According to Liverpool, the Anfield Road Stand’s new upper tier won’t be finished this year. The Merseyside derby at Anfield, which was planned as the target date to reopen the stadium at full capacity, is just nine days away. Reds CEO Billy Hogan provided the update.
The redevelopment project, however, has been severely delayed since the original contractor, the Buckingham Group, filed for administration back in August. It was initially planned to be finished for the start of the 2023–24 season. Hogan, via Liverpoolfc . com, broke the “frustrating” news: “So, at this point, as everyone knows, what we have effectively been operating with is the lower stand being open over the course of the early part of the season, which is allowing Rayner Rowen to continue the analysis of the project. “However, what I would say is that over the course of the last few days it has become clear that in order to complete a thorough assessment of that project completion timeline, it’s going to take longer than really we first thought.
In the end, that means for fans that we’ll have to maintain the status quo for the rest of the year until we have visibility of all the necessary information, which essentially means that the capacity at Anfield will remain the same as for the previous home games that we’ve seen this season.
WHAT FINANCIAL IMPACT COULD THE NEWS HAVE ON LIVERPOOL?
At least nine games, including home matches against Manchester United and Arsenal, will be played at Anfield before the end of the year, not counting the upcoming Merseyside derby. The club would lose roughly £750,000 per game if the upper tier of Anfield Road were closed, according to Kieran Maguire of Liverpool University, who previously stated his prediction on the Price of Football Podcast. If those calculations are correct, the six games that have already been played at a reduced capacity and the nine that remain before the end of 2023 will cost Liverpool at least £10.5 million in matchday revenue.
The longer the ground is at capacity, the more likely it is that this number will increase. Liverpool has had about 50,000 fans show up for home games so far in 2023–24. Anfield will become one of the Premier League’s largest stadiums when the expansion project is finally finished, increasing its capacity to 61,000.