Leeds United stadium expansion: How Premier League survival will impact Elland Road plans

Leeds United’s promotion to the Premier League in 2020 left tickets near enough impossible to get your hands on.

The club is arguably one of the biggest in England and their 37,792 stadium certainly doesn’t match up with the size of the fanbase.

With Elland Road being one of the oldest grounds in the country, an expansion of the Whites’ home has been highly anticipated over the past two years and their top tier survival last season was another huge boost for a potential upgrade.

We take a look at Leeds United’s latest expansion plans and how their Premier League status will have an impact:

Survival ensures stadium expansion

It was confirmed only in June 2021 that plans to build a new training facility had been withdrawn in favour of increasing the capacity of Elland Road to 55,000.

Investment from the San Francisco 49ers had allowed them to review their stadium development plans, however it was made clear that they would need to remain in the top flight to uphold these plans.

Speaking to The Square Ball in August, Angus Kinnear revealed: “If we stay up this year, then construction wouldn’t start next year, but the process would” - suggesting plans would likely have been put on the backburner had the Yorkshire club returned to the Championship.

While the expansion will clearly take quite a long time, Leeds’ future in the Premier League is looking more stable now that they have got through this terrible season and hopefully more focus can go into their stadium plans.

Stages of development

Kinnear also spoke on how the expansion would take place, with the length of time redevelopments usually take making playing in the stadium particularly difficult.

The Whites’ CEO claimed the development would be done in stages, saying: “The phasing is open to debate. But you can either do the West and North at the same time, or you can do them separately. And you protect the attendance for the season that you’re doing it.

“The way that works is you build over the existing stand, so supporters can still sit in their seats, and then the next season they move upstairs and then you build the tier below it. So ideally you don’t lose significant capacity during the construction process. West and North could be done together [or] they can be done sequentially.

“And then it’s about probably joining it up to the East Stand, and it’s more of a redevelopment of the East Stand than knocking it down and starting again. And then the South Stand is the most challenging because you’ve got Elland Road behind it, so you don’t have the footprint behind to expand.

“So that would probably limit the expansion on that side … that stand would need to be taken down and started again. It just doesn’t have the depth of the other three.”

Kinnear also admitted that they would look to change the layout into a ‘bowl’ rather than four separate stands to improve the atmosphere.