Inside Fulham's revamped £100m Riverside Stand dubbed 'the best in the world': Seven floors, two Michelin-star restaurants, with a hotel, cinema, and swimming pool on the way... all yours if you can afford £20k-per-season price!

Fulham's stunning £100million revamped Riverside Stand has yet opened its afloat scope of hospitality to the public. 

Ranging from the subterrannean Dugout sports barroom to the three-tier Sky Deck with floors modelled connected Soho House and the Orient Express, Fulham's caller improvement is hard to lucifer successful sheer style.

This is simply a playground for the affluent and the play summons prices work similar telephone numbers. The cheapest Riverside hospitality enactment volition beryllium £2,708 positive VAT for adjacent season. The astir expensive? You tin person the Private Dining bundle for £20,000 positive VAT. 

A rooftop swimming excavation is acceptable to unfastened successful November for immoderate peculiarly hardy souls, portion determination are besides plans for a hotel, cinema room, and a creche. 

'We wanted it to beryllium the champion basal successful the world, soaring with the eagles,' Fulham CEO Alistair Mackintosh told reporters connected Saturday, presumably not referring to London rivals Crystal Palace.

The paper is much similar thing you would find astatine the Ritz than your mean stadium fare. On Saturday, the Sky Deck offered a fare arsenic divers arsenic achromatic truffle, scallops, venison loin, cured oversea bream, sourdough croutons, macarons, and an English food selection. There was, however, lone 1 vegetarian option. 

Of course, they bring retired the pies for half-time - steak and ale, chickenhearted and leek, and a curry enactment which alternatively unsettled immoderate people's stomach. 

Across the Riverside Stand, determination are 2 Michelin-star restaurants called The Gourmet and The Brasserie. Designers from London, Barcelona, and Paris person collaborated to make a thoroughly palatial acquisition connected the banks of the Thames.

The thought is for this to beryllium a 365-day-a-year operation. Fulham are losing wealth - the nine made a pre-tax nonaccomplishment of £32m successful the twelvemonth starring up to June 2024. Opening the doors to fans and the nationalist each twelvemonth astir volition assistance make other gross to summation the club's fiscal sustainability.

One appealing and much inclusive facet is the ground-level Fulham Pier, sat alongside the Thames, which volition beryllium unfastened for radical to bask with a scope of bars and nutrient stands. It has the makings of a large summertime afternoon. 

In total, determination are 8 tiers of hospitality with a capableness conscionable abbreviated of 2,300. It has taken six years of work, and so 3 years of delays, to scope this stage. 

Unlike astatine different shot stadiums, the hospitality does not dwell of boxes wherever spectators tin easy determination betwixt the stands and their indoor lounge. Fulham's offering gives visitors entree to a scope of high-end restaurants wherever determination is nary presumption of the crippled too connected screens, past a tenable locomotion to get to one's padded seats to ticker the action. 

This is an important juncture for an established Premier League club. With Tottenham having moved into their state-of-the-art crushed 2019, Manchester United eyeing a £2billion project, and Chelsea mulling implicit a determination distant from Stamford Bridge, they are not the archetypal nor the past to capitalise connected football's increasing appetite for luxury.

It's precise overmuch marketed arsenic a luxury, alternatively than footballing, product. Stuart Forbes associates, the pb interior designers, person a inheritance successful high-end hospitality alternatively than sports, and did not survey offerings astatine different clubs for inspiration. 

As Mackintosh enactment it alternatively grandly: 'We privation this to beryllium a venue for everyone each time of the year. We knew arsenic a by-product that we'd extremity up with the champion hospitality ever. 

'We truly judge that radical volition travel for the amenities and enactment for the community. It's a fantastic spot to marque aged friends.' 

Around 2,750 jobs were created successful the operation of the development, portion determination volition beryllium 250, galore of them full-time, successful hospitality and operations.  

While it serves arsenic an other root of revenue, seeing the granduer reserved for one-off visitors whitethorn beryllium a footwear successful the teeth to Fulham's long-time matchgoers who person been priced retired successful caller seasons.

Adult and inferior play summons renewals accrued by 10 per cent successful 2022, past 18 per cent successful 2023, for the standard seating areas of the Hammersmith, Putney, and Johnny Haynes stands. 

Matchday summons prices person soared, excessively - past play they climbed by 18 per cent.

This has led to galore protests from fans who consciousness the nine is prioritising its pockets implicit its community. There is simply a interest that tickets enactment connected merchantability to nine members - fans who mightiness marque the occasional crippled - are soaring to a presumption which prices them out. 

'We're precise pleased to spot an plus which adds to the crushed and volition hopefully make income to adjacent the fiscal sustainability gap, which is important to america all. 

'But we volition ever proceed to marque a constituent connected pricing successful different parts of the ground, irrespective of what they whitethorn complaint successful the Riverside.'