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My idea to relocate major football teams & others to a newly built 'sports capital'

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Tramere

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Having spent most of my childhood and teenage years living in a part of London that is very near a football stadium, I am well aware of the changes to a daily routine of an area that occurs when there is a match at said stadium, with the crowds travelling to and from the stadium on congested roads, and the changes which have to be made to the nearest tube station when there is a match on. A few years ago, when I was at school, we, as part of our geography curriculum, looked at conflicts that have occurred between the interests of local businesses and a football club wanting to build a stadium in a certain area. Just recently though, it just occurred to me, 'why not relocate major football stadiums and other major sports venues out of existing urban areas in England to an English 'sports capital' which would be centered on the stadiums, having all the necessary infrastructure, hotels etc, while having the added benefit of not conflicting with the interests of what is often an inner-city victorian built neighborhood?' Such a town could host the Home Stadiums and headquarters of all the Premier League and most popular Football Teams, as well as Wembley Stadium, but why stop at Football? Why not relocate other major sports' venues, such as Rugby and Tennis? The more different sports there will be there, the less 'seasonal' the town/city will be. If only one football team relocated there, there would be long periods of there being not any work, but if you had say, Football, Rugby and Tennis, perhaps along with others, you wouldn't have such long periods of temporary redundancy.

You may wonder what this has to do with rail transport. The truth is, it has everything to do with it, as such a football/sport 'capital' would need a reliable way of transporting thousands of fans to and from there. The obvious place therefore, would be at a railway junction or intersection involving at least two lines, where at least one of the lines was a mainline. The considerations of the local area would have to be taken into account. It should also be somewhere in the North of Midlands of England, for the sake of geographic centrality and to bridge the North-South divide. Somewhere on HS2 could be an idea, to make sure that people use it. What do you think guys?
 
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The Planner

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So are you suggesting that established football teams move from their historical geographical locations to be centered on one place, such as Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, Man City etc? Doubt that would ever go down well.
 

hairyhandedfool

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On some days there are ten Premier league games at the same time, so your "sports city" would have to have atleast 10 stadiums just for that. Then if you safely assume 45,000 people go to a game (some grounds are bigger than that), instead of getting 45,000 people into one area, you'll be trying to get 450,000 into one area, and out again obviously.

Tennis can't use football pitches, I can't think of anywhere that has the same stadiums for football and cricket either, so that's yet more on top. Then there's actually the logistics of having that much capacity in terms of parking spaces, bus/tram routes, railway lines and all the vehicles and staff you need to operate it all. What happens to all of this stuff when there isn't an event on?

Finally, there's crowd control, there are very good reasons why Spurs and Arsenal don't often play at home on the same day, same goes for Man Utd and City, and there are other derby matches where fans can clash, but you'd put them all in the same place week in, week out?

I'd say it's a very well meaning idea, but doomed to failure.
 

hounddog

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Am I missing something? The OP is suggesting moving the whole of a nationwide competition to a single venue? If a similarly idiotic suggestion was made about anything relating to the railways - although I'm struggling to think of anything remotely approaching that level - the thread would be up to 25 pages of 'you know nothing' in no time.
 

ECML180

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I think the idea of a 'sport village' on the edge of a town/city is a good one, combining a number of sports teams and sports provision into one area. This way you can move congestion away from older smaller streets and into a dedicated area with large enough car parks and well designed transport infrastructure. Of course this does have it's negatives too but this is a similar idea and has been implemented in a number of places before.

I can't see it working on a national level though. Loughborough is in a way close to what's being suggested with a strong draw for all sports towards it's facilities, hence it being chosen often for competitions, courses & events - particularly those involving more than one sport. But to attempt to bring together teams in the same sport does not seem to be a good one, apart from anything else the supporters mostly grow from it being 'the local team' and moving them away will likely damage the following. Aside from that inner city football stadiums traditionally have poor parking and accessibility meaning a lot of people walk there, moving the stadiums outside of the area would substantially increase the amount of people using cars or public transport so somewhat negating the benefits of the project. If this increase was outweighed by the loss due to those not willing to travel it would be a hollow victory.

In my opinion, good idea but on a local level not national!
 

SteveP29

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As a Newcastle United season ticket holder, I'd hate nothing more if the stadium was moved. That the stadium is already in the city centre with access to buses, the Metro system and a short walk to Central station, its perfectly placed.

Why should we be moved at the behest of people who have arrived in the area long after the club was there, it was there long before they were born, and will be long after they're gone, much like the people who buy houses next to live music venues, knowing what happens there and then still buying the place and complaining about the noise.

