Question about stadiums

I have played 5 seasons (won 3) in premier league with Hartlepool and I have expanded stadium to it's limits and till' this day i can't host more than about 12k attendants per game. Now i wonder how is that my board will not build me a new stadium eventho clearly gate incomes don't come even close to covering wage expenses? Club balance is in order (or so i think, 78m balance atm).

Just upgraded to 9.20 and played another season hoping new patch would so something about this problem but no. Nothing i can do. How many more season do i have to play till' board decides to take the initiative? I'm thinkin maybe i should be doing the opposite aiming to red instead of green, that could trigger somekind of "hey we need more seats" feeling upstairs?

In any case it won't make sense and it's been 5 seasons already..........

It does take a while but eventually, provided the club has the cash and the current stadium is consistenly packed out, you will get a new stadium, but you gotta have a little patience, as in real life, it isn't something the club just launches into

I've got a wage budjet of 950k £/week. And it seems to be ever increasing. I fear eventually club balance will start going downwards no matter if i keep winning or not. Victoria Park is always packed out and has been all the seasons i've played in premier. I wonder if anyone else is struggling with the same "bug" as me?

When a club is listed as top10 richest and has a stadium of 12k capacity then i suppose we can call it a bug since anywhere out irl this would be called stupidity

Do you ask the board for a stadium increase every season or are you just sitting back and expecting one? If you don't ask for increases today I think you should start doing that.

Good luck!

Erm... it's expanded to it's limit? Making an ultimatum won't help either, I get sacked everytime

Heheh, this is definitely poor design choice.

At the very least we should get information about how much money is needed to build a new stadium- if that's the problem.

I have played 5 seasons (won 3) in premier league with Hartlepool and I have expanded stadium to it's limits and till' this day i can't host more than about 12k attendants per game. Now i wonder how is that my board will not build me a new stadium eventho clearly gate incomes don't come even close to covering wage expenses? Club balance is in order (or so i think, 78m balance atm).

Just upgraded to 9.20 and played another season hoping new patch would so something about this problem but no. Nothing i can do. How many more season do i have to play till' board decides to take the initiative? I'm thinkin maybe i should be doing the opposite aiming to red instead of green, that could trigger somekind of "hey we need more seats" feeling upstairs?

In any case it won't make sense and it's been 5 seasons already..........

I actually support, am from and live in Hartlepool and all I can really tell you is that the council owns the stadium which is reflected in the game.

From my FM experience its usually teams who don't own their stadiums like Pools who get new ones built pretty quickly. I'm sure you'll get some good news in a season or two

I'm in same boat with Wycombe, Premier league Champions, 180 million in the bank, year is 2018. Been consistently filling my paltry 14000 seater stadium since season 2 yet I've still not been given a new stadium.

Been making my money by having a young squad on meagre wages and selling them on for profit whenever they ask for more then 30k per week.

I'm gonna just cheat and build it myself via fmrte if they don't give me one next season.

For anybody that HAS had a new stadium built, when in the season is it announced and how long does it take to build?

I'm in same boat with Wycombe, Premier league Champions, 180 million in the bank, year is 2018. Been consistently filling my paltry 14000 seater stadium since season 2 yet I've still not been given a new stadium.

Been making my money by having a young squad on meagre wages and selling them on for profit whenever they ask for more then 30k per week.

I'm gonna just cheat and build it myself via fmrte if they don't give me one next season.

For anybody that HAS had a new stadium built, when in the season is it announced and how long does it take to build?

It is announced at the end of the season and it take about 1 season to build.

At the very least we should get information about how much money is needed to build a new stadium- if that's the problem.

Thats a very good idea I think. You could ask the board to look into the possibility of building a new stadium and they could come back and tell you if you currently have sufficient funds and if there is likely to be any other problems like refusal of planning permission.

I actually support, am from and live in Hartlepool and all I can really tell you is that the council owns the stadium which is reflected in the game.

From my FM experience its usually teams who don't own their stadiums like Pools who get new ones built pretty quickly. I'm sure you'll get some good news in a season or two

I was already playing with Hartlepool back in the old CM days...... Dunno why but it's sumhow ended up nr1 in my favourite ever clubs list

Also as funny as it sounds i seem to recall having this same very problem back then also

There are a few new additions to the stadium module that I have on my list to be added into the game in the future. Naturally things like telling you how much money is needed to build a new stadium have not been at the top of the priority list, since the game is mainly about the managing a football club on the footballing side and not in the board room.

