FC Bayern Forum

Ottomeister13 wrote:Why would the ticket prices be higher if they really had 150000 seats? Dont see a need for that tbh..

It's because you don't take structural engineering into account. I'm not going into the details of the different price plateaus when building a new stadium, but why do you think Real Madrid and Barcelona opted for a renovation of their old stadiums instead of building a new 80-100k seater? Why did two of the richest and best run European clubs like Arsenal and Bayern only build 60/66k seater stadium? The simple explanation is that the bigger the stadium, the more expensive the construction costs of every additional seat becomes.

Consequently the club would have to significantly increase ticket prices to be able to afford the construction of a 80-100k seater stadium. However the seats which are the most expensive to construct ironically make the least revenue, because you're further away from the pitch. It simply doesn't make sense from a business point of view to build a new stadium which has more than 60-70k seats.

tflags wrote:

Bazi wrote:but why do you think Real Madrid and Barcelona opted for a renovation of their old stadiums instead of building a new 80-100k seater?

Hate to disagree here but you are not making much of a sense with all due respect. Bayern's trying to tuckle in as many seats as they can as we have recently seen and the reason why Bayern didn't build a Maracaná back in 2005 was mainly because the 350 million loan (which you have provided the best info on how it was paid out) was already staggering enough at the time. If they had the chance recently to go for a 90k seater they would gladly close their eyes and sign whatever is put in front. Fact of the matter is Bayern staff have personally confirmed they get, still today, huge complaints as to their constant sold out seat events, lack of ticket availability and on top of this the Allianz y full of VIP boxes which get the most hatred from the fans.

Back to the Spanish argument the reason why Real Madrid and Barcelona will renovate instead of building new stadiums is quite simple. Both the Bernabau and the Camp Nou are located inside the city and on the second case that's one f*cking prime location if you ask me. The city would have had to invest more than they can afford to build new infrastructure to move the people to the stadium via mass transit. Cost/benefit did not make sense and as the German design firm proved on Madrid's case, they can re-build that shitty shopping mall next to their stadium into a mass traffic state of the art shopping center.

The Camp Nou on the other hand is surrounded by secondary annexes such as their museum and the other sports stadiums which will make the investment quite unaffordable on an arena which - by the way - is already at 100k seat capacity; give or take a few seats.

I don't understand how your post invalidates what I said. It's true, Uli Hoeneß admitted that nobody would have given Bayern and 1860 a bigger loan than for the construction of a € 346M stadium. He also hinted at a possibly slightly larger audience had the situation been different, but as far as we know that could have simply been a jab at 1860's poor finances at the time. However the very same Uli Hoeneß also said on multiple occasions that he thinks the Allianz Arena has the perfect capacity for Bayern München, because he prefers a sold out house with high ticket demand over the alternative. The very same Uli Hoeneß who looked sick and afraid when he announced at the AGM (was it in 06?) that Bayern München took over 100% of the Allianz Arena and 1860 München's liabilities for the stadium loan. The fact that we converted Fifa's press areas, which were required during the WC 2006, and a no longer needed police safety zone on the third deck into seats doesn't contradict that point. We obviously want to use the existing space in the Allianz Arena efficiently. However the only source who spoke about Bayern's plans to build a 100k stadium was the infamous Franz Beckenbauer who is widely known for talking and overexeggerating too much. To the best of my knowledge neither Hoeneß nor Rummenigge ever took a stadium that big into consideration. I also doubt it is dispuutable that increasing the capacity by an additional 20k from let's say the initial 66k to 86k, would have been a lot more expensive then increasing the stadium capacity from 46k to 66k. Otherwise the construction costs of stadiums would develop linear, but they don't. I stand by the point that it made no sense from a business point of view, even if Bayern München would have been able to afford it at the time. Those additional seats are the most expensive and ironically also the seats which produce the least match-day revenue per seat, because of the distance to the pitch.

Barcelona's and Real Madrid's decision to renovate both had also to do with the location, but why do you think almost nobody outside the strongly subsidized US market is building stadiums significantly bigger than 60-70k seaters? Just look at the costs of the new Wembley Stadium with 90k seats, last the Guardian reported the total costs were beyond € 1,1 billion and the bigger US stadiums all cost far more than the modern 60-70k. seaters. Why was Barcelona's counter proposal to the renovation significantly smaller than the current Camp Nou? The immense costs of constructing a modern stadium with a 100k capacity obviously was one of the main reasons. A couple of years ago Munich based TZ asked a structural engineer about the potential to build the Allianz Arena bigger or increase the current capacity later on. He explained in great detail what had to be done to increase the Allianz Arena's capacity by the amount of 20k (with a fourth deck) and the infrastructural costs on top of the construction costs would have been astronomical (estimate € 100-150M at the time + infrastructural costs).

So in theory, if the bank's limit would not have made a difference, do you really think a sound business man like Hoeneß, who always insisted that ticket prices should be affordable for every fan, would have opted for that option? Or back to the original point,do you think it would have been possible without increasing the ticket prickes considerably? In my conclusion the limtations of Bayern's creditworthiness was one major aspect why the Allianz Arena was build for an initial capacity of 66k, the necessities of structurual engineering which would lead to exponentially increasing costs of constructing a new state-of-the-art stadium with a capacity of 90-100k were another one. Then there were also other matters like the underwhelming average attendance of the Olympia Stadium days and the restrictions of the City of Munich authorities and Munich's public transportation company. The latter already rebelled against our most recently planned increase from 70k to 75k, no way in hell they would have agreed to a 100k stadium considering how long it took us to even get into the testing phase of our increased stadium attendance against ZSKA Moscow and SC Freiburg in mid-December, but I digress.

I think we can all agree that a lot of thought has to go into such a largescale stadium project and I'm quite happy with the decision-making of our officials.