By Paul Nicholson
January 21 – Barcelona have scrapped plans of a move to a new-build stadium at Avenida Diagonal in favour of a €600 million redevelopment of their iconic Nou Camp stadium. The new plan will now be put by the club’s directors to the vote of Barca’s 160,000 members in April.
The redevelopment will increase the capacity of the stadium to 105,000 from the current 99,354 and will feature a “new ring of boxes, restaurants and other VIP facilities” and the creation of 3,500 new corporate seats – a market the club has not been well equipped to cater for to date.
The costs of a new-build stadium 105,000-seat stadium were estimated at €1.2 billion.
The remodelling of the stadium is the major cost within a broader development of the site that will include the new indoor hall Palau Blaugrana (a basketball arena) and associated infrastructure. The whole project will be made of eight parts and will be delivered between 2016 and 2024.
The stadium revamp would take place between 2017 and 2021 but would not require a closure for the works to take place.
The clubs expects that the financing of the development will predominantly come from existing funds and on-going revenues. Bank loans of 165 million will be taken out and the club says that naming rights to the stadum would be worth €28.5 million a year, even though it would still be called the Nou Camp.
Plans for the stadium development include a steeper bottom tier to improve spectator visibility and a roof that will cover spectator areas but not the pitch
The clubs says the changes will generate €24 million a year on top of any naming rights revenue, and the whole project would be paid for in eight years.
Club president Sandro Rosell said: “It has been an important decision for the club – the most important in the last 50 years.”
Talking about the financial arrangements, board member Javier Faus, said that Barca needed to make this progress in order to continue competing with Europe’s other leading clubs but that doing the development in a structured way was the best way forward for the club. “We don’t want to bankrupt the club for 30 to 40 years,” he said. “We won’t take money from the club members or outside investors. The club will run the proposals with our own resources.”
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