If you want an idea what these out of town/ edge of town stadiums would be like, take a trip to the Reebok/ Macron (whichever you prefer) in Bolton and see how opposition fans aren't allowed in the pubs, club and shops around the ground for the kind of welcome you'd get.
 

edwin_m

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The transport infrastructure for a sport city would have to be huge, bringing in and dispersing people from a large part of the country, but it would only be used fully at weekends and probably less fully on weekday evenings.

Although the existing arrangement is far from perfect, few sports events coincide with peak travel times for other markets so the infrastructure provided for normal peak hours can be used outside these hours, almost for free. Thus centreing all major sports matches in one place would be very uneconomic in transport terms, as well as disadvantaging those who didn't live nearby and would have to make a long and expensive journey to see any sort of significant sports event.
 

Mvann

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On some days there are ten Premier league games at the same time, so your "sports city" would have to have atleast 10 stadiums just for that. Then if you safely assume 45,000 people go to a game (some grounds are bigger than that), instead of getting 45,000 people into one area, you'll be trying to get 450,000 into one area, and out again obviously.

Tennis can't use football pitches, I can't think of anywhere that has the same stadiums for football and cricket either, so that's yet more on top. Then there's actually the logistics of having that much capacity in terms of parking spaces, bus/tram routes, railway lines and all the vehicles and staff you need to operate it all. What happens to all of this stuff when there isn't an event on?

Finally, there's crowd control, there are very good reasons why Spurs and Arsenal don't often play at home on the same day, same goes for Man Utd and City, and there are other derby matches where fans can clash, but you'd put them all in the same place week in, week out?

I'd say it's a very well meaning idea, but doomed to failure.
Northampton town used to play at northamptonshire cricket stadium. Also the stadium in Cape Town used to have cricket and football played there I believe.
 

davyp

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Melbourne, Australia, has most of the various sports' stadiums in one area next to the Yarra river close to the centre of the city and very well served by public transport. Even the Grandprix circuit is quite close. Works well.
 

The Ham

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I could see that if there was a way that facilities could be provided to minimise the impact of match days which was then available to the local residents of an area the rest of the time then it could provide some mitigation.

However it is likely that the residents would become reliant on it and be grumpy when it was unavailable to them (i.e. on match days).

Conversely if you relocate sports facilities to "out of town" then they run the risk of being ghost towns for much of the time and very busy for very short periods of time along with needing a lot of occasional public transport provision.

There is a fine balance to be had, but any established sports facilities are well known about and it means that (for example) house prices reflect this.
 

GrimsbyPacer

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A sport city might be good for national teams, sort of like an Olympic Park in the middle of the UK.
 

miami

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Just recently though, it just occurred to me, 'why not relocate major football stadiums and other major sports venues out of existing urban areas in England to an English 'sports capital' which would be centered on the stadiums, having all the necessary infrastructure, hotels etc, while having the added benefit of not conflicting with the interests of what is often an inner-city victorian built neighborhood?'

So all those supporters would have to travel 200 mile round trip to visit their teams each week? With 400,000 supporters arriving for 40 games a year this would be about 125 billion additional miles on top of current away fan travel. Based on coach travel, that would be 20 milllion tons of CO2, about £2.5 billion a year. Based on miles traveled/fatality it would be another 130 deaths a year.

Ridiculous suggestion.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
In the current terrorist climate, such a very large gathering of people would seem to be an unnecessary bridge too far, should a multiplicity of stadiums be constructed very close together.

Even more ridiculous suggestion. As I'm sure you remember well, in the 1970s 80s and 90s we actually suffered from regular attacks from terrorists. In the 1940s we suffered attacks from bombs that dwarfed all other attacks in this country. That didn't stop us carrying on.

In the unlikely event that somebody wants to shoot up a football stadium or other large gathering, the presence of 500,000 people or 50,000 people isn't going to make a blind bit of difference.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
A sport city might be good for national teams, sort of like an Olympic Park in the middle of the UK.

It could work, but travel to national games is a pretty insignificant amount of travel. When there's an event at Wembley, even something like Liverpool vs Manchester, I don't believe that they stop the WCML trains at Wembley, certainly they don't run chartered trains.

Fundamentally the occasional national game doesn't make much of a difference to transport requirements. I would guess the average savings of going to somewhere like Rugby rather than London would be about 80 miles per supporter, or about 3 million miles. About 10 times a year? Not a great saving.
 

3141

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The scale of the infrastructure needed to enable a scheme like this to operate approaches what the "Boris Island" airport proposal would require. That would include homes for the people who worked in it, unless they were going to have to travel in every day from elsewhere. But "Boris Island" would operate every day of the week, whereas this sports centre would have some days when nothing much was happening, and much of the infrastructure would be under-used.

Any idea what this thing might cost? Actually I'm wondering why I'm bothering to think about its implications!
 