That atleast is a positive to hear, but still a shame u couldn't implement this in 9.20 patch.

Surely you must see how frustrating it is when you basicly are in charge of the club alone and make every single decision affecting the team. And at the same time you have 0 influence over matter that reflects right back at your face. Now ofc I understand managers irl have no input over these things anyway. Yet I'm sure they get info what is happening in this front also and maybe can even influence / make a suggestion over the matter. In FM you have no idea what's happening "behind the scenes" and that annoys the hell out of me.

However to get back to the topic, do you have any tips how to fasten the build of new stadium (assuming finances etc already are in healthy state)?

Playing as Pompey with a stadium that cannot be expanded (council planning permission) at the end of season 1 they announced they were build a new 29k stadium for 44 million offset by the 10 million sale of the current one. Looking at the finance screen they borrowed 34 million over 30 years to do this.

The loan repayments are NOT crippling me

The stadium will be built at the end of season 2 which seems a bit quick but I'm looking forward to the extra revenue I will get from ticket sales

Why am i getting a feeling the whole construction idea is a question of whatkinda lottery ticket did you buy last weekend. Or maybe the game tosses a coin every end of season, but even that sounds almost too good to be true If some1 (that also posted here) is going on year 2018 and i myself 2015 I seriously have to accept the possibility it may not ever happen, atleast not in this patch anyway.

Pls 5 seasons is not enough, u need at least 10 to 15 years, that the time i wait for a new stadium. Dont be so impatient, just wait

Yeah stop being so impatient and play another 15 seasons tonight

Although that might not be too far off the mark. I've only had a new stadium built once and that was back on FM07. I had got Bromley to the Prem and been refused expansions for the previous three years (although fortunately it had already reached 36,000 capacity). Anyway i had plenty of money and was selling out every week so decided to do a test to see how many reloads at season update it would take to build a new stadium. It took a further 11 or 12 until it finally got the go ahead.

I think it was unlucky that it took so many, but if things are similar in FM09 then you could well be waiting many more seasons if you're unlucky too.

I also agree that there needs to be much more communication from your board in this respect. It seems that if you meet the criteria for a new stadium it then becomes a roll of the dice whether you get one or not. The only message you get is that the council has blocked another expansion and you are none the wiser that there was a chance a new stadium. It seems a bit like the board are sneeking around behind your back, wispering about a new stadium as if its a big birthday present they want to suprise you with.

Therefore I think it should be more clear cut, in that meeting the criteria gets a message stating that the board are in the process of implementing a new stadium. The variety would then come from whether they get it built the following year or not for another 7 years for example. Over that period maybe you find your transfer and wage budgets cut in preparation for the financial outputs in building this new stadium.

For the first time ever in FM, I was granted a new stadium last season, currently building... But I'm not impressed by the size, they're upgrading from 24k to 30k? Surely they could have gone a bit further while they're building one in the first place?

Yeah stop being so impatient and play another 15 seasons tonight

Although that might not be too far off the mark. I've only had a new stadium built once and that was back on FM07. I had got Bromley to the Prem and been refused expansions for the previous three years (although fortunately it had already reached 36,000 capacity). Anyway i had plenty of money and was selling out every week so decided to do a test to see how many reloads at season update it would take to build a new stadium. It took a further 11 or 12 until it finally got the go ahead.

I think it was unlucky that it took so many, but if things are similar in FM09 then you could well be waiting many more seasons if you're unlucky too.

I also agree that there needs to be much more communication from your board in this respect. It seems that if you meet the criteria for a new stadium it then becomes a roll of the dice whether you get one or not. The only message you get is that the council has blocked another expansion and you are none the wiser that there was a chance a new stadium. It seems a bit like the board are sneeking around behind your back, wispering about a new stadium as if its a big birthday present they want to suprise you with.

Therefore I think it should be more clear cut, in that meeting the criteria gets a message stating that the board are in the process of implementing a new stadium. The variety would then come from whether they get it built the following year or not for another 7 years for example. Over that period maybe you find your transfer and wage budgets cut in preparation for the financial outputs in building this new stadium.

