Knighthead’s Big Bet on St Andrew’s: A New Era for Birmingham City

Birmingham City owners Knighthead have pledged to build a new Sports Quarter in the heart of the city

Five months ago Birmingham City announced that it had purchased a vacant 48-acre site in east Birmingham for £51million, formerly known as Birmingham Wheels, and unveiled plans to build a new Sports Quarter and super stadium.

Knighthead has also acquired another 12 acres of land adjacent to the Wheels site, excluding St Andrew’s, to take the total holding to 60 acres. Blues have taken inspiration from Manchester City’s stunning Etihad Campus and plan to create a Sports Quarter that comprises a stadium, training and academy facilities.

There are also plans for office spaces, restaurants – or ‘eatertainment’ areas as Tom Wagner calls it – and hubs to socialise. Knighthead intend for match days to make up a fraction of the Sports Quarter’s revenue.

Wagner wants the new stadium open by 2029 – but he admits that is slightly ambitious. “My timeframe is lunacy but we’d like to get this completed in five years,” he said. “That is the perfect world if everyone works with us at the same pace we’re willing to work. Five years from August and we could be in. I’m going to keep saying that even though it makes everyone around me sweat. A lot of it is outside our control but that’s the goal.”

Chief executive Garry Cook and board member Kyle Kneisly are playing integral roles. Joking about his timescale target, Wagner said: “Garry and Kyle have told me definitely five years from now we’ll be in the new ground!”

What capacity will the stadium have?

Knighthead are keen to stress that the stadium is only the centrepiece of the Sports Quarter, the other cogs are equally important and will be used more frequently. Wagner showed supporters a mock up at the Open House event in April but warned them: ‘Don’t get wed to this!”

The stadium is expected to have a capacity of around 60,000 – a figure which would make it the largest facility of its type in the Midlands and rank among the 10 biggest stadiums in England.

That figure would provide Blues with room to house more supporters than St Andrew’s currently can and it would make the venue suitable for large scale non-football events. For instance, an NFL fixture in Birmingham would be a possibility.

A mock up image of Birmingham City’s prospective new stadium

What else will be in the Sports Quarter?

Wagner insists there will be ‘nothing else like it in the world’. There will be a hotel, with easy access, and office space. “We want the site to be used 365 days a year,” says Wagner. “Restaurants, pubs, mini golf… All those types of venues will be incorporated.

“That revenue from every one of those things is going into your football club. Look at Tottenham and how much money that stadium is making. If you think that stadium is generating a lot of money, wait until you see what we’re going to build.”

Wagner estimates the cost of building the Sports Quarter will be between two and three billion pounds.

Before building can start, a clean up is required. When the Birmingham Wheels site was closed in 2021 the council completed some work on the land and discovered that it was contaminated. Japanese knotweed was among the issues discovered and the council withdrew the plot from sale in 2022.

Included in the sale agreement between Blues and the council is a £17m government grant to part fund the clean up operation of the site. Matters probably weren’t helped by a fire at the Wheels site in June.

What about St Andrew’s?

The club’s existing stadium has undergone a makeover during the summer months to bring its hospitality offering into the 21st century. Knighthead have splashed out to create a number of new spaces, despite the promise of the new stadium.

Why? Head of infrastructure Nick Smith said: “The discussion with the owners goes, ‘OK, how quickly do you want to go here? And how much do you want to spend to get here before going to the new stadium? If you are going to go, you have to go early and hard to return on the investment you’re going to make.

“Hence why there’s a big chunk of work now. There will probably be another 18 months or two years of investment (in this stadium) before we shift our energy and put sticking plasters on whilst we focus on the build phase of the new stadium.

That was the thinking behind how and why we invested in this space. A lot of people have asked me, ‘Why are you spending money on this when you’re going there?’ And that’s it. You have to go on the journey.

“Because if you don’t you get to it and go, bang, here’s a thousand pound seat in hospitality it’s ‘Bloody hell, I’ve been spending £100!’. You can’t do it like that.”

Knighthead haven’t revealed what will happen to St Andrew’s once the new stadium opens, but Wagner has suggested the site could incorporate some housing. He said: “There’s a development broadly within that region where we would hope to encompass some housing on this site (St Andrew’s) depending on what we end up doing here.”