Central Coast Stadium, our idyllic bayside home

[sydmariner]

I think at minimum there needs to be some sort of upgrade done to the stadium, whether that involves another 15,000 seats or not... meh

It might have a great view with palm trees and sauce bottles and whatnot but it's not great as a modern stadium.

Maybe they could close off the top tiers for some events like they do @ anz stadium also would that mean that we'd have to move games while construction is going on

 

[adz]

Maby they could build a hill kinda thing in front of the palm tree's

put some hammocks in?

 

[sydmariner]

put some hammocks in?

What about bay16

 

[midfielder]

With D its grammar with me its numbers ...

Follow my logic for a bit and BTW if you have the actual numbers I would appreciate...

Take our existing stadium its 20K.... my guess [as I said if you have actuals please supply] is 9K down the sidelines and 2K at the northern end.

I further assume the lower deck on each side holds more than the upper deck so 5K lower and 4 K upper...

To get an extra 12 K ... say 3k at the Northern end ... how is interesting and 4.5 down each side or roughly a totally new deck above the existing two or make the existing decks bigger ... well the eastern side has not much room to work with ...

I wonder aloud given the issues the 32 million price tag ... recently in NZ they looked at building a 12K stadium on a clear site ... the cost in NZ dollars 25 million... seems to me the both the costs and land available make it pie in the sky ... but then there is a state election soon ...

 

[dibo]

Unless you move the bowling club I can't see where you'd put an extra 12,000 seats.

You go up!



Doodled impression only - but decent approximation of what is required.

The capacity to host corporates is the thing that's missing for us. There needs to be corporate hospitality space available in far greater scale than at present. The corporate hospitality on offer at the moment is pretty rank.

You simply wouldn't open tier 3 unless it's a big day, but it'd be well above the normal camera angles so it'd be no issue on broadcast. The upper tier at the northern end would be a great place to do banner drops...

 

[Big Al]

You go up!

View attachment 235

Doodled impression only - but decent approximation of what is required.

The capacity to host corporates is the thing that's missing for us. There needs to be corporate hospitality space available in far greater scale than at present. The corporate hospitality on offer at the moment is pretty rank.

You simply wouldn't open tier 3 unless it's a big day, but it'd be well above the normal camera angles so it'd be no issue on broadcast. The upper tier at the northern end would be a great place to do banner drops...

Put corporate suites all the way around between level 2 and 3 and you what you want.

Not sure gov would be to keen current tenants no way enough to cover and they might already be in trouble for coast votes and not sure this type of spending would win them back.

Often wondered why they don't have concerts etc there. The problem might be trashing of the grass. Would love a proper carols event at Christ to start it off. They could make the sauce bottle end a stage no problems without encroaching on the playing field and then put down mats over the grass. I went to U2 at home bush and they had these mats to protect the grass.

Maybe a jimmy Barnes or farnsy concert could be a start.

 

[nogbad]

http://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/...ord-for-next-three-years-20150321-1m49jw.html

Looks like it'll be our home for at least three years

 

[MagpieMariner]

If that agreement does come to pass, I could very well be persuaded to go to the games at NS.

 

[nearlyyellow]

Yep, it's a goer, for the next 3 A-League seasons CCS will be our home for all home games

"Central Coast Mariners and Gosford City Council today announced a landmark agreement that will see the Yellow & Navy play majority of their home games at Central Coast Stadium for at least the next three Hyundai A-League seasons."
Read more at http://www.ccmariners.com.au/articl...72zzinfz8m9f12mymg30ykpi5#OWscQppXTcPBBLTT.99

Gotta say, whew! I'm happy about that.

 

[rbakersmith]

Yep, it's a goer, for the next 3 A-League seasons CCS will be our home for all home games

Majority of home games, not all of them. Still it does confirm that the club intends to call the Coast home.

 

[nearlyyellow]

Majority of home games, not all of them. Still it does confirm that the club intends to call the Coast home.

They'd be mugs not to play the allocated 13 home games at CCS and the other designated "community" home game could be anywhere, maybe Geelong would be a good idea?

“Immediately we are faced with a 13 home game season at Central Coast Stadium but this stadium agreement sets up an exciting prospect for our fans and members for the next three seasons at least,” Storrie said.
Read more at http://www.ccmariners.com.au/articl...72zzinfz8m9f12mymg30ykpi5#OWscQppXTcPBBLTT.99

I'm optimistic that the new broom will see the value to and the support of the local community and will continue to have those 13 home games at CCS.

 

[rbakersmith]

They'd be mugs not to play the allocated 13 home games at CCS and the other designated "community" home game could be anywhere, maybe Geelong would be a good idea?

It very much depends on what sort of deal they were able to get from the council. They would be mugs if it continued to cost around $50k per game to play there.

 

[dibo]

Majority of home games, not all of them.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled about that wording...

It very much depends on what sort of deal they were able to get from the council. They would be mugs if it continued to cost around $50k per game to play there.

If it costs $650k to call Gosford home ($50k x 13 games) how much do you think they can save by moving games elsewhere?

If they halve it (which seems frankly pretty unlikely) they save $325k - fine, but if they take games away from Gosford they risk losing the memberships of a hefty chunk of 6,000 members. At $200 a pop that's $1.2m they're risking.

