Dealing with smaller stadiums in English leagues

waywardzzt

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I have done LLMs before in other countries, but never in England. So imagine my surprise when I made it to the championship league only to see that I could fill around 4k of the 7k seats in my stadium that was built in 2013 and had already been upgraded. I can only assume this is because the league has some rule on all-seater stadiums? Is that correct?

My finances aren't looking too great because I had to spend to survive. Will I just have to persevere with a tiny stadium until I can get it sufficiently upgraded? What did you all do?
 
I'm pretty sure you aren't even allowed to compete in the Premiership unless you have an all seater stadium.. And, no, UEFA do not allowed fans to stand during their games.
 
A 4,000 crowd for a Championship team. You should have a heck of a lot more than that even if you did start with a lower league team. Who are you managing?
 
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A 4,000 crowd for a Champions League team. You should have a heck of a lot more than that even if you did start with a lower league team. Who are you managing?

Eastleigh. They start by renting a stadium and they built one for me the moment I got promoted to BSP. However, the stadium only had 2k some seats, the remaining 3k were non seated for around 5k total.

I got my first stadium upgrade after moving to the Championship division...and now my sell outs are only 4kish because that is all the seats I have. Actually, the facilities tab has something really strange written on it:

Capacity: 7275 (4109 seated, 6864 for regular matches).

It just doesn't seem right. And right now I'm bleeding cash because I can't make enough revenue from games to keep my team afloat. I've already had to cut payroll a good 15%, and am looking to move about another 10% off, but I'm not sure what my xfer budget will be like next season.

As strange as it sounds, I'm midway through the season and am currently sitting in the last playoff spot. I wonder how screwed I would be if I somehow managed to get promoted to premiership.
 
Yea you can only use the seating capacity in the championship...its a rule

and what Aannddyy is right. you HAVE to have an all seater stadium to be in the Premiership, but I'm pretty sure that if that does happen I've seen somewhere that your facilities will be upgraded to all seater....something about a stadium grant project...? so dont worry and try and get them finances up! (or down so u get a new owner ;))
 
Alright then I will keep that in mind and keep you all posted.

Looks like I'm about to get my first >7000 game because I'm hosting Fulham in the League Cup Semi Final. So hopefully I can convince my board to increase the seating in the stadium because right now they will have none of it.
 
I have had similar issues in FM 11 with AFC Wimbledon (For a london club I never understood why whenever I asked there was no new stadium built.). You do lose a lot of revenue due to lack of fans however the EPL's awesome TV revenue structure should have you pocking money anyways. Be careful not to fall into traps of offering players high wages and transfer fees because then you are handicapping your clubs ability to build one of substantial size. When I was with AFC, this is the mistake I made.

Take into account that your side's local area only has a population of 123 000 as well limiting the boards decision on stadium size. Cut the fat in the budget, get a surplus and try for a new stadium, its the only thing I can suggest.
 
Yea you can only use the seating capacity in the championship...its a rule

and what Aannddyy is right. you HAVE to have an all seater stadium to be in the Premiership, but I'm pretty sure that if that does happen I've seen somewhere that your facilities will be upgraded to all seater....something about a stadium grant project...? so dont worry and try and get them finances up! (or down so u get a new owner ;))

Either FM is wrong or Posh are getting away with breaking this rule as i stand in the London Road end at Peterborough most weeks. It, along with the away end behind the other goal has no seats, standing room only.
 
Either FM is wrong or Posh are getting away with breaking this rule as i stand in the London Road end at Peterborough most weeks. It, along with the away end behind the other goal has no seats, standing room only.

All-seater stadiums are compulsory in the top two tiers of English football under the Football Spectators Act, which was introduced after the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

Don't know how you're getting away with it :p
 
Update: hooray I got promoted to the Premier League! English Hero Get!

First message I got from the board was that I was getting a stadium upgrade to meet league requirements. The upgrade? 5225 seats are going to be installed into the stadium. Considering I had around 4k seats already, this should bring me up (hopefully) to 9000 or so. It's a start. In FM 10 my Noicattaro stadium never got larger than 12000 and I did fine (had the most expensive tickets in Europe, but look up Noicattaro Italy and tell me how many people live there).

As a nice bonus? I get to use Southhampton's stadium which seats 32k. Good thing they just recently got relegated back to the Championship division. They're still my parent team LOL.

I wonder if I just made the game angry by requesting a stadium upgrade immediately after the last game of my season?
 
Another update just so you all know what's going on + for the benefit of others who may face this problem in the future.

Shared a stadium with Southampton through December. And while my average attendance was only 12k, for a good number of the Premier League games I was drawing about 18-22k in attendance.

Expansion to my stadium was completed, leaving me with a 9333 all seater. However, I was able to immediately ask for another stadium upgrade from the board -- which they granted.

I have about 11 million in the bank right now because I haven't been dumping $ into the transfer market.

Despite having that much money, the board only used 1.6 million of it to expand my stadium 1000 seats. Don't get me wrong, getting another expansion that will be completed before the beginning of next season is excellent. I was just hoping I'd have enough revenue to get them to add in a lot more seating. Maybe next year.
 
hey waywardzzt, just wondering... did you use the Editor to change anything related to the stadium or maximum capacity before starting this save? And I presume you're playing FM12? Fair play on getting Eastleigh to the premier league too!
 
Another update just so you all know what's going on + for the benefit of others who may face this problem in the future.

Shared a stadium with Southampton through December. And while my average attendance was only 12k, for a good number of the Premier League games I was drawing about 18-22k in attendance.

Expansion to my stadium was completed, leaving me with a 9333 all seater. However, I was able to immediately ask for another stadium upgrade from the board -- which they granted.

I have about 11 million in the bank right now because I haven't been dumping $ into the transfer market.

Despite having that much money, the board only used 1.6 million of it to expand my stadium 1000 seats. Don't get me wrong, getting another expansion that will be completed before the beginning of next season is excellent. I was just hoping I'd have enough revenue to get them to add in a lot more seating. Maybe next year.

You'd be better off asking for them to build you a new stadium. There's a good chance that there is a maximum capacity on your current stadium, so yeah, get them to buy a new one! :)
 
even with the stadium having been completed in 2013? (four years ago in game) guess it's worth a shot
 
hey waywardzzt, just wondering... did you use the Editor to change anything related to the stadium or maximum capacity before starting this save? And I presume you're playing FM12? Fair play on getting Eastleigh to the premier league too!

I did nothing with the editor. However, Eastleigh starts with a rented stadium and built me one the moment I got promoted to the BSP. So even with the editor pre save I would have no idea about what my upgrade threshold is?

And thanks for the congrats. It's the first time I've ever gotten straight promotions from the lowest league to the highest. and yes, this is FM12.
 
I got to the premiership without an all seater stadium. Wasn't allowed to compete in the champions league though. I originally had about a 10k with about 3k seating. They agreed to build a new one after my first season in the prem. I managed European qualification the next season but wasn't allowed to compete due to the stadium not being finished.
 
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