Inside Fulham’s revamped £100m Riverside Stand dubbed ‘the best in the world’: Seven floors, two Michelin-star restaurants, with a hotel, cinema, and swimming pool on the way… all yours if you can afford £20k-per-season price!
Fulham’s stunning £100million revamped Riverside Stand has finally opened its full range of hospitality to the public.
Ranging from the subterrannean Dugout sports bar to the three-tier Sky Deck with floors modelled on Soho House and the Orient Express, Fulham’s new development is hard to match in sheer style.
This is a playground for the rich and the season ticket prices read like telephone numbers. The cheapest Riverside hospitality option will be £2,708 plus VAT for next season. The most expensive? You can have the Private Dining package for £20,000 plus VAT.
A rooftop swimming pool is set to open in November for any particularly hardy souls, while there are also plans for a hotel, cinema room, and a creche.
‘We wanted it to be the best stand in the world, soaring with the eagles,’ Fulham CEO Alistair Mackintosh told reporters on Saturday, presumably not referring to London rivals Crystal Palace.
The menu is more like something you would find at the Ritz than your average stadium fare. On Saturday, the Sky Deck offered a diet as diverse as black truffle, scallops, venison loin, cured sea bream, sourdough croutons, macarons, and an English cheese selection. There was, however, only one vegetarian option.
Fulham’s stunning new hospitality in the Riverside Stand has finally opened in full
Season ticket prices will range from £2,708 to £20,000 plus VAT for Private Dining in the Sky Deck
The Riverside Stand features two Michelin-star restaurants and will employ full-time chefs
Of course, they bring out the pies for half-time – steak and ale, chicken and leek, and a curry option which rather unsettled some people’s stomach.
Across the Riverside Stand, there are two Michelin-star restaurants called The Gourmet and The Brasserie. Designers from London, Barcelona, and Paris have collaborated to create a thoroughly palatial experience on the banks of the Thames.
The idea is for this to be a 365-day-a-year operation. Fulham are losing money – the club made a pre-tax loss of £32m in the year leading up to June 2024. Opening the doors to fans and the public all year around will help generate extra revenue to increase the club’s financial sustainability.
One appealing and more inclusive aspect is the ground-level Fulham Pier, sat alongside the Thames, which will be open for people to enjoy with a range of bars and food stands. It has the makings of a great summer afternoon.
In total, there are eight tiers of hospitality with a capacity just short of 2,300. It has taken six years of work, and indeed three years of delays, to reach this stage.
Unlike at other football stadiums, the hospitality does not consist of boxes where spectators can easily move between the stands and their indoor lounge. Fulham’s offering gives visitors access to a range of high-end restaurants where there is no view of the game besides on screens, then a reasonable walk to get to one’s padded seats to watch the action.
This is an important juncture for an established Premier League club. With Tottenham having moved into their state-of-the-art ground 2019, Manchester United eyeing a £2billion project, and Chelsea mulling over a move away from Stamford Bridge, they are not the first nor the last to capitalise on football’s growing appetite for luxury.
It’s very much marketed as a luxury, rather than footballing, product. Stuart Forbes associates, the lead interior designers, have a background in high-end hospitality rather than sports, and did not study offerings at other clubs for inspiration.
The development will be open all-year round, and the Pier area next to the river, swarming with bars, will be a particular attraction in summer
The designers did not study other sports hospitality offerings but modelled themselves off high-end restaurants and hotels
The menu for the Sky Deck includes black truffle, scallops, and venison loin
The project has created around 250 jobs, many full-time, in hospitality and operations, with almost 3,000 having been involved in the overall construction project
As Mackintosh put it rather grandly: ‘We want this to be a venue for everyone every day of the year. We knew as a by-product that we’d end up with the best hospitality ever.
‘We really believe that people will come for the amenities and stay for the community. It’s a fantastic place to make old friends.’
Around 2,750 jobs were created in the construction of the development, while there will be 250, many of them full-time, in hospitality and operations.
While it serves as an extra source of revenue, seeing the grandeur reserved for one-off visitors may be a kick in the teeth to Fulham’s long-time matchgoers who have been priced out in recent seasons.
Adult and junior season ticket renewals increased by 10 per cent in 2022, then 18 per cent in 2023, for the standard seating areas of the Hammersmith, Putney, and Johnny Haynes stands.
Matchday ticket prices have soared, too – last season they climbed by 18 per cent.
This has led to numerous protests from fans who feel the club is prioritising its pockets over its community. There is a concern that tickets put on sale to club members – fans who might make the occasional game – are soaring to a position which prices them out.
‘We’re very pleased to see an asset which adds to the ground and will hopefully generate income to close the financial sustainability gap, which is important to us all.
‘But we will always continue to make a point on pricing in other parts of the ground, irrespective of what they may charge in the Riverside.’
