Tom Wagner makes new Birmingham City promise as 60,000-seater+ stadium excitement builds | OneFootball

The Birmingham City owner Tom Wagner is confident that his club will be able to fill their new 60,000-capacity stadium when they've got it completed.

Birmingham City owner Tom Wagner is remaining bullish about his club's chances of filling their new 'Sports Quarter' stadium when they've got it built.

Things may not be going brilliantly on the pitch for Birmingham so far this season, but plans to grow the club are continuing nevertheless. The Blues have released plans for one of the most ambitious stadium complexes ever seen in this country. With a 60,000-capacity stadium as its centrepiece, it'll be fit for the Champions League, never mind the Premier League.

There is one obvious question that springs to mind at such a point: how on earth will they ever fill it, even though its capacity will be more than double that of their current home, St Andrew's? Well, the club's owner has been speaking to the media about the club's plans, and he's confident that they can.

Tom Wagner confident that Birmingham City will fill the new stadium

Speaking to ITV Central's Dan Salisbury-Jones this week, Tom Wagner was very clear about his intentions for the new stadium, telling him: "We want to make sure that we're compliant for all major competitions across a wide variety of sport." A reflection of the club's plans for the new stadium to be multi-use.

Salisbury-Jones followed this up by asking Wagner how he was intending to fill a stadium with a capacity of over 60,000, and Wagner's reply will be very exciting for Birmingham fans: "We'll fill it. I'm not worried. We've got five years to get there and we'll make sure that we're there."

Birmingham City will have to break records to fill their new stadium

In the interview, Tom Wagner mentioned that the Birmingham Sports Quarter will have a capacity of "at least" 60,000, and this is the most visible sign of just how ambitious the club's plans are. A capacity of 60,000 would make it the seventh-largest football stadium in England, behind only Wembley, Old Trafford, The London Stadium, The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Anfield and The Emirates Stadium.

The importance of getting into the Premier League under such circumstances cannot be understated. Five of those six bigger stadiums than this proposal have hosted Champions League football. Were they to be unable to get into the Premier League by the time of its completion, the new stadium would be more than 1.5 times the size of Hillsborough, which with a current capacity of 39,732 is the current biggest ground in the entire EFL.

Birmingham are not a club familiar with 60,000+ crowds, even when attendances were far higher than they are today. Their record attendance is 66,844 for an FA Cup Fifth Round match against Everton in February 1939, while their record League attendance is 60,250 for a match against Aston Villa played four years earlier.

But ironically, considering how important Premier League football seems to their plans to fill this new one, the Blues' record average attendance over a League season came in the old Second Division during the 1947-48 season, when an average attendance of 45,731 packed into St Andrew's in the middle of the post-war attendance boom to see the team lift the title, finishing three points ahead of Newcastle United.

To say that the plans are ambitious feels like an understatement, but Birmingham is England's second-biggest city, with a population of 2.5 million, while its Midlands location makes it accessible from all parts of the country. At first glance, the club's plans could look over-ambitious, but it's clear that the owners of the club believe that the potential to grow to that size is there, and it certainly can be achievable, especially if Birmingham can secure a return to the Premier League.