets in areas they like to sit and that becomes known within our catchment. Supply is fixed, but demand is malleable to an extent with marketing, ticket offers, extended family area, linkups with local businesses etc."

Also, I have been talking about people who can't come regularly due to circumstances- I notice you constantly switch that to "Only want to come 6-8 times a season". The gig economy, weekend working, job/financial/spouse/child/health/travel pressures affect many. The fact that you don't seem to acknowledge that is why I use the term myopic.

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10 minutes ago, Mr.Carrow said:

 

"There is no way of knowing our potential support untilit becomes easier for groups of people to get tickets in areas they like to sit and that becomes known within our catchment. Supply is fixed, but demand is malleable to an extent with marketing, ticket offers, extended family area, linkups with local businesses etc."

 

  •  

Genuine question, as I don't live in Norfolk, how much marketing and promotion work do the Club do?

If you go to a show or a concert you hear about it, in advance on local radio and TV, you'll often see posters plastered up announcing upcoming events it'll be online in some format or other. 

Do our Club do this? or is it the case that because there are few seats available there's no need? If that's the case, we need expansion to happen and the sooner the better imo, then get someone our there promoting the availability of extra seats and getting more people involved. 

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