Go-ahead for Giants to buy Shay Stadium

Article posted by Coliseum, April 2^nd, 2025

Image: Shay Stadium, Peter Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0

The temporary home of rugby league’s Huddersfield Giants is set for major upgrades after club owner Ken Davy’s proposed purchase of the venue was approved.

BBC Sport said Calderdale Council has given the green light to Davy’s bid to buy The Shay in Halifax. The stadium is the home venue of Halifax Panthers and FC Halifax Town.

Davy expressed an interest in the ground in order to move the Giants there temporarily from 2026 while a new stadium is built for the Giants.

The Shay Stadium in Halifax, England (UK) will be used as a stopgap home for the Giants until their own stadium is built in Huddersfield (West Yorkshire, England).

The Huddersfield Giants are an English professional rugby league club from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England (UK). The Giants play their home games at the John Smith’s Stadium and compete in Super League, the top tier of British rugby league.

Huddersfield Giants’ average home attendance for the 2024 Super League season at their current 24,121-capacity John Smith’s Stadium home – which they have shared with football club Huddersfield Town since it opened in 1994 – was just over 4,600.

The venue is far too big and lacks atmosphere, so the club decided to build their own, smaller stadium.

The 5,108-capacity Shay Stadium is home to the FC Halifax Town football club and the Halifax Panthers rugby league team and they will share it with the Giants.

Davy previously said the stadium, which is an asset of community value, would see “major investment” in order to bring the ground up to Super League standard.

A hybrid pitch is scheduled to go into construction in summer 2025 with Davy providing interest-free loans in order to facilitate its installation.

In a statement, FC Halifax Town said there were “a raft of questions that will require detailed answers in conjunction with the two parties involved in the sale and those tenants within the stadium”.

The club added: “This will also require the agreement of third party associations of which all of these discussions are in progress.”

The council put the ground up for sale a year ago as part of savings plans, but Halifax Town supporters had previously asked them not to sell the stadium.

The football club’s fans also proposed that an independent, not-for-profit trust took over ownership of the stadium instead, prior to Davy’s purchase being approved.

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