Ball: The Aim is 40,000
Wednesday, 17th Dec 2025 16:38

Town chief financial officer Tom Ball says a capacity of 40,000 is the aim when the club looks to redevelop Portman Road in the years to come.

Speaking at last night’s PLC AGM, Ball was asked to put a figure on the expansion, which has been a long-term plan since the 2021 Gamechanger 20 takeover with a replacement for the Cobbold Stand, now nearly 55 years old, the most significant aspect of the development.

“How big do we want or how big do we see as practical?” Ball said. “Forty thousand is the aim. It’s one of the things we’re starting to look at now - how do we expand and replace the Cobbold Stand? Is there anything we need to do to the West Stand in terms of expanding that and putting another tier behind?

“We’ve had architects look at this on and off now for the last couple of years. Filling in the corners has been suggested, we’ve had various people look at various things. And we were talking with another group earlier today.

“The fact that the club’s done this for the past few years, it’s not that we’ve lost focus on it, we’ve been working on this in the background all the way along, but it’s really tricky to find a way to develop without displacing season ticket holders and members for a period of 18-24 months.”

As previously reported, building behind the existing structures of the Cobbold Stand and West Stand are possibilities which have been looked into in order to address this issue.

“There are plans which could see us develop behind the existing stand in order to move everybody who is there behind whilst we develop the front,” he added. “But as with anything, that just adds time, cost and complexity.

“When you’re looking at something that could cost around £100 million, by the time you’ve put 10, 15, 20 per cent on the cost to do that, you’re talking considerable sums of money, far greater than you’d ever get from the revenue from those ticket holders.

“Rest assured, anything that we’re doing on that stand, isn’t from a revenue-of-current-ticket-holders point of view, it’s what is the right thing to do, what’s the best thing to do, what’s going to put this club in the best position in five or 10 years from now.”

Photo: TWTD

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Bazza8564 added 17:12 - Dec 17 Trust the process, again! The West stand is logically next, it's no massive issue to lose the fanzone for a period and we've seen at places like Anfield and the Etihad that you can still use a stand whilst development goes on above and behind it. 40000 would be a massive increase and establish us with a premium stadium, bring it on
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victorysquad added 18:04 - Dec 17 Atmosphere has to be high on the list. They killed the North stand when they put that tier on top We need to gain competitive advantage from the acoustics
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MickMillsTash added 18:12 - Dec 17

If the folk of Ipswich have learnt anything over the years about new stands its that it does not guarantee success but it does guarantee debt.
Liverpool added 6K seats with the Anfield Road development and only 1K season tickets... different clubs but we need to be careful to whom those new tickets will be sold to - the view/ atmosphere at the back of those stands is cr@p.

EssexBloo added 18:24 - Dec 17 40,000? We’re huge.
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BtreeBlueBlood added 18:43 - Dec 17 I’m hopeful there will be better raised position disabled seat positions which run along the length of the pitch ( above the 1st bank of fans) like at Villa Swansea mk dons and a lot of overseas new grounds! We can’t stand up to look over camera men or players warming up etc etc
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armchaircritic59 added 18:44 - Dec 17

MickMillsTash, some truth in what you say for sure. Different era, times and owners now, but things have hopefully been learned from the past. One thing for sure, all the great things that are happening off the field of play, need to be mirrored by the things on it. Otherwise we will end up putting the cart before the horse again. A very suitable phrase given the club badge!

Northstandveteran added 18:55 - Dec 17

Of course the atmosphere is awful.

Went with 4 friends to the Coventry game.

One a Manchester United fan, one a West ham fan.

Sat in completely different stands from each other.

Sat next to a bloke who had a season ticket as did his 12 year old son.

His son could only get a ticket in the opposite stand and it was only the good nature of fellow fans that meant they could sit together.

In the day, you went with your mates, had a couple of pints, stood together in the boisterous stand and had fun.

Now you sit next to strangers whose ages range from 8 to 80.

You're not going to start singing in that situation are you?

