By Alexander Krassimirov
October 18 – German company IFS has unveiled its plans to build a new modern stadium in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. The stadium will have a capacity of 24,000 (22 000 plus 2000 VIP) seats and should be completed in 2016.
A key criteria for the stadium build to go ahead, is the stipulation that is must be used by two clubs. One of the teams will be Slavia Sofia, as the facility will be constructed on the site of their stadium. It was expected the another club to be CSKA Sofia, but for now, the Reds are refusing the proposal.
The managing director of IFS, Dr. Claus Binz, said that the company has reached an agreement with the Bulgarian Football Union for the stadium to be used for national team matches.
The total cost of the stadium will be about €40 million, which will be provided by German investors – no funding from the Bulgarian football union , the Bulgarian government or football clubs is required.
Binz warned that a deal for a second club to share the stadium needs to be on the table in the next six weeks, otherwise the funds will be reallocated to other projects.
The press conference was attended by the president of Slavia Ventsislav Stefanov, Chief architect of Sofia Peter Dikov and several CSKA supporters who were strongly opposed to move their club to a new stadium.
“If all the contracts can be implemented by the end of this year, we can start building the stadium and it will be completed by the summer of 2016. Failing to do so, the investors’ money will be used on other projects.
More than two years ago we came to Bulgaria for the first time and spoke with Bulgarian Football Union. After meetings with the government, it became clear that we could not implement the project as well as in Western Europe. There, the similar projects are funded by the state and then teams pay rent.
We understood that it cannot happen in Bulgaria, because the state has other priorities for funding. We talked with investors from Germany who are willing to invest here in Bulgaria”, said Claus Binz.
“This is our first investment in Eastern Europe. We want to show that in this region is possible to build a stadium with a fully private investment. The revenues of the clubs themselves will increase three to four times compared to the current .”
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