Chelsea have held talks over playing at Craven Cottage, Twickenham and Wembley as Todd Boehly’s ownership group plots an expensive redevelopment of Stamford Bridge.
As part of their £4.25billion takeover of Chelsea last year, Boehly’s consortium promised to provide £1.75billion to fund "investments in Stamford Bridge, the academy, the women's team and Kingsmeadow”. They are now exploring ways to redevelop Stamford Bridge, which lags behind Chelsea’s rivals with a capacity of around 41,000.
The club wants to build a new 60,000-seat stadium on the same site which has been their home since 1905. But that is easier said than done, with a huge number of problems needing to be overcome.
The Stamford Bridge site has the District Line and a Network Rail line running underneath it, while it is penned in by the Fulham Road, social housing and the Brompton Cemetery above ground. Meanwhile, Chelsea Pitch Owners, a group of fans all around the globe, own the freehold to the ground and certain intellectual property rights.
The Daily Mail reports that Chelsea hope to have built a new stadium at Stamford Bridge by 2030 at a projected cost of around £2bn. Boehly has spoken to Fulham owner Shahid Khan about potentially using Craven Cottage while the work is done, as well as the Rugby Football Union to discuss the possibility of using Twickenham.
Mirror Football reported in January that Wembley was being considered as another option, after the national stadium hosted Tottenham during their redevelopment of White Hart Lane.
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It is understood that Chelsea would be away from Stamford Bridge for a minimum of four years while building work goes on. The plan is to bulldoze the current stadium and build a new one, possibly with the pitch rotated by 90 degrees and sunken lower to avoid height restrictions.
Bernard Ralph, a real estate planning expert at JMW, told Mirror Football last year that the whole process could take 10 years to complete.
Nothing can be done until Chelsea find out whether they have been successful in buying a 1.2-acre site next to the stadium for £50m. The land currently belongs to Stoll, a housing association which provides housing for military veterans, but a verdict is expected later this month.
The redevelopment of Stamford Bridge is needed to help Chelsea catch up with their Premier League rivals, who all play in bigger grounds. A sales brochure from Chelsea, that was touted to prospective buyers last year, claimed that increasing the stadium’s capacity to 62,500 would see match-day revenue rise dramatically from £70m to £200m per year.
Plans to build a new stadium are nothing new for Chelsea. After considering relocating to Shepherd's Bush and to Battersea Power Station, Chelsea managed to overcome the hurdles and get as far as receiving planning permission for a new 60,000-seat stadium in January 2017 before ex-owner Roman Abramovich pulled the plug, due to “unfavourable investment climate” in May 2018.
