Aberdeen warns council over new stadium

Article posted by Coliseum, December 10^th, 2025

Image: Aberdeen FC, Lewismccabe10, CC BY-SA 4.0

Aberdeen Football Club has warned that the city council risks missing out on a massive boost to the local economy if it opts against a proposed shared community stadium to replace Pittodrie.

The BBC said the Scottish Premiership club was responding to reports that claimed their latest offer to break the deadlock in talks over a new beachfront stadium looks set to be thrown out.

Aberdeen Football Club is a Scottish professional football club based in Aberdeen, Scotland (UK). They compete in the Scottish Premiership and have never been relegated from the top division of the Scottish football league system since they were elected to the top flight in 1905.

The 19,274-capacity Pittodrie Stadium, commonly referred to as Pittodrie from which the surrounding residential area has taken its name, is an all-seater stadium in Aberdeen, Scotland (UK). Used primarily for football it has been the home ground of Aberdeen F.C. since they were formed in 1903.

In a bid to get the city on-board with the proposal for the new stadium, Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack offered to give Pittodrie and the surrounding land to the council to secure a proposed 99-year lease on the replacement ground.

However, the city’s finance convener Alex McLellan said that “if Dave Cormack needs to raise capital to fund the stadium, he should be looking to the private market” to sell it himself.

Aberdeen said in response, “It was Aberdeen City Council who proposed a shared community stadium and leisure centre and who asked Aberdeen Football Club if they would consider staying in the city centre and being the major tenant for the centrepiece of the beach masterplan.

“The ball is not in our court. It is well and truly in the hands of our council leaders – only they have the mandate and the ability to secure public, capital investment to drive a major infrastructure project like this.

“The leaders of the opposition parties understand this. Sadly, our current administration does not and continues to deliberately miss the point, which is both disappointing and disingenuous.”

Aberdeen said the council’s co-leaders promised 18 months ago to research similar projects where a football club was the anchor tenant in a community stadium.

“A new economic impact report from BiGGAR Economics revealed that this transformational project will generate £3.2bn into the local economy over 50 years,” the club claim.

“If this was just about a new stadium for the club, we’d look at moving ahead with Kingsford [an alternative out-of-town site] or explore the major challenges of trying to redevelop Pittodrie.”

Aberdeen said it hoped the report would persuade the council to “work together to seriously evaluate the project.”

The club added, “Instead, all we’ve seen from them are mis-leading briefings to the media, dismissing the economic report by a reputable company used by the Scottish Government”.

The BIGGAR reprt suggested that a new, multisport community stadium at Aberdeen Beach would inject at least £1.6 billion into the local economy over the next 50 years.

Investment in a new community stadium and facilities, including new 4G pitches at Cormack Park (Aberdeen F.C.’s state-of-the-art training and community facility) would enable the club to address the shortfall of the all-weather community pitches in Aberdeen where initial research reveals that there is only one community pitch for every 10,000 people as opposed to Glasgow which boasts one for every 5,000 of the population.

A modern community stadium will increase visitor attendance. Pittodrie currently generates around 400,000 visits to Aberdeen every year supporting spending in the City Centre. This project would bring an additional 110,000 visitors per year to events at the new stadium.

It would also strengthen the city’s sport and leisure sector with an opportunity to add 330 jobs to the sector’s workforce.

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