Delays to the Anfield Road End’s redevelopment mean that supporters are missing out on going the match, and Liverpool are missing out on revenue.
Liverpool were supposed to be hosting more than 61,000 against Bournemouth. In the end, less than 50,000 were in attendance for that fixture and that number won’t be rising any time soon.
This is because initial delays to the redevelopment have been compounded by the contractors, Buckingham Group, filing for administration. As a result, work on the new stand has stopped until a solution can be found.
The next step will be to see what action action administrators take, with the Liverpool potentially needing to find new contractors to finish the job.
While all this is going on, the club are losing revenue.
On the renowned Price of Football Podcast, Liverpool University’s Kieran Maguire estimated that the Reds would be losing about £750,000 per match with the ground in its current state.
With the work not set to be until late October at the very earliest, we can assume Liverpool are now set to lose to miss out on at least £6m in matchday revenue.
Baring in mind this is with an optimistic completion date and doesn’t even take into account the cost of hiring new contractors, the club are clearly set to incur some hefty costs.
Maguire said: “In an ideal world, even if the Buckingham Group go into administration they can come out of administration and complete the work and there could be a full Anfield in a month or two.
• Read here about Liverpool CEO Billy Hogan’s comments on the situation
“There are financial consequences for the club. My view of FSG being the way that they are, my view is that they won’t have counted their chickens too early in terms of additional income…
“It’s not a disaster, it’s business and business setbacks take place and this will be frustrating for the club.”
As supporters, we shouldn’t really care about the financial impact – if tickets were rightfully cheaper they wouldn’t be making this money anyway – but what will worry the public is the workers who have lost a job.
On the football side of things, it will be a while before Liverpool can play in front of the new and, hopefully, improved Anfield.
