Manchester City are pushing to expand their home stadium, the Etihad Stadium. The capacity will be increased from the existing 50,000 to a maximum of 61,000. In addition, large-scale improvements to the surrounding environment of the stadium are underway.
According to British media reports such as ‘Manchester Evening News’, 스포츠토토Manchester City submitted a plan for the expansion of the Etihad Stadium to the government permitting agency. A budget of about 1 billion pounds (approximately 1.6 trillion won) was set aside for the cost of developing the stadium and surrounding environment infrastructure.
Etihad Stadium was completed in 2002. Originally built for the purpose of hosting the Olympics, there was an athletics track. However, it failed to attract and held the ‘Commonwealth Games’, which is called the Olympics of Commonwealth countries. Since then, the athletics track has been removed and is being used as a football-only stadium. Until Mansur bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s takeover of Manchester City in 2008, the area around the stadium was full of old houses and warehouses, but with a large capital investment, changes have occurred.
The first-team training ground, women’s team, and youth team training facilities located in southern Manchester have all been moved to the nearby Etihad Stadium. For easy movement of fans, a tram line, a public transportation method connected to the city, was attracted, and commercial facilities are gradually increasing.
Man City does not stop there, but plans to build private facilities such as corporate offices, hotels, community facilities for local communities, fan parks for fans, megastores, museums and club-related facilities along with the expansion of the stadium.
It is already known that Man City has actively applied the feasible parts by collecting the opinions of nearby communities in all planning stages.
Manchester City plans to start construction as soon as possible after obtaining government permission. Construction is expected to begin in November at the earliest and be completed just before the start of the 2025/2026 season.
Meanwhile, according to the data of the world-class accounting firm Deloitte, Man City recorded a profit of 731 million euros (approximately 9,700 billion won) in the 2021/2022 season. It is the number one record among soccer clubs in the world, surpassing Real Madrid, Liverpool, Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and Manchester United.