On top of potential Ibrox sponsorship, CEO James Bisgrove is said to be finally looking into stadium expansion, and specifically the capacity.
It’s been a sitting idea for the best part of 20 years; how do Rangers expand the capacity of the famous Govan stadium?
With the Main Stand a listed and protected building, we are never leaving Ibrox, and neither we should, but it does limit the options for growth somewhat, with a potential for significantly more fans if it was possible being restricted by logistics.
Could Rangers have a 60,000 stadium? Absolutely, but it’s not possible under present circumstances, but there are plans to try to increase the current 50,817 capacity, and there are two methods being mooted to do this.
The obvious one, and very feasible, is filling in the Ibrox corners fully and having the edges filled up to the top, rather the current bottom third or so which only gives a few hundred at the moment. This is a strong method and is very feasible to do, but won’t be cheap.
The second one is very tough, and has been pondered for some time too – lowering the pitch.
This would allow an extra row or two but practicality is limited, because we’re talking about further adding rows to the front which has a limit as to how far forward it can go before encroaching on the playing surface.
In short, these solutions are about the best we can do – the corner filling is a big one, and the most expansive, and we’d imagine if a combination of both of these is done we could add maybe 5,000 tops to the capacity.
It would be an improvement in the Ibrox capacity going forward, but it certainly won’t be easy.
The Stadium expansion would be fantastic. It’s my understanding that partial corners would add 2600 seats costing £6-8m. Full corners would add 6-8k seats costing £20m. Lowering pitch would create 3.5-4k at a cost of £25m. Let’s hope it’s not a pipe dream. 💙💙
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