Liverpool put stadium expansion on hold due to fans protest of ticket price hikes
Liverpool won't be making any further expansions to Anfield in the near future. Owner John Henry said that plans to add even more seats to the ground are on hold because of a fan protest that stopped plans to raise ticket prices and now calls into question the financial sense of further stadium redevelopment.
“I don’t know if there is a next step because ticket prices are an issue in England,” Henry said. “That may foreclose further expansion. We’ll have to see.”
Liverpool announced a rise in ticket prices last season, causing fans to stage a large protest that included fans walking out of a match. After the fan protest, Liverpool canceled the planned price hike and apologized to the fans.
Anfield was expanded to 54,000 seats this season with the opening of a newly built Main Stand. That construction began in 2014 and the ticket price hike was going to help recoup some of the cost of it. The plan was to expand the Anfield Road Stand next, taking capacity to roughly 60,000, but if Liverpool aren't going to be able to raise ticket prices then they may not be able to make enough money from the expansion to justify the construction costs. Now they have to re-think their plans and decide if it still worth going ahead with the planned expansion.
Manchester City opened a new stand last season and West Ham moved into the Olympic Stadium this season, putting both in a group with Manchester United and Arsenal of playing in bigger grounds than Liverpool. Tottenham Hotspur will open their new 61,000-seat stadium in 2018 as well, while Chelsea are also working on building a new stadium that will out-strip Anfield. With all those seats, and the premium seating that redeveloped stadiums have, Liverpool would struggle to generate the same revenue as their rivals. But if they can't charge more money in an expanded Anfield then it might not be feasible for them to keep pace.
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