Do you know when the season update for English teams is in FM09?

whos to say you will sell out the 30k? an extra 6k seats and stadium you a)own and b) can expand is surely better than a crippling debt for a ground you would never fill?

my only new ground was FM07 with gateshead got my 11k stadium replaced with a 20k new build which in 15 years was eventualy expanded to over 100k

Turn of season point>>24th of june/25th of june is the turn of season point<<Turn of season point

Do you know when the season update for English teams is in FM09?

Yeah this is what i was looking for

Is there a way to get those conditions for building a new stadium out of the game files? Are they team specific? or random as someone mentioned?

Unfortunately we cannot add new text into the game extensively in patches (all new text would require translations) so we cannot really implement new news items in patches. As you may have noticed, FM (well CM as it was called back in the day) started out as a very pure football manager and only later on the game has implemented more informational features around the core of the game, which is the actual football managing. But rest assured, I will be working on adding more informational content in the future into the game regarding the club stadium developments.

As a manager, there is very little you can do to directly speed up the planning and building of a new stadium for the club. All you can do is keep the team performing well on the pitch to increase attendances and manage your budgets well, so that the finances are in order for the possible funding of the new stadium.

I think you're missing an important point. We want information about what that status is for a new stadium. If there's just no chance it will ever happen, I'd like to know. When you wait for a new stadium year after year without ANY tiny little hint about whether it might happen or not, it gets depressing. There's currently absolutely no communication whatsoever to the player. I asked my board for an expansion, they said it could never be expanded, end of story. Nothing about the possibility of building a new one.

In FM07 I sold out my 25k for 10+ years straight, never did I hear a word about the possibility of a new stadium. Being left completely in the dark definitely puts a damper on things, and it was one of the reasons why I didn't bother buying FM08, but I thought that surely they must have fixed this for FM09... I got lucky this time, but like another guy said, it looks like it's decided by throwing some dice. In real life, you'll hear a lot about what's going on in this respect, the ideas, the planning, applications, budgets, etc... So it's definitely not realistic to get zero info until .. BAM, after X amounts of seasons you're just lucky with the random number generator.

whos to say you will sell out the 30k? an extra 6k seats and stadium you a)own and b) can expand is surely better than a crippling debt for a ground you would never fill?

my only new ground was FM07 with gateshead got my 11k stadium replaced with a 20k new build which in 15 years was eventualy expanded to over 100k

Turn of season point>>24th of june/25th of june is the turn of season point<<Turn of season point

Two things.

1: We're selling out 24k every match, even against the small teams in the first round of the cup, so there must be a huge potential against the big teams in the league and champions league, and there's also potential against the medium and smaller teams. Let's hope there's room for expansion, but why not build what you need right away...

2: From 20k til 100k+? That's insane, and I can't think of any way that's even remotely possible in real life.

i think there should be a build new stadium button in the board room, not just an expand the stadium button

Pls 5 seasons is not enough, u need at least 10 to 15 years, that the time i wait for a new stadium. Dont be so impatient, just wait

Mine was announced end of season 1 it would be built end of season 2.....not made it there yet

2: From 20k til 100k+? That's insane, and I can't think of any way that's even remotely possible in real life.

I think he meant that over 15 years he gradually expanded the Stadium until it had over 100,000 seats. He didn't increase it by 80,000 seats in one go.

yea was getting expanded every year by about 16000 seats

I think he meant that over 15 years he gradually expanded the Stadium until it had over 100,000 seats. He didn't increase it by 80,000 seats in one go.

Yeah, that's what I mean... a 100,000 stadium is HUGE. How can it be possible to just gradually build up from 20,000 to 100,000? You need to scale it for hugeness from the start to pull that off.

It is depressing if you can't do anything more you already have. When you know the missing pieces should be in place and nothing happens. What if I have to deal with 12k attendants even after 10 seasons from now? There HAS to be some atributes that trigger this or is it JUST a matter of dice? If it's lottery then there has to be date for season end/change?

Thanks for the update.

Any comment on about how to get that information for the game via data editors or other tools? For example i have seen people comment on how the can simply give teams larger stadium etc by changing some data in game. So therefore team specific stadium info is stored somewhere in the game.

Similarly are the variables controlling when a new stadium be built stored somewhere in the game files? Is there any way to get at them? or is this completely random?

Thanks for the update.