Groningen

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That there was space to built a new Wembley stadium is a miracle in its self. You can also go the harbours (east of London) and built there you new stadium.
 

ExRes

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A total non starter, who is going to support a team that is playing miles away from their home?

Let's say I live in Manchester and my team are now playing all their home and away fixtures in London, I'm really going to be a regular attendee aren't I?, or am I supposed to move too London as well?

Back to the drawing board I think
 

Groningen

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Maybe just for national events, but you already have all those things after the Olympics of 2012 in London.
 

Antman

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A total non starter, who is going to support a team that is playing miles away from their home?

Let's say I live in Manchester and my team are now playing all their home and away fixtures in London, I'm really going to be a regular attendee aren't I?, or am I supposed to move too London as well?

Back to the drawing board I think

This does all sound like an early April fools but moving Old Trafford to Surrey might be beneficial :D
 

Gutfright

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If you want a sensible, practical solution why not turn all the seats in modern sports stadiums into folding beds and require fans to live there full time?

Think about it. Most modern stadiums already have kitchens, toilets, baths/ showers and even big screen televisions! Sure, some people's beds may get a bit damp when it rains, but it's a price worth paying to avoid match day congestion.
 

Xenophon PCDGS

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A total non starter, who is going to support a team that is playing miles away from their home? Let's say I live in Manchester and my team are now playing all their home and away fixtures in London, I'm really going to be a regular attendee aren't I?, or am I supposed to move too London as well?

Back to the drawing board I think

If that is Manchester United that you refer to, I should well imagine that if London becomes their home ground, this will save a large amount of their support from travelling to and from Manchester...:D
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
If you want a sensible, practical solution why not turn all the seats in modern sports stadiums into folding beds and require fans to live there full time?

Think about it. Most modern stadiums already have kitchens, toilets, baths/ showers and even big screen televisions! Sure, some people's beds may get a bit damp when it rains, but it's a price worth paying to avoid match day congestion.

Such is the form shown by certain teams who shall remain nameless that having to stay in the stadium full time to keep watching the same level of depressingly poor football may well constitute a form of imprisonment that could be said to constitute an infringement of their human rights...:D
 
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Clip

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That there was space to built a new Wembley stadium is a miracle in its self. You can also go the harbours (east of London) and built there you new stadium.

What habours East of London?

Wembley was rebuilt on teh stadium that was there before it.
 

miami

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If that is Manchester United that you refer to, I should well imagine that if London becomes their home ground, this will save a large amount of their support from travelling to and from Manchester...:D

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

Oh wait

:lol:

Hilarious.
 
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thenorthern

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When the FA was wondering what to do with the old Wembley stadium there were proposals to sell the land and build a new stadium near the NEC in Birmingham. In my mind it made more sense as the land is cheaper there with better transport links as Birmingham Airport, Birmingham International station and the M6 & M42 motorways nearby. It also made sense as football is more popular in the Midlands & North of England and national stadiums aren't always in a nation's capital (Scotland with Hampden Park in Glasgow for example).

The FA decided against it though as Wembley is the home of football.
 

306024

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We've been warned before about any thread beginning 'My idea'.....
On the bonkers scale this idea trumps all others though :)
 

Greenback

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This has top be the strangest suggestion I've ever seen on these forums, and I feel there has been a lot of competition for that title!
 

underbank

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It's one of those "good in theory, crap in practice" ideas.

My team, Morecambe, only moved half a mile yet the number of fans fell sharply and has never recovered. That was mainly because the core fans lived within walking distance of the old ground (in a densely populated "working class"), whereas the new ground is in a sparsely populated "bungalow" land mostly occupied by the blue rinse brigade.

OK, there were other factors, such as the new ground being poor served by buses whereas the old ground was on a main bus route.

Back to the OP, what about all the spectators who currently walk, cycle or get a cheap bus to their local match - they're hardly going to spend a fortune on a train fare and overnight hotel room to watch a match 50/100/200 miles away!
 

Bevan Price

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I think that we should build a couple of artificial islands, one in the Irish Sea, and one in the North Sea, each just big enough to contain a football pitch, changing rooms, etc.
Supporters would view only via personalised subscription TV channels.....

Failing that, all professional football matches would be required to take place between 02:00 and 04:00, thereby minimising transport problems for everybody else. Sale of alcohol would be banned anywhere in the country for 3 days prior to each match, and football grounds would require to be surrounded by anti-noise barriers.

Well - I can dream occasionally, can't I ???
 

Xenophon PCDGS

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The FA decided against it though as Wembley is the home of football.

That was not always the case as Kennington Oval hosted the FA Cup final for many years from 1871 onwards, with only two exceptions.

Of the first nine FA Cup finals to be held, Wanderers won it no less than six times, Royal Engineers twice and Oxford University once.
 
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