49ers Enterprises sent Elland Road expansion message as £100m Leeds United revenue gap highlighted
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Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has urged Leeds United to prioritise the expansion of Elland Road in order to consistently increase revenue, with investment expected now the stadium is under club ownership.
Leeds confirmed earlier this month that Elland Road is under full club control for the first time in 20 years, having been transferred over in March. Owners 49ers Enterprises have made no secret of their desire to improve the facilities inside the iconic ground and a major part of that will come via expansion.
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Hide AdDemand for tickets has far outweighed supply in recent years, with Elland Road sold out almost every week and thousands of paying members unable to attend. As well as appeasing loyal supporters, a bigger stadium would obviously generate more income and Maguire believes Leeds have the backing to bring tens-of-millions-of-pounds more in.
“Elland Road generated the 10th highest level of matchday revenue (in England),” Maguire told The Price of Football podcast. “You would expect Leeds to be higher than that but because it was separate from the club, there has been very little investment. The new owners are considering all options. In my view, there is no reason why Leeds shouldn’t be in a 50k-55k stadium. There is £30m coming in from matchday revenue while Manchester United bring in £136m and that’s a big gap to fill. They won’t fill that fully but they could go a lot higher.”
The expansion and development of Elland Road has been a key talking point ever since 49ers Enterprises took full control of the club last summer, with supporters keen to see facilities improved. The cost of doing so will be significant, however, but chairman Paraag Marathe has consistently spoken of plans to invest and insisted recently that failure to achieve promotion would not halt plans.
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Hide Ad“We have already earmarked a certain amount of investment to make some improvements at Elland Road, things that I know supporters have been asking for,” Marathe told the YEP in May. “And while it might not be the whole new shiny toy, we are doing different things like improving the bathrooms and improving different concourses and lounges and things like that. We've already earmarked the investment that we're going to use for that.
“It's been reported that nothing is going to happen until we get to the Premier League. That's a little bit of a miss at least for this season. What I mean is, all of the make-ready work that we have to do for shovels in the ground, it really didn't matter this season if we're in the championship or the Premier League, there's still work to be done that we're doing anyway.
“And I don't want to say work, I mean a significant investment, as well to line up the rights that you need to do to work with the city council to get all the approvals, to do all of the drawings, all of those things before you put a shovel in the ground that whether we were in the Premier League or the Championship we will be doing anyway. And so that money is earmarked, committed. And we are continuing down that path.”
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