The English Premier League has become a place where not just the other half reside, but the 1 percent. If money follows money, then England’s top tier is a place to be seen, to do business, to entertain and for those who can afford the corporate facilities, which are increasingly important to soccer’s bottom line.
On Saturday, before Fulham’s 3-1 loss against Everton, the club hosted its grand opening of the Riverside Stand. Its exoskeleton was a feature of the River Thames during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Behind the project is Shad Khan, Fulham’s Pakistani-American billionaire owner. “Shad put the vision on steroids,” Fulham chief executive officer Alistair Mackintosh said.
Photo: AFP
The project has cost significantly more than its initial pricing of ￡100 million (US$133 million), with officials and architects tight-lipped about the overall cost on launch day.
“A location like no other, a real gamechanger for Fulham Football Club, our neighborhood and all of London,” Khan said as construction began in 2019.
The architect Populous worked on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the All-England Club.
Fulham aim to offer the highest-end, most elite corporate facility in soccer.
Hospitality customers would be charged from ￡3,000 to ￡20,000 a season over nine tiers, with individual match packages on sale. Plus value-added tax.
Not for the faint of wallet, at a club where fans have been protesting against prices, saying not all Fulham fans can afford West London house prices. The club retains a suburban working-class core of support, despite an outwardly genteel image.
“The decision to implement a modest increase was made with careful consideration,” the club said on May 1 as 2.8 percent season-ticket increases were levied.
Craven Cottage has become a place of contrasts. Opposite the Riverside’s architectural modernity is the Johnny Haynes Stand, a surviving creation of Archibald Leitch, the Scottish architect whose art deco designs were used at Anfield, Old Trafford, Hampden Park and White Hart Lane, among others. Most of those grand designs have passed into history.
Leitch’s continued influence is obvious in the Riverside Stand’s five tiers, as is that of Thames boathouses.
This section of London’s main river conjures images of Oxford-Cambridge Boat Races, Ringo Starr’s caper with a young scruff during a Hard Day’s Night and romcom scenes from Sliding Doors.
Fulham seek to reimagine the Cottage as more than a soccer ground.
“A venue for everyone, every day of the year,” Mackintosh said.
On non-matchdays, southwest London’s joggers can run along the Thames Path, under the new stand’s decks.
Wembley’s arches and Stamford Bridge are visible from the decking. On the opposite bank, Barnes Football Club, an important marker of soccer’s development in the late 19th century.
Soccer is not necessarily central to the project. The Thames is the star attraction, not the playing field. Lighthouse Social is a membership scheme for non-matchdays, with about 600 members added so far. With a local committee, styled as a neighborhood-friendly scheme, it has a selection process that might be associated with central London’s private members’ clubs.
Mention of Fulham FC within the new development is minimal, although a small club badge is visible on the walkway to Khan’s presidential seat.
A grand piano is ordered for the third-tier Sky Deck to make it resemble the ballroom of the Titanic in a facility designed by a Parisian outfit whose trade is high-end restaurants and hotels.
The scallops, sea bream and Veuve Clicquot menu contrasts with pile ’em high soccer clubs filling punters’ bellies with pies and pints of beer.
An Agatha Christie chic is added by the fourth tier’s slim corridors resembling the Orient Express, a world away from sticky-carpet concourses in other Premier League clubs’ corporate facilities, the Gallic type of art-deco, almost nautical setting, lifelong Cottager Hugh Grant might be found acting out a period drama.
The Riverside looked glorious on a late-spring day, although the Cottage can be one of soccer’s chilliest settings when wintry winds whip from the river.
As yet, the rooftop swimming pool that has made headlines is unfinished. The promise is that it would be heated.
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