The entire time Steve Bruce and Mike Ashley were at Newcastle United together, all two years and three months, St James’ Park was never once sold out.
A very small number of games saw all seats taken up BUT only due to Mike Ashley giving 10,000+ free season tickets away.
Thousands and thousands of season ticket holders sacrificing their season tickets to try and get the tyrant out.
It worked, that boycott saw Ashley forced into the ultra desperate measure of giving 10,000+ tickets away each match to fill the seats next to his shop adverts. However, the good news, was that this mass season ticket give away was his acceptance that the game was up, now he had no choice but to sell.
Ever since that 7 October 2021 takeover, every competitive match at St James’ Park has been sold out.
Just the return of a little bit of hope is all it takes for Newcastle United fans.
Very similar to the incredible 51,000+ average St James’ Park crowds across the 2016/17 Championship season, simply because Rafa stayed and gave us a little bit of hope.
Back to the present day and we have far more than just a little bit of hope, where the team are concerned and the club overall.
However, this new St James’ Park expansion update from the Newcastle United CEO is very disappointing.
Darren Eales talking to BBC Newcastle about potential St James’ Park expansion – 10 August 2023:
“We’re in a fortunate position with 52,000 (inside St James’ Park every match).
“As everyone knows, we can sell that out every game.
“The demand for tickets means that at the moment, people can’t get into the building.
“One of the challenges we have is that we are in a great location.
“St James’ Park is the cathedral on the hill, it’s just amazing to have that location in the city.
“So one of the things we want to do, and this is something that we’ve just started the process with, is a stadium feasibility study.
“That is to get in some experts to take a look with a blank sheet of paper, to see what we could do to improve the stadium’s capacity.
“The reality is, we need some experts to come in with no preconceptions.
“Look at it and actually give us that feedback.
“Our focus is to look at the possibilities.
“We will then be able to consult and talk with fans to say ‘here’s the potential of what we can do’.
“One thing we have done is Strawberry Place and the land outside St James’ Park.
“We purchased that earlier this year and put in planning permission for fan zones.
“We are really excited to hopefully get something out this season, where we have that fan zone, so we can use that land for our supporters on a matchday.
“Obviously having that land also gives us the flexibility to potentially do the things we around the stadium.”
As I say, I find this St James’ Park expansion update very very disappointing, if we take Darren Eales at his word.
The NUFC CEO declaring ‘So one of the things we want to do, and this is something that we’ve just started the process with, is a stadium feasibility study. That is to get in some experts to take a look with a blank sheet of paper, to see what we could do to improve the stadium’s capacity.’
The hope I cling onto is that in reality, Darren Eales is really being economical with the truth, that far more has gone on behind the scenes and that things are actually far more advanced with regard to plans for St James’ Park and how it can be maximised in terms of capacity.
The ‘new’ Newcastle United owners have now been in control more than 22 months.
Then of course before that, there was an agreement for them to take over for pretty much two years, before getting Premier League approval.
If you go even further back, it was actually 2017, six years ago, when it all first started with Amanda Staveley coming to watch Liverpool play at St James’ Park and then at some point following that, taking the idea to Saudi Arabia PIF of taking over the club.
I must admit that my hope was that very quickly after the takeover happened in October 2021, the owners would announce plans for how they intended to maximise the St James’ Park capacity. Certainly by summer 2022 at the very latest I had expected for sure to hear what was intended.
After all, these are people who can afford the very best expert advice, plus Saudi Arabia PIF partnering with the UK’s richest family who are experts in developing land / property AND who have been especially active in Newcastle Upon Tyne and the region overall, in terms of development and their numerous business interests. Which include Newcastle racecourse amongst many others.
Every major Premier League club is desperate to maximise their capacity because it plays a huge part financially, especially in helping to stretch FFP parameters.
I even find it difficult to believe that long before the actual NUFC takeover happened, a major feasibility study wasn’t undertaken by the prospective owners. As your stadium capacity is such an important component if they wanted to turn Newcastle United into a major force.
With so many Newcastle United fans currently locked out and just as importantly, the fans of the future currently seeing a bleak picture of getting inside St James’ Park, we need to see things moving ASAP.
The reality as well is that even at the most optimistic, once we do hear plans announced, we would still be talking years before those plans became reality and St James’ Park much increased in capacity.
As for what our CEO said yesterday, I really hope that when he talked of a feasibility study kicking off now, Darren Eales was actually secretly meaning that this is the final details getting agreed on how the St James’ Park capacity is going to be increased, with Newcastle City Council shortly to receive those plans for the go ahead.
Not as important of course as increasing the St James’ Park capacity, I think it is also worth mentioning the new state of the art training ground.
Much was made of this not long after the takeover, with friendly media reporting that plans for improving the current training facility were in progress to get it up to an acceptable standard but also at the same time, a number of locations had been identified on where to site the new state of the art training facility which would be so much more than that, including other facilities as well as accommodation etc. A few quid has been spent on the current temporary training facility but no progress whatsoever announced on the new state of the art one.
Hopefully a massive double announcement imminent on both that and especially St James’ park.
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