About time? All I can suggest is that you go to the club on any non-match day and look at the amount of activity... the suites are being used by lots of organisations and companies during the day, it’s being used for all sorts of corporate events in the evenings as well as weddings etc On an evening the Community foundation constantly have things going on whether it be cheerleading, fitness classes etc.
The only thing we haven’t done to date is utilise the pitch itself - I know there was an event organised and cancelled a few years back but it missed a trick as it was £50 plus per ticket for a concert to watch a host of B list 80s bands - and that had a very narrow appeal.
I think we missed a trick not getting Elton John who then went on to do Widnes and Leigh stadiums where the local councils who owned the ground would’ve coined it.
This event will be sold out by the end of the day on Thursday when tickets go on general sale - standard tickets for North and South where £70+ rising to £146 for seats in the blocks closest to the stage, the West terrace is being sold as standing and there’ll be another couple of thousand on the pitch.
If we assume on average tickets are £75 and they sold 15000 for the event, that would be over 1.1 million in ticket sales!!
The club will have rented the stadium out for a set the event. I’ve no idea what the going rate is, but if we guessed that we’ve rented it for 10% of this, that’s 100k extra in the clubs coffers... benefit of owning our own stadium that’s essentially a first team stars wages paid for the season. That’s before bar sales etc on the day.
Once this proves to be a success, all the other major concert promoters will eye the stadium up to add to their circuit of venues - if every summer we can fit 3-4 big name concerts in around the rugby, that’s an enormous amount of income for the club which will allow us to stay competing at the top of the table for years to come.
My bank account is now a considerable amount lighter after buying 4 tickets!!