Nearly two decades after its opening, Arsenal are once again re-imagining their home. The club is weighing up plans to expand and modernise the Emirates Stadium in a project that could reshape the matchday experience and Arsenal’s long-term competitiveness. According to reliable sources, the club’s board are investigating various improvement options, including increasing capacity well beyond its current 60,704 seats.
What Are the Expansion Plans?
In 2024, Arsenal created a working group to examine the feasibility of redevelopment work. It is believed that the group, which has made no final decision, has looked at various possibilities, including both small and large changes to the Emirates. Small changes include reducing the space/increasing the gradient between seats in the lower and upper tier general admission tickets. This approach, which could be done in batches during the summer break, could increase capacity by as much as a few thousand.
While this is certainly one plausible option, it perhaps does not match the ambition of the club owners who are reportedly keen on a much larger expansion. A report first published by the Telegraph highlighted that some of the more ambitious plans could see the capacity of the Emirates exceed 70,000. This would, however, involve the club temporarily moving out of their home stadium and into Wembley.
For now, Islington Council has stated that no formal discussions are taking place, so it would appear that a decision on the future of the Emirates is not imminent. For a project of this size, planning permission and legal obstacles will likely take a few years to overcome, even as many as five.
Do Arsenal Need a Stadium Upgrade?
It is fair to say that Arsenal are performing very well in their current stadium, with its capacity of 60,704. Mikel Arteta has got the team challenging for the league title and has reestablished the club as one of the very best in Europe. It is hard to say the stadium is any sort of hindrance at the moment, but there is a sense that the club need to be looking longer-term and to capitalise on their current success.
The demand for seats is certainly there too, not only is the Emirates regularly packed out, but there are over 100,000 fans waiting in the queue for a season ticket. It is difficult to imagine the club being unable to fill a much larger stadium on a consistent basis. Of course, there are limits on what they can build. Even if they could theoretically sell out a 110,000 seater stadium, this would never receive planning permission as the local infrastructure could not cope with so many people.
However, plans to boost the stadium to around 70,000 seem realistic. The club’s latest accounts showed they made £131m from matchday revenue. If we say that Arsenal boost the capacity by 15%, you might expect revenues to expand 15%, reaching £151m. An additional £20m in revenue a season is far from spare change and would aid Arsenal’s long-term competitiveness. This is a fairly high estimate, though with other sources indicating an expansion would bring in closer to £13.5m a year.
You could point out that Arsenal already have the fifth biggest club stadium in the country, but they are trailing fellow Londoners West Ham (62,500) and Tottenham (62,850). Given the amount of Arsenal support there is in the capital, it does seem fitting that they should also have the biggest stadium to reflect this.
The Temporary Move
While there is a strong case that Arsenal should increase the capacity of the Emirates, it would likely require a rather painful transition period while the work took place. As mentioned by the Telegraph, Wembley would be the most likely temporary home for the Gunners while they revamped their stadium. They have done this before, in both the 1998/99 and 1999/00 seasons, but only for Champions League matches.
This was a voluntary move because of UEFA rules that required seats reserved for dignitaries and a few rows at the front kept free for specialist advertising hoardings. This reduction of the already quite small Highbury meant that the club could approximately double the number of fans able to watch Arsenal in the Champions League if moving to Wembley. While good for revenues, the decision otherwise backfired.
Not only was it a pain for most Arsenal fans to travel across London to the national stadium, but on-field performances suffered. For the Gunners, it felt like playing on a neutral venue rather than at home, so they lost all sense of home advantage. For visiting sides, however, it felt like a cup final being able to play at such a fabled ground. Across the two seasons, Arsenal won just two of their six home Champions League tests and lost three of them. We cannot definitely say that was down to the venue but the consensus is that it had at least some impact.
This is not to say results would suffer like they did over two decades ago, but the journey fans would have to make is unlikely to be any better. Tottenham supporters can attest that travelling from north London to Wembley every other week is far from an ideal scenario. Speaking of Tottenham, they would no doubt rule out any possibility of a ground share, but West Ham might be more open to it. With a 62,500 capacity and similar proximity to the Emirates, it could be a potentially cheaper alternative.
Ultimately, there is no perfect solution, but a short period of pain is likely worth it to have decades of a substantially bigger Emirates.
How Much Would a Stadium Expansion Cost?
With concrete plans not yet released, it is hard to get an accurate idea of how much any Emirates redevelopment might cost. The report published by the Telegraph however, said that plans could total as much as £500m given that the most adventurous plans would impact every part of the stadium, rather than just one stand.
Some Arsenal fans are concerned about how much this might harm their transfer budget, just like it did when they initially moved to the Emirates. Tottenham have shown us though that even a hugely expensive stadium spend does not have to mean austerity in the transfer market. Over the last five years, Spurs have posted a net transfer spend of -£564m despite only playing in the Champions League once during this period.