But that's modern football I'm afraid.

Watched the so called ferocious Sunderland Newcastle derby.

Wasn't that noisier than Portman road.

Football used to be tribal.

Recognising people from your stand when you went to away games, having a great time, now it's like watching a game of baseball.

Singers used to be with the singers, jumping up and down, keeping warm.

Now it's sat with strangers freezing your balls off.

Modern football is s##t.

Westy added 18:56 - Dec 17 Very excited about all this. Does seem logical to address the West Stand first. To get a crowd of 40,000 would be great but to get it a capacity a shade over this would probably be necessary, as for whatever reason, the attendances always seem to be just under capacity even when a game is a supposed 'sell-out'.
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OldFart71 added 19:25 - Dec 17

The development to the North and Churchmans to give us a capacity of 30,000 was done to achieve the use of PR for International games where £30,000 was the minimum. I believe we had an under 21 game played at PR due to this. I suppose the biggest problem may arise where if in the Premier League we have to allow opposing teams 3,000 seats and if you are one stand short that creates it's own problems.

MVBlue added 21:47 - Dec 17 That might be too big. Just update the Cobbold, expand it and add 5-6000 for £60 million and be done with it.
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Bluearmy_81 added 22:14 - Dec 17 Larger than 38010, come on!!
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atty added 22:48 - Dec 17 Could we fill a 40K stadium.In the PL, with a full 4K away section (SAR) in a lot of games. So leaving 36K. We’ve had 29K often enough and we have 6K on the ST waiting list. In the Championship who knows?. Taking an extra 10K seats at say £30 makes £350K, x 23 = £8, 050, 00, plus catering and Programmes. Well in theory anyway.
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atty added 22:50 - Dec 17 Ops “at £35” !
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Broadbent23 added 07:28 - Dec 18 The Milton Keynes stadium where Town played in Lg one is a huge stadium but unfortunately not enough fans to fill it. Therefore even if our fan base was 35k we can allow 5k (away fans in ) for higher revenue. Plus Ipswich would have a huge entertainment venue. Just a logistical nightmare to build and keep fans happy.
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Steve_ITFC_Sweden added 09:26 - Dec 18

victorysquad: I don't think it was the upper tier of the Sir Bobby that negatively affected the atmosphere as much as the fact that the most vocal fans have all been stuck in a corner of the Cobbold, where you can't see them or even hear them all that well. This is something I've written about before. I agree the atmosphere in the Sir Bobby is mostly pretty flat, but that's because it contains such a diverse mixture of fans - some who would love to give vocal support, and others (probably largely the older ones) who choose not to join in with some of the admittedly rather juvenile chants.

Brogan55 added 10:11 - Dec 18

Why not make the North Stand Lower,standing only.Get rid of the seats,as they are not used and go back to terracing,as it was. Then all the fans who who sing will be all together and you can increase the amount of supporters in that area.All the tickets sold for that area would be regulated as season ticket holders.So you could never have too many supporters and create problems.The atmosphere will be brilliant.

Lightningboy added 10:13 - Dec 18 Bigger ain't always better. Don't kill what this club is for the sake of squeezing more money out of fans. Btw,whilst you're still potching around,any chance of putting the main pitch camera back where it was before the premier league make-over...it's far too low down now.
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Northstandveteran added 16:30 - Dec 18 Great comment Brogan55.
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algy added 16:38 - Dec 18 With bigger capacity should definitely look to increase allocation for opposition fans if we get promoted. Last season away to us was a great game to go to. 14 sets of 3000 opposition fans saw their team win at Portman Road (even the one team that finished below us) and only 1 saw their team lose. More will want to come if we're as uncompetitive again.
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Linkboy13 added 19:57 - Dec 18 Absolute rubbish the atmosphere at Portman road when we got promoted couple of years ago was fantastic. All this talk about 40,000 capacity is just cheap talk that the fans love to hear let's get it right on the pitch first by recruiting better players just look what Sunderland are doing or are they a bigger club than us.
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