David Hopkinson has spoken openly about Newcastle United’s need for a stadium decision and extra revenue to deliver PIF’s Toon dream
Newcastle United CEO David Hopkinson
Newcastle United CEO David Hopkinson admits that the clock is ticking on a stadium announcment – with the Magpies in danger of falling behind their rivals.
Both Aston Villa and Man City will expand their grounds in the next year or so and while Newcastle’s capacity of over 52,000 is still in the Premier League’s top 10, fans dream of either a new home or a renovated St James’ Park. It is now 26 years since the club last expanded its capacity.
Hopkinson told the SportsPro London conference at the KIA Oval cricket ground, where he was speaking on Wednesday: “We need more capacity to drive that revenue.
“Our training ground is very good — it’s not as good as others. If we’re going to have world-class ambition, we need world-class infrastructure to support that. These are the types of conversations we’re going to have over the next couple of days.
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“We’re considering what to do with our stadium, whether that’s a significant renovation or a brand-new stadium.”
Hopkinson will be at the centre of Newcastle’s summit meeting with PIF this week at Maften Hall when squad budget will come into the conversation. He has already mentioned the need to better at player trading and admitted that Newcastle need to buy and sell this summer.
He said today: “We’ve got to be looking for those opportunities in the marketplace to join our squad where we think we can acquire them either early in their career or where we think there’s a value gap and use our money most effectively. And what we cannot do is overpay.”
Newcastle will make two boardroom appointments in the coming days with The Athletic claiming Dave O’Connor will be the new chief revenue officer while a new chief marketing officer is also in the pipeline.
O’Connor is Newcastle-born and has built an agency in Switzerland, and Hopkinson is excited about his arrival. “We’ll be making these two announcements in the coming days,” Hopkinson said. “A superstar, an international. He’s going to focus on our digital growth. We cannot achieve all that ambition on Newcastle’s local market opportunity. We’ve got to go global.”
The key for Newcastle is to keep growing commercially and on the field as the club try to deliver “number 1” status as a club.
Hopkinson said: “Our ambition is ultimately to be number one.
“How are we going to do that? Frankly, money is the biggest piece of the equation. We’ve got to just generate more revenue, give ourselves a bigger envelope to work with. If we can execute superbly, there might be £100m in annual run rate revenue that could be unlocked.
“We’re (at) about £400m. Well, that can become £500m, or stretch to £550m. We start to kick our way into that conversation. That’s our ambition.”
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