Feyenoord Rotterdam Case Study

VISION: 

Feyenoord Rotterdam have been working with the city of Rotterdam to develop Feyenoord City, a new entertainment, residential and commercial centre for the city of Rotterdam. Over the past 20 years, Feyenoord have been at a financial disadvantage to rivals Ajax of Amsterdam who moved into a new stadium in 1996, and a core ambition of the club is to take advantage of the huge dedicated support of the team to move into a modern world-class stadium. Legends International was appointed to help Feyenoord in the process of optimising their business plan and securing financing for the project.

PROJECT: 

Legends International undertook a three-stage process:

  1. The initial stage was a headline review of the proposed business model. This gave the client the confidence to move ahead with discussions with financing partners
  2. Legends International then undertook a detailed robust process to analyse all areas of the new stadium projections across ticketing, premium products, sponsorship and naming right, food and beverage and a wide range of proposed non-match day activities. This included a wide-ranging market research process covering the match day and non-match day activity at the proposed stadium. Based on the analysis undertaken, Legends then worked with Feyenoord to optimise the overall business model, for example by changing the proposed mix of premium products to significantly increase yield without reducing the number of seats available for ordinary season ticket holders.
  3. Legends International will then deliver a “reliance letter” to the team of banks, led by Goldman Sachs at financial close. The independent input from Legends International will be a critical piece of the due diligence required to secure the loan for the project.

RESULTS: 

The project is currently moving through local approval processes and financial close is expected in 2021. The resulting stadium will be a vibrant hub in Rotterdam with as much revenue expected from the non-match day exploitation of the stadium and surrounding infrastructure as from the match day income itself.

See also: Global Planning