The Kraken

Of course; but MLG has highlighted a link where Derby FC intend to build a series of shops, bars and restaurants external to the club stadium and the profits from that will then be able to be used to fund the football team. A bit like SFC building West Quay 2 and profitting in the same way. Which is why the question is being asked, where is the line drawn?

Yes, and I used it as you used it to ask a question about where exactly the demarcations are, as it seems to be extremely loose. Almost 20 odd posts later and no closer to an answer.

You picked up and ran with from post 7.

On that note then, rewind a few years when SFC were a subsidiary of Southampton Leisure Holdings, made up from: Southampton Football Club Ltd St. Mary's Stadium Ltd St. Mary's SPV Ltd Southampton Insurance Services Ltd Southampton Mortgage & Financial Centre Ltd Saints Supporters Club Ltd Southampton Swaylife Ltd Secure Retirement Ltd Dell Estates Ltd St Michael's Street Homes (No. 1) Ltd Stadium 2000 Ltd Felix Broadcasting Ltd South City FM Ltd Forest FM Ltd Would they all have counted as football-income?

That's been rumoured for quite some time now; I personally don't think it'll happen, traffic on matchdays would make it an utter nightmare for accessibility.

I don't disagree. I just imagine that UEFA will be massively spineless and in constant fear of being sued that they will fail to act. Wenger has stated publicly that the City deal raised issues relating to the credibility of the rule, and I can only imagine this will be just the start of it. It seems a nice idea in principle, I'm just massive skeptical that it can work in reality. Mostly due to said spinelessness of UEFA, who won't want to ruffle the feathers too much of the hands that feed them.

And that is true, but who is to say what is out of line? Based upon what? It'll be a littany of court cases which the rich club's lawyers will end up winning.

Precisely. Sponsor a player in the programme? Sponsor one of the academy sides. Is there anything to stop a monetary gift being made, as happens with political parties? The list is almost endless.

Of course, they should count. However, the very notion of it identifies the massive potential there is for abuse of the system.

Is it, though? genuine question, as I don't know where the demarcations of footballing-income will be. For instance, could Man City simply buy out, for instance, Frankie & Benny's, re-name them "Blue Moon Restaurants", incoporate them under the umbrella of "Manchester City holdings" or whatever and then claim all profits as football income? Seems totally ridiculous, of course, but is it possible?

I think I'd actually prefer Redknapp to Stuart Pearce. Can't see why Jose would ever want the gig. Wenger would be the ideal candidate IMO, although the press would absolutely slaughter him for even the tiniest of failures.

I never leave early at the end, but always a few minutes before half time to get a half time beer. You get served immediately, and you can still see the pitch to keep an eye on the game. Plus when the screens down in the concourse are working you can keep an eye on those. A half-time beer is a necessary part of the day; f*ck queuing up for 15 minutes to then have to down it in 3 to then get back to your seat.

Redknapp will not get the England job. He just won't. The press will talk him up for it because they know he has so many skeltons in the closet that they could bring out, it will give them sensationalist headlines (and the increased sales numbers that go with them) for his whole tenure.

Being as St. Mary's has a UEFA 4 star rating, I don't think you can call our stadium "rubbish", even by comparison to any other stadium in the world. It's smaller than a lot of the great stadia, and does have a basic and common design. But it is not "rubbish" by any criteria.

I can't think of many stadiums that I'd prefer to ours. It's a flatpack standard design of course, but really, who cares? Bolton's & Huddersfield's look ok but they're smaller than ours, and I prefer the bowl arrangement we have. Arsenal's is a nice design but just a complete carbon copy of the Estadio da Luz, so hardly a stand out design. Other than those I can't think of any others that stand out; football stadiums are really just large, functional structures that house a huge pitch and thousands of people inside. The only one I can really think is a fantastic stadium is the Allianz Arena. But then how much did that cost? And what would it actually add to us (plus it would look a bit daft doing that to a 32K capacity ground).

