Angus Kinnear on Elland Road expansion, Leeds United season tickets, and the spectre of Red Bull — Square Ball 12/9/24

Premium experience

Written by: Rob Conlon

Like the Yorkshire Evening Post reporting on the city of Leeds potentially getting a tram system once a year, Angus Kinnear made his now annual appearance on The Square Ball podcast and provided the latest update on the 49ers Enterprises’ plans to expand Elland Road stadium.

On the stadium redevelopment, the big update is that an even bigger update is coming soon, although it sounds like the plans for a 60,000 capacity that Kinnear mentioned on the podcast in 2021 have been revised slightly:

“The good news about the stadium is, for the first time in the six and a half years or seven years that I’ve been involved in the club, I think we’ve got some real traction behind the stadium. So the 49ers have committed a multimillion-pound sum on putting together a project team which has environmentalists, transport planners, the design team, the structural engineers, the mechanical engineers.

“That team now is meeting two or three times a week with a view to submitting the planning application. There’s going to be an announcement very shortly about that. And within that, you’ll get a degree of granularity in the plans around stadium capacity. I think at the moment it’s looking like it’s going to be 53,000. That’s the most economic number.

“Within that, you’ll also get a sense of the broad split, which hasn’t been decided yet, between GA (general admission) and hospitality seats. But there’ll be a significant GA increase, but there will also be an increase in premium seats on that side as well, because the West Stand doesn’t really have any workable hospitality as it stands.”

On that delicate balance between increasing general admission tickets as well as corporate facilities, Kinnear says:

“There’s no hiding from the fact that increasing the number of premium seats will be part of the plan. That’s why all of the planning applications that are currently underway are for the West Stand and the North Stand.

“The vision at the moment is the North Stand wouldn’t have any hospitality at all, and the West Stand would have an increase in hospitality. You cannot fund a stadium build just on GA seats. You need premium seats in there. And I think there will also be a bigger spread of premium seats.

“One of the things that Leeds United doesn’t have very many of — it’s got the Bremner [suite], I think — is a base level of, in industry terms, premium GA, but it’s effectively a GA seat which has an element of hospitality on it, but actually is a huge step up for supporters.

“And at both West Ham and Arsenal, we found lots and lots of existing season ticket holders were prepared to step up into premium general admission to get a better located seat and access to a bar.”

For example, Leeds are currently selling ‘hospitality packages’ for Yeboah’s Crossbar (an outdoor marquee next to the Pavilion opposite the stadium) which include a free pie, pint, and matchday programme, as well as a seat in the East Upper. For the visit of Sheffield United in October, fans could pay £165 for that ‘premium’ experience.

Which brings us neatly onto general admission ticket prices, and whether paying £49 to sit in a decrepit West Stand and watch second-tier football is a̶ ̶r̶i̶p̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶ reasonable:

“I think if you look at ticket prices and index it against inflation over the last twenty to thirty years, the increases are not significantly above inflation. So I think I’m certainly at the age where everything just seems expensive and it does feel like a lot…”

…less so if you got paid £1.4m the season Leeds got relegated…

“…but if you take out all the premium seats, then the GA seats have gone broadly, I think, across the football industry in line with inflation.”

Using an inflation calculator to compare the price of old Leeds tickets to today, I’m not sure that’s strictly accurate. Or at least not as accurate as saying, ‘Football clubs around the country are overcharging supporters, and Leeds are no different.’ Kinnear’s justification is essentially that, given the demand for tickets far outweighs the supply, Leeds could have increased ticket prices even more but haven’t, and we should be thanking the 49ers for that:

“Clearly, it needs owners who have a relationship with a fanbase and a desire, and this is where I think the 49ers have been great. You could look at all the modelling in the world and you could look at increasing the prices of lead United tickets because we’ve got 22,000 people on the season ticket waiting list, and actually, season ticket prices have increased, I think, twice in the last ten years, and actually have increased very modestly.”

Touching upon the season ticket waiting list, Kinnear says “it’s very difficult to be completely transparent” where fans are in the pecking order because only “slightly more than a handful” become available every year. “The opportunity for people on the season ticket waiting list to get a seat is going to be when the new stand is built”.

By the time the new stand is built, could Elland Road be renamed by our new energy drink overlords, or could it be the home of Red Bull Leeds?

“It’s not going to happen. All I can say is that it’s never been a consideration in terms of it’s never been raised by them. It’s never been anything that’s been offered. Paraag has been adamant, and I’m with him on this, that it’s not going to happen.

“I think to give the fans some kind of reassurance in the direction of travel, I think over the last couple of weeks, you’ll have seen that Red Bull have announced more traditional sponsorship deals. I think they’re going to end up with five or six clubs, which are going to be more traditional sponsorship partnerships.

“We’re very proud that they chose Leeds United to be the first of those because this is, although it has an ownership stake in it, this is about driving the brand awareness through football in a market that they haven’t been in historically.

“The values of the deal are absolutely transformational from a commercial perspective. We’re not going to publish the values, but they are a multiple of what we’d have expected otherwise. It’s a really high level of commitment.

…

“I understand the fans’ concerns about what’s happened elsewhere. It’s very difficult to give them absolute certainty that it’s never going to happen again, but it is not the 49ers’ plan. It’s not the 49ers’ plan to sell to Red Bull. It’s not Red Bull’s plan to buy Leeds United. It is by and large a sponsorship deal which has an equity element to it. And I think it’s going to be one of the pillars which is going to frame our commercial success, which will ultimately frame our footballing success.

“So I think my perspective will be in four to five years’ time, everyone will look back on the Red Bull deal and they’ll see from a commercial perspective it was the catalyst for the commercial growth which has fuelled Leeds United becoming a top-ten Premier League side.”

Kinnear himself says that if Red Bull were to take over Leeds and try to rebrand the club, “I could categorically say I wouldn’t be part of Leeds United if it’s changing its name.” Which is very noble, but no use to us if he was part of the group that let the bull in the china shop.

I sincerely hope Kinnear and Marathe are correct when they say Red Bull have no intention of taking over Leeds United. If that proves to be true, then Leeds fans will have been shown to be overly cynical, which our recent history shows is healthy. If it proves to be false, then Leeds’ current ownership will have been shown to be overly naive, which our recent history shows is dangerous.