King's Stoke concert wish and raising transfer cash while sticking to principles

Stoke City continue to pursue the chance to bring big concerts back to the bet365 Stadium as chief operating officer Simon King spells out the hurdles they must overcome.

Stoke have previously hosted gigs from Elton John, Rod Stewart, McFly, Bryan Adams and Bon Jovi – but the last of those was now 12 years ago and it has proven difficult to muscle back onto a competitive stadium circuit.

Bringing sell-out acts would be an important money spinner to ultimately go into the transfer cash pot at a time when football financial rules favour sustainability rather than investment from chairman John Coates but there are two different pathways to making it happen.

The first – events run by a promoter who accepts all the risks – are difficult deals to strike while the second – Stoke taking those risks on themselves – would be a significant gamble.

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The club has increased commercial revenue by £4m to £24m per year since King joined in the summer of 2022 but this is a key dilemma as he looks to take that up again without compromising Coates’s demands to keep football as affordable as possible.

“It’s the big question (about concerts at the stadium) and I was quite open – and it was run in The Sentinel when I first joined – that I was looking to bring concerts here,” he said on the Stoke podcast, Potters Pod. “Yes, it’s an absolute ambition of ours. Hands up, it’s more challenging than I thought it would be, I had brought a couple of concerts to Hull and they were incredibly successful.

“We have had concerts here previously. We then took ourselves out of the market for 10 years – we just didn’t do concerts, that wasn’t our ambition, it wasn’t the strategy at the time and that’s fine, many stadiums don’t do concerts. We see it as a real opportunity to generate revenue but also bring an incredible event to Stoke. It means that Stokies don’t have to travel to Manchester or Birmingham to see a big gig.

“Clearly we want to do that. The challenge is that because we’ve taken ourselves out of the market, other stadiums have those relationships now with promoters.

“There are two financial models you can have with concerts. One is that a promoter will come in and take all the risk and basically say, ‘We will pay for everything but we will take all of the ticket revenue and we’ll leave you with the food and beverage revenue, which is significant.’ We will be absolutely, sounds great, we’re not concert experts so we’ll leave it to them and we’ll take the money from the food and beverage and take significant money from that.

“Those models are few and far between and only certain stadiums are getting those who have been in the market while we’ve taken ourselves out of it. Dragging those away from other stadiums is more challenging than I thought it would be but we will continue to see if we can land one of those because clearly it would be our preferred option.

“The second option, which we haven’t really considered until the last 12 months because we were hoping for option A, would be to take on all of the risk ourselves. You would go to a promoter but would basically say, ‘We will pay for everything, you deliver it for us, profit share, but we’ll take all of the risk. We’re financing the whole thing and we’ll take all of the upside.’ There’s a lot of risk so there could be a lot of downside too if you don’t get it right. I know stadiums who have done this and lost a whole lot of money.

“We’re ruling it out and it is still an ambition of ours to bring concerts here. That leans into the stadium development and money being spent on catering areas and hospitality because that’s primarily for Stoke City and the 23 or 26 games we have here each season but if we are going to put on a major event like a concert it helps us monetise that as well and deliver a brilliant experience.

“We are very focused on trying to deliver it but clearly we would like option A. How patient are we going to be? That is an ongoing decision we have to make because option B would be taking all the risk, knowing that if you don’t get it right you could lose £1m quite easily. That’s not something I particularly want to sign off and have on my head!

“But if that’s what we’ve got to do and we’re prepared to take that risk as a business, I’ll be having that consultation with John and Richard (Smith) and people in the business asking if we’ve got to that point – or, if a certain act becomes available, we could say ok there is risk in that but surely we’ll be able to sell X amount of tickets at this price.

“It’s still on the table but we’ve not landed a one as yet.”

Football stadiums around the UK have held sell-out music events over the last couple of years ranging from Coldplay at Wembley and Beyonce at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to Huddersfield Town hosting Stereophonics.

Even so, Stoke still have one of the strongest commercial revenues in the Championship and there has been major investment to boost that further. Ricardo’s sports bar was launched in late 2022 and the Boothen Quarter fan zone was opened in 2024 while £5m is being invested in improving catering facilities around the stadium.

King said: “We’ve got a whole good to great internal strategy and it’s constantly about how we’re going to improve this club in this area and how this takes us forward, internally or externally, to our fanbase. We were one of the first clubs to launch a fan engagement plana and now it’s mandatory with the EFL, you have to submit it every year.

“Within that was our public commitment to a framework around fan engagement. It was two or three years ago when we put the first one in. You don’t want to change things for changing’s sake but I also don’t want the plan to become stale. I don’t want to look at that in two years’ time and basically we’ll just change the design artwork on it and resubmit it. Fan engagement will continually evolve and our supporters will continually want to feel like they are getting more value or feeling more connected with their club. We need to think of different ways we can achieve that.

“From a financial perspective, we’ve gone from £20m to £24m in four years. We’ve increased revenues by £4m while maintaining a fixed season card price and fixed match back pricing. But how am I going to get to £25m? How am I going to get to £26m? You’ve constantly got to be reviewing that and the moment I’m not I’m the wrong person for the job ultimately.

“In every area we’ve got to be thinking about what’s next. Yes, what can we do for our supporters to make their experience as good as it possibly can be, what can we do to drive commercial performance because that has an impact on our transfer budget to make the team stronger, what can we do internally to make a better environment for our staff? It’s just layered across so many different areas.”

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