Nottingham Forest to boost City Ground capacity with Qatar-inspired shipping containers

DOHA, QATAR - DECEMBER 05: General view outside the stadium prior to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Round of 16 match between Brazil and South Korea at Stadium 974 on December 05, 2022 in Doha, Qatar. (Photo by Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
By Daniel Taylor
Nov 13, 2023

Nottingham Forest have provisionally drawn up plans to take the City Ground capacity above 30,000 by erecting a temporary seating area that will be built on shipping containers and modelled on the Stadium 974 used in Qatar during the World Cup.

Evangelos Marinakis, Forest’s owner, has been looking for ways to satisfy a level of demand that has left the club believing they could have sold up to 50,000 tickets for some of their more attractive games since returning to the Premier League.

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One idea under consideration is to fill in the corners at the Trent End with a new structure based on the World Cup stadium in Doha (pictured) that was built on 974 recycled shipping containers.

As it stands, the plans are only at an early stage and no decision has been finalised about when the development will start. However, with no planning permission required, it could begin before Christmas.

Forest’s highest attendance since returning to the Premier League came against Arsenal in their final match last season, when 29,514 watched Steve Cooper’s team complete the 1-0 win that guaranteed them staying in the top division.

An aerial view of the City Ground (Getty Images)

At the start of the season, Forest’s hierarchy set about trying to find ways of taking the capacity above 30,000 by modifying parts of the ground and, where possible, adding new seats.

However, they reluctantly had to accept it was not feasible until Tom Cartledge, Forest’s newly appointed chairman, came up with the idea they could become the first club in England to take inspiration from the Stadium 974 project. The plans would involve making another 500 or so seats available to fans.

Marinakis decided in August that it was time to change the club’s chairman and invited Cartledge, a long-time Forest supporter, to take over from Nicholas Randall, who had held the position since 2017. The people at the top of the club hope the change in personnel will, among other benefits, accelerate Forest’s plan to modernise the City Ground and take its capacity up to 35,000.

Those plans involve knocking down the Peter Taylor stand and replacing it with a larger structure but, having announced everything in February 2019, the scheme has been plagued by delays.

Cartledge is the Forest-supporting chief executive of Handley House Group, which includes Benoy, the firm of architects who designed the proposed new stand.

Forest, 15th in the Premier League after Sunday’s 3-2 defeat at West Ham, have made a series of cosmetic changes in the last few months to improve the stadium’s appearance.

(Photo: Getty Images)

Daniel Taylor is a senior writer for The Athletic and a four-time Football Journalist of the Year, as well as being named Sports Feature Writer of the Year in 2022. He was previously the chief football writer for The Guardian and The Observer and spent nearly 20 years working for the two titles. Daniel has written five books on the sport. Follow Daniel on Twitter @DTathletic