A “thrilled” Wagner was speaking after his hopes for a new 62,000-seat stadium to replace St Andrews took a significant step forward, with government funding for a new tramline to a planned ‘Sports Quarter’ in the east of the city.
The club’s owners, US investment firm Knighthead Capital – which Wagner founded – wants to build a 125-acre sports and leisure complex on abandoned land in Bordesley Green, and have been trying to persuade ministers to grant the West Midlands billions of pounds to fund new transport links for the regeneration project.
Now that has been achieved, with Wagner also pledging between £2-3bn of private investment, he says the aim is for the “transformative” Sports Quarter – which will also include a 20,000-seat arena, hotel and training complex for the club’s men’s, women’s and academy teams – to be open by 2030.
“We needed the transport links to ensure the site was viable,” said Wagner.
“This will be an entertainment venue unlike many others in the world.”
“We have a unique opportunity. If you look across western Europe you’d be hard pressed to find another city with that much land available… where a project of this magnitude could be created.
“This will be a venue that is used 365 days a year, we’ll create 8,500 jobs… the goal would be to host a whole range of international events, not solely football but American football, rugby.”
Seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady is a minority owner of Birmingham City.
When asked if there was a risk that the new stadium would result in higher ticket prices for supporters, Wagner said: “If you price out the fans that are here you have different people sitting in the stands, you lose the singing, you lose the passion and then you’ve lost your product.
“We have to remember this is a club of the people and that means the solution for growing commercial revenue is not solved through ticket prices, it’s solved through making a better product.”
Last year, Birmingham City’s former chief executive Garry Cook said it would be “a great idea” if they played a league match against fellow US-owned club Wrexham on American soil.
“I don’t think that it makes sense to do it necessarily with regular-season matches,” said Wagner.
When asked what he thought about potentially playing some domestic cup matches in the US, he said: “It’s something that has to be thought of.
“When you think about the top-tier clubs in the Premier League, they’re competing globally, which means that they have to have global fans and global-scale revenue, and if that means playing some matches overseas to create more following and revenue for the club I think that’s a good thing.
“You have to find a way to do it that doesn’t take away from your local community, so it’s very much a balancing act. There’s a very fine line that needs to be walked there, but I think for the top clubs it’s something that has to be seriously considered.
“Perhaps there’s a different tournament, or something that happens that allows for that, maybe at a different point in time in the season. There’s a whole series of ways that could be pursued beyond simply the pre-season tours.”
When asked what assurances he could give to fans concerned about the number of English clubs now controlled by US investors, Wagner said: “The reason Americans are drawn to investing here is because it’s English football.
“If we ‘Americanise’ it, then it’s lost everything that drew people here in the first place.”
Leave a Reply