Then how much do they cost themselves through reduced corporate income (you can't sell a box in Gosford for a game you play at some tinpot ground elsewhere).

And that's before you get to the brand damage of being a club who don't know where they live and whose fans don't trust them. Last year some of our crowds were down to the bare bones of the membership, and some not even that. That's got a long term cost that surely outweighs a few grand saved in rent.

By all means we should argue for as good a deal as we can get, but the potential savings are (relative to the entire budget) so small that I can't see the point of penny-pinching on this when there are huge downside risks and frankly pretty marginal gains on offer.

 

[rbakersmith]

If they halve it (which seems frankly pretty unlikely) they save $325k - fine, but if they take games away from Gosford they risk losing the memberships of a hefty chunk of 6,000 members. At $200 a pop that's $1.2m they're risking.

When you're looking at a loss of over $1.5m a year, $325k is a big deal.

It's also worth remembering that our membership numbers went up in 2014/15 despite two games being scheduled away from CCS.

And that's before you get to the brand damage of being a club who don't know where they live and whose fans don't trust them. Last year some of our crowds were down to the bare bones of the membership, and some not even that. That's got a long term cost that surely outweighs a few grand saved in rent.

I'd argue that our poor performances on the field had a far greater impact on our crowds than what was happening off it - not even #standupforthemariners had a significant lasting effect. The only two games where you could primarily attribute lower crowds to moving games were the NSO and (aborted) Brookvale games.

The fact that the club has also invested significant time and effort in community engagement over the last 3-4 months (particularly with the whole "IN the Coast" idea) should make it clear that the club knows where home is. My primary problem with the expansion plan was how it was executed; engagement with the community at that point was almost non-existent and it the plan was presented pretty much as a fait accompli (regardless of Stalder's claims of only doing if the club was properly engaged with businesses & the community in Northern Sydney). I think there is still scope to play a couple of games per season down here, but it would require fixing the engagement problem on the Coast first, properly engaging with Northern Sydney and then working with both communities on a plan.

 

[dibo]

Source on the $1.5m loss?

I'd heard (from two sources close enough to know) that the loss was going to be pushing $1m but that *much* of this loss came from doing some really bad business.

Overpaying some pretty rubbish players, failing to sell corporate packages and sponsorships and a few other administrative f**kups that cost some serious cash.

I understand that the fundamentals are stronger than the $1m or so loss, and we're in the final year of this TV deal.

FFA and the clubs are trying to hold the PFA up so that players get 30% of the increased value of a broadcast deal and 70% goes to the game more broadly.

I'll assume for the sake of this that we double the current deal (this is guesswork, but that's the sort of number that keeps floating around).

I'm also going to assume the 30% is per club (so an expansion to 12 clubs actually means a little more than 30%).

That means that we'll get a salary cap bump to roughly $3.3m.

It frees the FFA to pad club budgets out by a further $1m and they still will have nearly doubled their remaining income from $14m or so to $27m or so.

That might simply fill a hole in club budgets, but it might allow clubs to gamble on a marquee to grow. Well managed clubs should then be breaking even, and clubs should even be thinking about trying to grow rather than shrink their operations.

I'd like to see our foundations locked in a little harder to give us a chance to thrive when that comes about.

 

[rbakersmith]

Source on the $1.5m loss?

A source definitely close enough to know, following the last game of the season. I think the number mentioned was actually $1.9m.

 

[nearlyyellow]

Majority

The "majority" in this case is a number exceeding 8 games and 13 or less games of the 14 home games (ie. between 8 and 13). I'd really hope that the deal struck will ensure that 13 games will be played at CCS and that there will be one "home" game away, for the next 3 seasons. Locked in! Unlike last year where there was the NSO game disaster and the proposed BO game, a disaster waiting to happen. I think that the club has correctly made a decision to re-engage with the Central Coast community.

 

[nearlyyellow]

In all this talk of the losses for last season, was there any impact on the loss by the inclusion of any COE holding/development costs. Or are we talking only of the Playing Club?

 

[dibo]

A source definitely close enough to know, following the last game of the season. I think the number mentioned was actually $1.9m.

That's catastrophic. Wonder how much of that was due to things like payouts/settlements for coaching and other staff (Zwaanswijk, Moss, O'Sullivan, Stalder, ...) and how much of it was from operations?

A few of our players are reputed to be on considerably over the odds, leaving us (well, Tony Walmsley really) with bugger all wiggle room within the cap for this year.

Have a year where those issues are ironed out, we sell our sponsorships and signage, we sell our corporate hospitality, *surely* we've got to be able to do better than that.

In all this talk of the losses for last season, was there any impact on the loss by the inclusion of any COE holding/development costs. Or are we talking only of the Playing Club?

I'm assuming for the moment that it's just the football club.

The COE is *sound the trumpets* apparently on the verge of Generating Actual Money with the office block and hotel well underway, so that's going to ease some pressure on the business more generally I suspect!

 

[rbakersmith]

In all this talk of the losses for last season, was there any impact on the loss by the inclusion of any COE holding/development costs. Or are we talking only of the Playing Club?

I'd say it would just be for the club, since the COE is owned by Charlesworth and not the club.