Major St James’ Park development update as Newcastle United ‘submit’ stadium feasibility study

The clash with Unai Emery’s side is, unsurprisingly, a sell-out with demands for tickets at Newcastle United far exceeding the 52,000 capacity of St James’ Park. With demand for tickets at an all-time high comes demand for St James’ Park to be developed and capacity increased.

The question over a potential expansion to the ground was put to Darren Eales on BBC Newcastle, with Newcastle’s CEO revealing the club are assessing all possibilities. Eales said: “It’s another hot topic. 

“We’re in a fortunate position with 52,000 and as everyone knows we could sell that out every game and the demand for tickets means, at the moment, people can’t get into the building.

“One of the challenges we have is that we are in a great location, St James’ Park is the cathedral on the hill, it’s just amazing to have that location in the city. So one of the things we want to do, and this is something that we’ve just started the process with, is a stadium feasibility study. 

“That is to get in some experts to take a look with a blank sheet of paper to see what we could do to improve the stadium’s capacity and the important thing on this one - and we chuckle about it on the board - is that everyone is a sort of ‘amateur architect’ on what you can do at St James’ Park and what might be the potential.

“The reality is we need some experts to come in with no preconceptions, look at it and actually give us that feedback. Our focus is to look at the possibilities, what is the ‘art of the possible’ and then at that stage, we will be able to consult and talk with fans to say ‘here’s the potential of what we can do’.

“One thing we have done is Strawberry Place and the land outside St James’ Park, we purchased that earlier this year and putting in planning permission for fan zones. We’re really excited to, hopefully, get something out this season where we have that fan zone so we can use that land for our supporters on a matchday.

“Obviously having that land also gives us the flexibility to potentially do the things [we want] around the stadium.”