Man Utd have moved a step closer to building a new Old Trafford but questions remain over how it will be paid for.
Manchester United are set to use debt to help finance the building of a new Old Trafford(Image: Manchester United)
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Manchester United are confident that a new 100,000-seater stadium will help deliver enough revenue to build a successful football team, even if it means piling more debt onto a club that already owes £1.3billion.
The club moved a step closer to seeing a new super stadium become a reality on Thursday, when it was revealed that the ground will be built on land 350 metres away from the current site as part of a regeneration of the wider area.
But questions remain over how a project initially estimated at costing £2bn will be funded, with some form of debt now seen as a certainty. Collette Roche, CEO of the new stadium development at United, cautioned supporters against becoming "over-obsessed" with debt and claimed the stadium would eventually pay for itself.
"What you've got to remember is through building a stadium of 100,000 seats, where it's football first, and we deliver all our matches, but then in and around the matches, we do other stuff. People come, they stay for longer, we'll have other facilities, other experiences. That's going to generate a lot more revenue," said Roche.
"The revenue that's going to be generated, where does that go? That'll go back into the club, that goes back into the team, that goes back into growing our football. So as far as I'm concerned, whilst we can get over-obsessed with debt and borrowing, there's no stadium, I don't think, where you would not have some form of borrowing.
"We just need to make sure it's sensible and that it generates income and obviously money for the future of the club and doesn't distract from what we're here for, which is winning competitions, winning trophies, winning matches."
United insist "all funding options" are still available to the club, including debt, equity, opening the project up to investors and selling shares, and Roche said there had been "a lot of approaches" from people keen to be part of the project.
How much it will cost to build remains unclear, with United unwilling to stick to the £2bn estimate given by chief executive Omar Berrada last March, with the world economy now in a state of flux.
"That is the £2billion question, isn’t it really?" said Roche. "We don't know, is the answer, because obviously different stadiums have been built, we can look at what other stadiums have cost. You look at Everton, we can look at some of the ones further afield.
"But we're going to be building a very different stadium. It's going to be bigger than any other. It's 100,000 seats, nobody's done that. It's going to be done a bit further in the future, it's going to be done with these guys.
"So there's not a price, I can't go and get a quote on this right now. We've been really clear from the onset this needs to be a sanity project, not a vanity project. And I think you've seen from the way we now run the club, having control of our costs is really important to us, focusing on putting our money where it matters is really important to us."
One avenue to financing the stadium that has been ruled out is public funding. While United and Trafford Council, who unveiled the Wharfside Strategic Masterplan on Thursday, are working together to access funds for infrastructure, Roche confirmed that no public money would be used to construct the stadium.
"That's not something that we ever really wanted to or thought about doing," she said. "I think we as a football club need to stand on our own two feet and we need to pay for our stadium for a whole host of reasons.
"However, what you've seen today is massive; it's a lot more and a lot bigger than a stadium. So what we can't do is to pay for a new train station or new infrastructure because we won't have the funds for that, our funds will go on the stadium."
One way of delivering some funding would be to sell naming rights, which Roche confirmed is something that is on the table.
"I really don't know what the stadium will be called," she said. "What I will say is, and we've been really vocal, we are going to potentially look at naming rights for the stadium.
"It's an important revenue stream, it's something we've discussed with our Fans' Advisory Board and I think everybody realises affordable, accessible ticket prices are really important, and in order to do that, we do need to generate revenue streams in other places as well to build the stadium that everyone's said is going to be really expensive."
United will now launch a consultation with supporters, before the design is finalised towards the end of this year and costings drawn up, but it seems clear that a new stadium is now a case of when, rather than if.
"We've gone so far, part of it is around the masterplan," said Roche. "So now we've worked with the local council to say we are going to build a new stadium, so we're really committed to doing it. I think all of the other things are important, but we've got to make this work, right? We can't just abandon it.
"We're looking at making sure it happens, not will it happen or should it happen. The train's left the station and we just need to make it happen now."