The Premier League has become a place where not just the other half reside but the 1%. If money follows money then England’s top tier is a place to be seen, to do business, to entertain, for those who can afford the corporate facilities increasingly important to football’s bottom line.
On Saturday, beforeFulham’s lossagainst Everton, a grand opening of Craven Cottage’s Riverside Stand. Its exoskeleton was a feature of the Thames during pandemic times, the bottom of the stand has been in partial service for the past three seasons. When contractor Buckingham Group in September 2023 collapsed it left the interior fit to be completed, plus much of the exterior; Buckingham’s collapse also delayed Liverpool’s Anfield Road redevelopment. Portview, the fit-out contractor, took control and full rollout comes before Fulham see out the 2024-25 season.
“London’s original football club has a new world-class matchday experience,” declares a project embracing 21st-century opulence. The club’s chief executive, Alistair Mackintosh said: “A wonderful location now blessed with wonderful hospitality.” Behind such reaching for the skies is Shad Khan, Fulham’s Pakistani-American billionaire owner. “Shad put the vision on steroids,” said Mackintosh. The project has cost significantly more than its initial pricing of £100m, with officials and architects remaining tight-lipped about the overall cost on launch day.
“A location like no other, a real gamechanger for Fulham Football Club, our neighbourhood, and all of London,” was Khan’s ambitious declaration as building began in 2019. The architect, Populous, worked on the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the All-England club.
Fulham aim to offer the highest-end, most elite corporate facility in football. Hospitality customers will be charged £3,000 to £20,000 a season over nine tiers with individual match packages on sale. Plus VAT. Not for the faint of wallet, at a club where fans have been protesting against prices, saying not all Fulham fans can afford west London house prices, that the club retains a suburban working-class core of support, despite an outwardly genteel image.
“The decision to implement a modest increase was made with careful consideration,” read a 1 May club statement as 2.8% season-ticket increases were levied. Those used to the Hammersmith End, the Putney End and the Johnny Haynes Stand on Stevenage Road may find the Riverside represents a very different social strata, particularly in the toilets.
The Cottage has become a place of contrasts. Opposite the Riverside’s architectural modernity is the Johnny Haynes, a surviving creation of Archibald Leitch, the genius Scottish architect whose art deco designs were used at Anfield, Old Trafford, Hampden Park and White Hart Lane, among others. Most of those grand designs have passed into history.
Leitch’s continued influence is obvious in the Riverside Stand’s five tiers, as is that of Thames boathouses. This section of London’s main river conjures images of Oxford-Cambridge Boat Races, Ringo Starr’s caper with a young scruff during a Hard Day’s Night, and romcom scenes from Sliding Doors.
Fulham seek to reimagine the Cottage as more than a football ground. “A venue for everyone, every day of the year,” says Mackintosh. On non-matchdays, south-west London’s joggers can run along the Thames Path, under the new stand’s decks.
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Inside, a range of eateries and bars, private dining rooms are on offer for the highest-end clients. The Brasserie, the Gourmet, the Thames Bar Room, the Originals, the Dugout, and Marker’s Bar are subsections of a structure offering outstanding river vistas. Wembley’s arches and Stamford Bridge are visible from the decking. On the opposite bank, Barnes Football Club, an important marker of football’s development in the late 19th century.
Football is not necessarily central to the project. The Thames is the star attraction, not the playing field. Lighthouse Social is a membership scheme for the non-matchdays, with about 600 members added so far. With a local committee, styled as a neighbourhood-friendly scheme, it has a selection process that might be associated with central London’s private members’ clubs. Its packages, ranging from £750 to £1,250 will not buy a member matchday access, though the expectation and hope is that 20-30% will cross the great divide.
Mention of Fulham FC within the new development is minimal, though a small club badge is visible on the walkway to Khan’s presidential seat. The top three tiers, even if Sky Sports News plays on matchdays, offer glamour, fully Instagrammable. A grand piano is ordered for the third-tier Sky Deck to make it resemble the ballroom of the Titanic in a facility designed by a Parisian outfit whose trade is high-end restaurants and hotels.
The scallops, sea bream and Veuve Clicquot menu contrasts pile ’em high football clubs filling punters’ bellies with pies and pints. An Agatha Christie chic is added by the fourth tier’s slim corridors resembling the Orient Express, a world away from sticky-carpet concourses in other Premier League clubs’ corporate facilities, the Gallic type of art-deco, almost nautical setting lifelong Cottager Hugh Grant might be found acting out a period drama.
The Riverside looked glorious on a late-spring day though the Cottage can be one of football’s chilliest settings when wintry winds whip from the river. As yet, the roof-top swimming pool that has made headlines is unfinished, the promise it will be heated. As Saturday’s match kicked off, attention returned to Marco Silva’s distant, disappearing hopes of a European place. Until kick-off, football felt a world away.