Real Madrid’s VIP nightclub, Tottenham’s ill-fated cheese room – and a high-tech ground on top of a 200m cliff! Football’s incredible new stadium developments as Fulham announce plans for a rooftop pool

Thought going to a football ground to take in a match was the beginning and the end of it? Think again. 

Gone are the days where the hospitality highlight a fan might expect is a pie and a pint. Instead, clubs are increasingly keen to make the match-going experience a more luxurious one, replete with luxury surroundings and a wealth of different activities – often with a price tag to match. 

With a number of top teams looking to upgrade their stadiums to ensure the maxiumum possible profit, the designs and features of new grounds grow ever more imaginative. 

But some of the upgrades – consider Tottenham’s ill-fated cheese room – have appeared a world away from the traditional matchday experience. 

Here, Mail Sport looks at some of the wackiest upgrades and design features in football stadia across the world.

Spurs’ microbrewery and the ill-fated cheese room

Designed by starchitects Populous – who are at the helm of a number of these extravagant projects, including Fulham’s – Tottenham’s £1billion Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is one of the few stadiums on this list that has actually opened, and to much success.

Regularly hosting sold-out gigs and sporting events such as heavyweight fights and NFL games has made the club’s ground immensely profitable, as have matchday takings. Spurs are thought to earn more money than any other Premier League side on matchday too, with an estimated £4.8m being spent on food, drink, programmes, and merchandise. 

The contemporary, state-of-the-art facilities play a large role in this, but none is more unique than their Beavertown microbrewery, the first on-site microbrewery of its kind. 

But some innovations were considered a hair too radical. In 2017 at a preview presentation on the stadium, a VIP cheese room was discussed with fans able to ‘select their own specially sourced half-time cheeses’. Amid mass derision when the club missed their first opening deadline, the club later denied that there had ever been plans for one. Something about this stinks. 

Party like a Real player at the new-look Bernabeu 

Real Madrid are revamping the Santiago Bernabeu to the tune of £860million, and when it comes to ensuring their fans have a good time at the ground, it appears no expense has been spared. 

The new 85,000 stadium not only features a retractable roof and 360-degree screen to ensure not one minute of Jude Bellingham and Co’s brilliance is missed, but in the final piece of the near-£1bn puzzle, a private nightclub. 

Part of the ground’s SkyBar VIP suite built to accomodate up to 200 guests, the box will not only give ultra-deep pocketed fans the best possible seat in the house for matches, but allow them to dance the night away to DJ sets after the final whistle.  

With the deadline of a Taylor Swift concert in May to consider, the official unveiling of the finished ground is planned for later this spring. 

Camp Nou’s sustainability revamp 

Anything Madrid can do… 

Despite having an almost spiritual connection to their storied Camp Nou – as evidenced by the club’s sale of patches of its historic turf in a bid to raise much needed funds – Barca broke ground on their £1.3bn renovation in 2023. 

With a view to boosting capacity to an astounding 105,000, the new Camp Nou will also have a roof, set to be the largest in Europe, and 360-degree screens. 

But unlike their loathed rivals, Barcelona’s plans have honed in on the sustainability aspect of the design, with a rainwater harvesting system to water the pitch, and photovoltaic panels planned for the roof to power their floodlights. 

But for green credentials, Barca are yet to go as far as Forest Green Rovers are keen to –  Dale Vince’s proposed £100m Zaha Hadid-designed stadium, if given the green light, will be made entirely of wood in a world-first. 

Stadium 974 reimagines temporary venues 

There was no shortage of luxurious innovation on display in Qatar, where lofty and much-mocked plans for air-conditioning in the stadium actually came to fruition, and matches could be watched from opulent pitchside suites – in bed. 

But perhaps the most eye-catching of the ingenuity on show in 2022 was the creation of Stadium 974, a temporary stadium built out of repurposed shipping containers. 

The 40,000-seat stadium needed less than 1,000 – 974 to be exact – to be put together and dismantled like Lego, sparking the possibility that a number of countries without tournament-level infrastructure could do the same in the future. 

Shortly after hosting its final match, Stadium 974 was taken down. But it could yet appear somewhere entirely different in the future. 

Saudi Arabia’s mirage in the desert 

It wouldn’t be a list covering ambition and previously unimaginable splendour without an offering from Saudi Arabia. 

With the 20234 World Cup in their sights, the Kingdom have enlisted Populous to create a one-of-a-kind ultra-modern stadium with LED walls and a retractable roof. 

Sound impressive? Now picture the structure atop a 200m cliff. 

The Prince Mohammed bin Salman Stadium is set to ‘reinvent the traditional stadium concept’. After its completion, and away from international football, it will reportedly play host to Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr. 

Fancy a dip at Fulham’s New Riverside Stand? 

The Cottagers have been in the throes of renovation to their Riverside Stand since 2019, with the original opening plan pushed from 2021 after the project was stymied by the Covid 19 pandemic. 

While the stand has been part-operational since the summer of 2022, the club is still at work on the piece de resistance, a completely overhauled hospitality area with two Michelin Star restaurants. 

But one aspect of the hospitality’s section required a second look, with fans agog that the club was planning to install a rooftop swimming pool. 

Fulham chairman Shahid Khan – whose NFL team Jacksonville Jaguars have similar hospitality features at their EverBank stadium in Florida – said it will provide a ‘premium experience that will be unlike anything in football’.

With the only comparable feature in English football history springing to mind the players’ communal baths of old, I would have to agree.