Arsenal are reportedly more likely to add a modest number of corporate seats to the Emirates Stadium, rather than overhauling the ground to add tens of thousands.
Gary Jacob reports for The Times that whilst Arsenal have been considering how to upgrade the Emirates Stadium, the club and Mikel Arteta are keen not to disrupt a winning team by giving up home advantage and temporarily relocating to Wembley.
Digging down to add seats would also reportedly be a logistical problem, due to the disruption of the pipework below, so the financial cost might not justify the extra revenue generated by 10,000 new seats.
Jacob claims it’s more likely Arsenal remodel the ground to add around 5,000 seats, geared towards increasing the range of corporate choices.
That doesn’t sound quite as exciting as adding 10,000 new ordinary seats to the stadium’s capacity, and new corporate seats would likely do nothing to aid the average fan sitting on the season-ticket waiting list.
But it’s a safer bet financially, with Arsenal able to charge a lot more for those new corporate seats, justifying whatever construction costs they incur to introduce the additional capacity.
Sam Cunningham recently reported for City A.M. that Arsenal were in talks with architects Populous over expanding the Emirates, having previously worked with the same company to design the ground in the first place.
At the time, Cunningham claimed all options remained on the table, from major works to minor hospitality upgrades.
Isaan Khan has also previously reported for the Daily Mail that new Arsenal board member Otto Maly has a clear remit to expand the Emirates Stadium.
Maly played a key role in building the SoFi stadium in Los Angeles, a 100,000-capacity ground home to the LA Rams. Though Khan added that a modest increase of a few thousand seats is more probable in this case than anything more significant.
That’s seemingly being reflected in this latest report, though nothing has been officially confirmed just yet.
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