All Leagues, EPL, England, Europe, Features, Ian John, Leagues, Regions POSTS

Is Manchester City’s £1bn Plan The Way Forward?

Published by Ian John on March 12, 2010

I read today with interest Manchester City’s new owners £1 billion plan to redevelop the area around Manchester City’s new Eastlands stadium, one of the poorer areas of Manchester. The talk is of using Milan’s ‘Milanello’ complex as a blueprint for the redevelopment project, which will not only see improved transport links into the area, but will see a specially designed “Fan Zone” on the approach to the stadium, no doubt to be filled with the 2015 upmarket version of hot dog stands and souvenir stalls, a hotel and leisure complex, a brand new training ground/area for City’s players as well as the possibility of extending the capacity of the 48,000 capacity stadium.

Chef executive Garry Cook stated, “Manchester City has been and always will be at the heart of the community it serves in the City of Manchester. The longer term considerations for the area reflect the long term commitment of our owners to the club and the community it serves.”

Certainly it represents a positive step forward for City owner Sheikh Mansour, who it is believed has long harboured ambitions to maximise the revenue available by renovating the area around Eastlands and the plan has been given a thumbs up by City manager Roberto Mancini who stated, “This is a good thing for the club and the city, although I am happy with this facility [Carrington]. But if we can improve [the training ground] it will be better for me and the players.”

On the back of the failed attempts at Liverpool and Everton in recent times to begin work on a similar project, City’s ideas seem to me at least, to represent a sensible approach to ensuring that the club is a viable business in future.

Roman Abramovic and Sheik Mansour may well be wealthy enough to bankroll a season or two of excessive spending, but no business model has a viable long term future without offsetting that by improving the business income. By incorporating the local community into the project in the form of a leisure facility, ensuring City’s training pitches and ground are on one site and the development of a hotel and retail opportunities, the diversification of Manchester City from a club IN the comunity of Manchester, to tangibly being part OF the community in Manchester will only help the club long term. A fact that more and more clubs are realising by the proliferation of non-related football activities that are now being promoted at many of the professional clubs all over the world.

The success of the project however will not depend solely on how well Manchester City perform on the field. Much of it will depend on how Sheikh Mansour sees such items as the ‘fan zone’ and ‘leisure facilities’ being utilised. If he prices these in such a way that the local community can afford to use them (remembering, this is not a particularly wealthy part of the city), then the inclusive , community spirit City are keen to portray the intentions of this initiative as being evidence of, may well be true. However if, as I fear, that the new facilities will be matched with a price tag that only a few, if any, in the local community can afford, then it may run into problems very quickly.

Let’s face it, few people go to Dubai because it is cheap do they?

So on the face of it, I like the idea. I think the model of using the club as a multi-use focal point for the local and wider community is a great idea. I think this is how clubs, particularly smaller clubs, need to diversify in order to continue. However my concern is that the Premier league facilities may come with premier league prices, that few in the community around Eastlands can afford. This will lead to the city becoming something of a white elephant and instead of representative and inclusive of the community it stands within, it will simply be an oasis of wealth, amongst one of the poorer communities in the city.

And that won’t be good for Sheikh Mansour, the local community or Manchester City football club.

Image Courtesy of *** Steven Tunney *** on Flickr.com

Readers Rating: