I visited the most opulent hospitality in English football – at Fulham, obviously

Telegraph

11-05-2025

As the Riverside Stand goes upwards the decor changes by floor – Parisian brasserie, Orient Express carriage, colonial-hotel chic, Los Angeles beach club. This claims to be the most opulent hospitality in English football and it is almost finished save the rooftop swimming pool which features the retro Fulham Football Club crest but no further tiling as yet – or water.
On one side, the views from Craven Cottage look out over the Thames to Barn Elms Park where some of the first association football was played. In the other direction are the roofs of expensive Fulham streets, the steel hotchpotch of Stamford Bridge and, in the distance, the skyline of the city and Canary Wharf.
For those who can afford the prices it is spectacular – but at the oldest football club in London, the question remains: what does this have to do with football?
The answer, from Fulham chief executive Alistair Mackintosh is emphatic. This is Fulham's future. Certainly, it plays to the club's strengths of its location and wealthy catchment to boost annual revenues that are around a quarter of the Champions League elite. As Marco Silva's players warmed up for the game against Everton, the place came alive with waiters, glasses of champagne and the kind of football food that one does not eat out of a cardboard box with a plastic fork.
For those supporters who protested in April 2023 about 18 per cent rises to prices this will scarcely feel like Craven Cottage, although Fulham say that this is a way of tapping the wealth of London.
No one at Fulham was prepared to say what the project will cost – or indeed what effect it might have on annual revenue. In the club's latest accounts Fulham said that a £125 million loan has been agreed with banker JP Morgan 'in relation to the completion' of the stand. Estimates of the total costs for the Riverside have gone much higher, up to £350 million and beyond.
It is a huge investment by any measure. To put that in perspective, Fulham's US billionaire owner Shahid Khan tried to buy Wembley from the Football Association in 2018 as a European home for his NFL franchise, the Jacksonville Jaguars. To acquire, demolish and rebuild Wembley 25 years ago it cost £757 million. Fulham appear to have spent just less than half that on one stand.
The Riverside has become famous for the rooftop swimming pool and the extraordinary delay to its completion – more than three years behind schedule. But it also exposes a truth about modern English football, financial controls and how a club like Fulham with an extremely wealthy and ambitious owner face the future.
The Premier League profit and sustainability rules mean Khan, who made his fortune in car parts, cannot simply pump money into Fulham, although he has given the club about £745 million over 12 years. But he can build assets that might change its finances.
Fulham generated £181.6 million according to results for the financial year ending July 2024, although £134.5 million was its share of the Premier League's broadcast deals. The club's matchday income was less than £19 million. Its commercial income was just £29 million. The Riverside Stand has been built to change all that. But by how much?
Fulham lose money – £33.4 million in their most recent results, and the Riverside Stand is intended to make them a more sustainable enterprise. Khan converted a £75 million loan into equity in October and contributed another £23.8 million last June. There was a further £46.5 million loan in July from Khan's parent company.
The Riverside Stand has nine different tiers of match-day hospitality, from a £1,200 league-game season ticket up to a £20,000 package that offers private dining in groups of 10. There are around 2,300 hospitality covers now, up from a previous total of 600. It will certainly not be the ordinary fans that pay those top-end prices. As with the big London stadium projects of the 21st century – Wembley, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur – it will be corporate customers that drive the revenue increases.
But the club have taken it even further, addressing that question of how to sweat an asset only used up to 25 days a year. It is a problem that has gripped football club owners for decades. Fulham's answer: an exclusive members' club.
Built on the Soho House model, the Lighthouse Social uses three tiers of the facilities, including the pool deck. Members are not admitted on match days although they can buy a season ticket for an additional price and up to 30 per cent have done so.
It means that the restaurants, bars and lounge area have been designed, in the words of Glen Sutton, the director of the Fulham Pier development, as 'entirely agnostic'. No pictures of Jimmy Hill or Barry Hayles and even the screens showing Sky Sports discreetly slide into cavities on non-match days.
Membership is between £670 and £1,000 annually and already 600 have signed up. In addition, Fulham Pier encompasses a small hotel and spa with just 13 rooms in the stand. That was a change of heart from Khan who had originally planned luxury apartments until it was decided the club did not want part of the stadium in private hands.
That was not the only delay that beset the project. Mackintosh said in a brief address at the launch that the stand had 'been described as my baby, but that baby is now leaving for university'. Lockdown was the key factor, and then also the complications of construction on the banks of the Thames. The club said in their accounts that they had 'suffered significant losses' as a result of the delays and the original constructor, Buckingham Group, went into administration in 2023.
It was Buckingham that was also the builder for Liverpool's delayed Anfield Road stand and in Fulham's case there is a court case with the administrators to recover costs. The stand was built by Populous, the big stadium architects behind Spurs' stadium. The major steelwork was shipped down the Thames when the tides permitted.
One of the floors is below the level of the Thames while on top the roof is stainless steel. There was never any possibility of the club moving away during construction, which complicated matters. The distance of 3.5 metres between the touchline and the first row of seats has been maintained. The riverside path, which had forever been blocked by the original stand has now been opened.
Mackintosh said that when he joined Fulham 17 years ago, supporters' groups had told him that above all they wanted the club to be sustainable and to stay at Craven Cottage. 'Shad Khan took that vision and put it on steroids,' Mackintosh said. 'Without him it wouldn't be the development it is today.' It is a sign of the modern football fan that the club seem to have no concerns about selling their new offering.