New Stadium News Item

As it seems to be such a rare occurrence, I thought I'd reproduce the News Item I've just had here, with a little commentary (as there's some odd bits, plus I did some experimenting...)

Board announce plans for new stadium

The Gloucester board have today announced that the club have been granted planning permission to build a new stadium.

Construction of Gloucester Stadium will cost around £18.5m, although this figure will be offset by the £2.7m the club will receive by selling Meadow Park.

The whole row about new stadium names continues; I rather think we have to let people choose it and let them control the realism or otherwise, rather than be satisfied with the unrealistic...

The board have secured a loan of £10.02m to help finance the stadium project. Additional funding for the project had been secured with a stadium sponsorship deal worth £4.48m and a £5.78m grant from the authorities.

To walk you through the finances; the loan capital and the ground sale appear together under "Income - Investments" and the grant from the authorities (nice of Gloucester City Council to stump up nearly £6m!) appears under "Income - Grants" and all three items come in immediately. The sponsorship deal is recorded on the summary as "10 year stadium sponsorship deal at £448k per season. Ends 2028"; no initial payment appears to have been received, but this works out quite well, as it pays for just under half of the loan repayments, assuming it does arrive eventually. The cost of the stadium goes out immediately too, under "Expenditure - Ground Maintenance"

The new stadium is scheduled to be finished on Wednesday 26th June 2019 and will boast undersoil heating and a capacity of around 14,740.

I re-ran the game from the previous save a few days previously a number of times; it generally refused planning permission altogether, but then I reloaded my most recent save, went back to the previous save and got permission again; that time the completion date was Saturday 20th June 2020 and the capacity was around 14,788, but the financial numbers were almost identical; £300k less from the sponsorship, £10k more in grant, £40k more in loan, so somehow cheaper but bigger! I'd be interested in how it works out the completion time and, indeed, the capacity (I'm in the Championship with an average attendance of 5,539, so where they got just shy of 15,000 as a target I don't know...)

While this development work is undertaken, the club will ground-share with Gloucester at Gloucester Stadium

Erm, no, I won't ground-share with myself at a ground that doesn't exist yet; the information screen correctly shows us staying at Meadow Park for now.

One last wrinkle that's got me concerned; I asked for the expansion in November 2017 and a board request status bar appeared for "Expand Stadium - Planning" to be completed on July 2nd 2018; the news item came on 28th May 2018 (the day after the season ended) but the status bar still shows it as not yet completed...