I always felt a club of our stature deserves a bigger stadium. You look at Bilbao and they have a better stadium than us despite not being in the big boys league.
We have 15,000 less capacity than Old Trafford. Tickets, food and drinks, hospitality, merchandise. They all adds up.
Couldn't we expand Anfield any further? Is there some sort of restriction or what?
No they don't? Bilbao's stadium, San Mames, might be more modern (being built in 2014) but it is significantly smaller (less than 54k) - the only Spanish stadiums bigger are the ginormous Camp Nou and Bernabeu, and the new Wanda Metropolitano.
Also, OT is about 13k more seats - and in terms of revenue - 13k isn't "that" much - if we look at the the 2021/22 accounts - we made £86m from match day revenue. In that season we averaged in the PL 53k in our 19 home games, had 3 home FA Cup matches (out of the 4 max given both Semis and Final now is played at Wembley), had 3 (out of a maximum of 4) League Cup matches, and made the final in the CL (so had the maximum 6 possible home matches). So best case scenario is if we adjust the matchday revenue up by the 13k "less capacity" you are saying we have to work out how much extra we might get - so thats £86m * 13/53 = £20.7m - or about 3.5% of our total revenue that year. the c.7k a year from the new stadium improvements will subsequently get us about £10m as well likely.
This also tallies with what United made - they made 110.5m in the same year's accounts from matchday revenue, so about 28% more than us (from a c. 37% larger stadium, but 5 fewer games). Last season they went from £110.5m from 26 games (19 PL, 1 League cup, 2 FA Cups, and 4 CLs) to making £130.5m from 33 (19 PL, 4 LC, 4 FA Cup, 6 ELs) - which is 24% more income from 27% more games - so the logic fully holds up.
Assuming that to make this bigger stadium, we'd need a brand new stadium, then unless we were to increase ticket prices (unlikely to be popular), then we would only be earning £20-25m a year more based on this - so could take 30-40 years to pay off the cost of the stadium - obviously, we'd make money for selling Anfield and the surrounding area, plus naming rights to the stadium - or we'd be screwed.