I think you're barking up the wrong tree with that one.

Personally speaking (and I have nothing to back this up) I'd be surprised if Cortese didn't already have accurate outline costs for how much a stadium capacity increase would cost, and how long it would take. I imagine even basic preliminary plans may exists; if they didn't already when the stadium was built (it was built with future expansion in mind) then it really wouldn't take much to knock new plans up. Furthermore, I would also imagine he has an accurate idea of how much a new ground would cost, and a potential location or two identified. So I doubt he's been sitting on his hands waiting, especially given that he floated the potential of it all very early upon arrival at the club, and since.

Personally speaking, I'm not for one minute suggesting that a 40K stadium unreasonable. I don't think ANYONE is saying that we definitely won't need to move. What people are saying is this; there is currently no evidence, none at all, to suggest that we will definitely need a bigger stadium. There is absolutely certainly no evidence to support MLG's claims that we need a 50K stadium. Talk of a bigger stadium is massively premature; in Cortese's own words it is a long way away yet. Expanding the stadium to 36,000 would cost around £16M. Expanding to 40,000 would cost £32M. Those are massive sums of money, and Cortese won't just fritter cash away on them for a vanity exercise, he will want to be 100% definite that there is a real need for such an expansion. What I especially am saying is that there are a number of benchmarks which will need to be met before we talk about spending such vast sums, namely: A season ticket base up towards the home allocation capacity; All match tickets selling out within a few hours of going on sale. Potential ballotting of tickets for select games to see exactly how many fans above capacity would be prepared to regularly shell out for games. If those conditions are met then I'm sure Cortese will want to expand the stadium. But they will have to met first, we won't be building anything on the whimsical notions of irrelevant statistics and opinion.

Why bother? In Cortese's words himself, any expansion of the stadium is a long, long way down the road. Unlike MLG, Cortese will base his decision on seeing evidence for himself that extra capacity is required, rather than cobbling together irrelevant information from other places ina desperate attempt to provide a contrary stance. Any bet you have will likely take quite a few years yet to cash in, and if we don't expand, ever at all.

Mikee, I don't personally see the point of a bigger stadium if we have to rely upon away fans bringing 5,000 fans each time to get close to filling it. That's 2,000 more tickets than most other Prem sides allocate (and that we would have to make available). Also, I don't share your dropping below 30K, as it happened a few times before in the Prem. You just need to look at our League cup gates to ascertain how ambivalent fans can become to lesser ranked games. Also, I'm not sure how you say adding 8,000 seats would be low risk; it would cost in the order of £32M. That's what St. Mary's originally cost us. just assuming that the Liebherr estate are going to fund it from their pocket out of the goodness of their hearts is a bit short-sighted IMO; any ground improvement would IMO have to prove to be capable of back-paying the costs within a relatively short time-frame (I'm thinking 5 to 10 years).

MLG, you're pretty good with stats, apparently? Can you provide a percentage of how many games Saints sold out the home allocation when in the Premier League? You mention Newcastle selling out with 51K of 52K, we often had 30.5K out of 32.5K, so an extra 1K seems like a hell of a lot to put down to segregation. Without stats this whole thread is massively based on assumptions, and therefore a bit pointless.

Because people would day trip to us from Plymouth; simple. Blimey, this thread has become even more ridiculous than I thought possible.

A very high level of season tickets, close to or over capacity of home tickets. Match tickets going on sale and consistently selling out within hours. Huge demand (thousands) for tickets, possibly by ballotting for high demand games. That would be a start.

No, I'm completely avoiding your suppositions as they are irrelevant. The only relevant thing is what evidence there is to show we could sell more home tickets than capacity to justify a new stadium. You claim there is evidence. What you just suggested is not evidence, it is an assumption. I'll assume then that you have no evidence to back up your assumptions; which is the entire point. Mr. Cortese will wait to see such evidence, thankfully.

What proof is there that the demand was there to have sold, say, just an extra 100 home tickets?