Soccer and Super Stadiums in North America and Europe
By Tom Dunmore • Apr 3rd, 2008 • Category: News & Notes • 7 responses
Forbes has an interesting slideshow of ten coming “super stadiums” scheduled to open in the next few years. There are four stadiums that will host soccer included, from both Europe and North America.
An accompanying article in Forbes notes the plans in MLS, though curiously fails to mention the numerous soccer-specific-stadiums that have already opened in recent years.
Major League Soccer’s New York Red Bulls are also building a cozy new home with 20,000 seats in nearby Harrison, N.J. The fledgling league is hoping to strike a chord with casual soccer fans by rescuing some of its teams from monstrous football stadiums—mausoleums to a soccer club playing to less than half capacity much of the time—and into soccer-only venues that bring fans closer to the action.
“The first row of seats will be just 21 feet from the touch lines, “says Red Bulls spokesman Andy McGowan, who also notes that a translucent roof will cover every seat in the house. “It will be the benchmark stadium by which all other soccer stadiums in North America are measured.”
As The Offside Rules recently noted, “Red Bull Park is pretty much a carbon copy –on the surface at least– of Austria’s Hypo Group Arena.”
The article also focuses on stadium development in Europe, discussing major developments in Dublin and Lyon and stating that “The website stadiumguide.com lists 78 new soccer venues across Western Europe that either opened recently or planned for the near future, along with a handful of others in Eastern Europe and South America. Most are scaled down models of the old giant soccer stadiums emphasizing seating rather than standing room, the better to minimize the chances for hordes of standing, leaning fans to fall and cause a crush.”
I’m not really convinced by that conclusion: given the rest of the article focuses on the economic-driven switch to more and more luxury suites and expensive seating, as one would think that’s a key factor in the decline of standing areas (not to mention the fact they’re forbidden in the top tiers of English football). Unfortunately, the writer fails to mention the redeveloped and new stadiums in Germany that have safe standing areas, or that fans in many new MLS stadiums are allowed in certain areas to stand on bleachers — dedicated standing areas would actually probably be safer than folks precariously perched on benches.
A final concern is the comment on what the writer calls the “formula” behind new development. “Build new facilities with fewer seats and more luxury boxes, charge higher prices, earn more revenue, hire better players and reap more wins. Then turn around and raise ticket prices.”
Maybe these stadiums aren’t all so super after all.
Tom Dunmore is the editor of Pitch Invasion.
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Wait a minute, so if/when St. Louis DOES get a team…I’d have to fork over a ton of cash for season tix while some jabroni gets to take his “clients” out to a game in the private box and not really watch what’s going on? WTF, folks?
Home Depot Center strikes a great balance between luxury suites, stadium club, and seating capacity. The view from anywhere, even the corners, is great. Too bad the bandwagon fans LA has to deal with don’t take advantage of the strong connection to the on field product HDC allows.
Now, that’s a laugh! “American ignorance” is not a stereotype after all.
Can anyone tell me why on Earth Sandy Stadium and Red Bull Park are super? I guess they were among first 10 results on Google…
How can anyone compare these medicore if not poor stadiums with masterpieces being built in:
1. Southern Europe (Seyrantepe Stadi, Votanikos Arena, Valencia stadium, Nueva Romareda)
2. Central&Eastern Europe (Zenit Stadion!!!, Shakhtar Stadium, Stadionul National Bucuresti)
3. South Africa (Moses Mabhida, Soccer City, Green Point Stadium, Nelson Mandela Bay)
not even mentioning Asia…
It’s actually pathetic to see a brand like Forbes doing something so puny…
I’ve written about this reasonably extensively on Pitch Invasion already, but just to flag what has been happening at Omiya Ardija in Japan’s J-League.
Between late 2005 and late 2007, the club entirely re-built its stadium in the middle of Omiya city’s main park. It is a soccer-specific stadium with a capacity of 15,000 that is split between seating and standing. The photo on the link below gives some indication as to how this is achieved: there is a small bank of terracing directly behind both goals, with seating behind the standing area.
http://www.ardija.co.jp/community/stadium/photo/nack5/nack_04.jpg
Regarding pricing for each part of the new stadium, 2008 season tickets are available that cover twenty home matches as follows:
Category 1 (around the halfway line): 60,000 yen [approx $600]
Category 2 (down the side, but further towards the corners): 42,000 yen [approx $420]
Category 3 (seating behind the goal): 30,000 yen [approx $300]
Category 4 (standing behind the goal): 24,000 yen [approx $240]
Fans purchasing a season ticket in any category get a different type of free gift, the Category 4 gift being a kind of pouch with a strap on it that you can use to attach it to the crush barriers to keep your stuff off the floor (photo here: http://www.ardija.co.jp/ticket/images/2008season_category4.jpg ).
One thing that is particularly pleasing to Ardija fans is that the club management seem committed to using the shiny-but-compact stadium as the regular venue for home matches, rather than switching between different grounds as they have done over the last couple of years. This policy even extends to the local derby match with Urawa Reds - the best-supported club in Japan - which will be staged in September at Omiya Park rather than the nearby 65,000-capacity Saitama Stadium.
Such a decision is guaranteed to lose the club the ticket money from about 20,000 Reds fans who would normally attend the game and will now be unable to do so. But it does also mean that the Squirrel Nation has come home.
[…] Super stadium slideshow (Pitch Invasion) […]
Hey, as long as I can pay $40 and get a quality seat in a SSS, then I’m cool. Just don’t tell me the cost of getting truly up close is gonna be in the $400 range.
Pitch Invasion Soccer and Super Stadiums in North America and Europe
Some new stadiums to be made in the next 5 years - mostly American ones, and not all football related, but interesting none the less