Arsenal are mulling plans for an Emirates Stadium renovation project, according to the Premier League football club’s co-chair Josh Kroenke.
The Independent said the new Premier League champions have been considering some kind of stadium revamp for a few years, especially since the club could easily sell tens of thousands more tickets than the current 60,704 capacity.
The stadium is already 20 years old and now operates in a different financial world to when it opened.
Arsenal Football Club is a professional football club based in Islington, North London, England (UK). They compete in the Premier League, the top tier of English football.
Emirates Stadium (known as Arsenal Stadium for Union of European Football Associations [UEFA] competitions) is a football stadium in Holloway, London, England (UK). It has been the home stadium of Arsenal Football Club since its completion in 2006.
Emirates Stadium remains one of the leading venues in English football and is currently the sixth-largest football stadium in the country.
The venue sits behind Wembley, Old Trafford, the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the London Stadium and Anfield, all of which have benefited from expansion or redevelopment in recent years.
Kroenke said of the potential Emirates Stadium renovation project, “Rich Garlick is leading those conversations on our end right now. We have several new members of the board that are plugged into that, that do those operations for us in the States. They’re putting together a plan right now to renovate the Emirates.
“We’re starting these exercises with some of our advisers but the Emirates has been an amazing stadium for us. I think we took it to a different level this year. I think that’s credit to Mikel [Arteta] and those players.
“But there’s some character that I want to make sure we’re preserving and bringing back to the ground as well. I think we can do that in a very elegant manner that’s really to the benefit of Arsenal.
“We do this stuff in the States in our facilities and our teams. We take great pride in it, so I think we have a chance to come over and really give the Arsenal supporters an elevated matchday experience from where they are right now.”
Asked whether there may be some lessons from the high-tech SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, which the Kroenkes had built for their NFL franchise, the LA Rams, Kroenke said “that’s still to be determined”.
Kroenke added, “I had different comments from people over the years about the walls of Highbury, the character of what that building was.
“The Emirates is obviously a totally different animal but I’ve made that comment to a few people and they’ve asked me that same question.
“I say I want to leave it up to our supporters and people that have experienced that to really tell me what that means. So we’re still sifting through that but I do want Arsenal fans to know this is a very modern facility but also has a character. Try to figure out a way to bring and preserve some of the character of old English style football as well.”
One plan that has been discussed over the past few years is to raise the four corners, but the club have been conscious of temporarily sacrificing home advantage by playing games in an alternative like Wembley.
A number of options are understood to have been looked at for an Emirates Stadium renovation project, including changing the gradient of the stands to allow the addition of thousands more seats, or a much smaller upgrade that would mean less disruption.
The outer bowl would remain similar in appearance as the majority of developments being assessed would come inside the ground.
As well as adding tens of millions in annual revenue, an enhanced capacity would go some way to satisfying a season ticket waiting list that now stands in excess of 100,000.
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