Any comment on about how to get that information for the game via data editors or other tools? For example i have seen people comment on how the can simply give teams larger stadium etc by changing some data in game. So therefore team specific stadium info is stored somewhere in the game.

Similarly are the variables controlling when a new stadium be built stored somewhere in the game files? Is there any way to get at them? or is this completely random?

I think there are essentially four factors that determine the building of new stadiums:

1. Money in the bank

2. Current capacity compared to potential capacity of current stadium

3. Average attendance in relation to current capacity

4. Luck

The first three can easily be found through real-time editors. So essentially if you have (1) loads money in the bank, (2) the stadium can not be expanded anymore and (3) the average attendance is greater than current capacity then you have met the requirements and it is a matter of (4) luck whether a new stadium is built that season.

...the average attendance is greater than current capacity...

One question, how is this possible? Surely your average attendance is limited by your current capacity, and even then, you'd have to fill your stadium every single game.

One question, how is this possible? Surely your average attendance is limited by your current capacity, and even then, you'd have to fill your stadium every single game.

No, I think he means the hidden variable of average attendance and not your average attendance per game. This hidden variable is what determines whether you need an expansion.

No, I think he means the hidden variable of average attendance and not your average attendance per game. This hidden variable is what determines whether you need an expansion.

What determines what that hidden variable should be?

What determines what that hidden variable should be?

I would imagine its reputation, current attendance, recent success etc. It is basically how much fans would attend your matches on average every game if you had no capacity limits and the more reputation the club gains in the game the more that will be. Obviously it can go down as well.

One question, how is this possible? Surely your average attendance is limited by your current capacity, and even then, you'd have to fill your stadium every single game.

No, I think he means the hidden variable of average attendance and not your average attendance per game. This hidden variable is what determines whether you need an expansion.

Yeah that's what i meant cheers

As for calculating average attendance, well that seems alot more complicated but i think jod123 has covered the main factors.

Sorry, Riz, I was referring to your comments about managers managing and not spending time in the boardroom, and not being able to speed up stadium things as a manager. You have however acknowledged the need for more information, so I take back that comment

Riz, I don't know which areas you are currently working on that have higher priority than the ones that go around stadium and it's limitations, as well as limitations provided by limited capacity of a stadium which relate to limited resource for yearly budget due low and high attendance levels. F.ex. when you spend 1 million per week on wages and get far less than half of it covered with gate income then obviously it causes a major problem b'coz you either:

a) have to keep on winning everything

b) sell your favourite players to cover the expenses

c) quit game and start a new one with a team that is not lower league/has better start-up

You've been circling around the question and we haven't been provided answer of what can be done to get a new stadium (other than cheating one by editor). Also you have to keep in mind we are playing fm09 here and not fm2010. Most people here are paying customers so imho it's abit offtrack when you say "these things will be taken in consideration in future versions". Atleast, correct me if im wrong, you meant next game rather than next patch? The very least what you CAN do is to change code without changing any actual information (text) provided for a player. Simply making it easier for board to consider building a new stadium.

If you are pushing on full capacity game after game, in a long run luck should be no issue at all regarding this matter. F.ex after 5 seasons in premier league with 100% attendance capacity when you have more than healthy finances the stadium project should be forced through without getting sacked by manager IF board doesn't have enough self initiative to constuct it. Pulling season after season on top level with close to nothing gate income is a joke. There should be a point where the random element that you mentioned should be replaced by common sense right?

Anyhow, good to know you are doing something about this atleast

Oh, and as for my new stadium... it's built now, and it is chock full for the preseason friendlies, so they definitely built it too small. Maybe something to fine-tune too?

hey no need to rub it m'kay

I enjoy tormenting you...

But really, it's the first stadium I've ever gotten in CM/FM history, so I think I've earned it.

Maybe that says something about the difficulty of getting one built?

Btw do you have the exact date when your board announced they were gonna build you 1?

I think this is the missing piece of puzzle that we're lookin at here....

Surely the exact date is going to depend on the club, the financial situation and attendances. Example im liverpool in 2014 and still at anfield. Reason why?

200 million of debt thanks to Hicks and Gillette. Im hoping once thats paid off I get a new stadium. Would be different for every club though IMO

No I think there's an in game date of which season "change" happens. a lottery date. Someone indicated there was 1 in earlier version of fm so there's no reason to believe there wouldn't be 1 in fm09 as well.