Is There Any Point in Building a Casino the Size of Old Trafford?

Is size everything? It’s not unfamiliar to any football fan to hear of development plans for existing stadiums to boost seating capacity. The more money that a team can cram into a space, the more game-day profit that they can make through ticket sales, if, of course, the demand is there for those tickets.

Old Trafford has been expanded plenty of times during its history, and while the state of the famous ground needs some current remodelling, it raises an interesting question about whether a casino the size of Old Trafford would be a big deal, or even perhaps, too big of one to be viable.

Football and gambling are two of the biggest pastimes in the UK. While people still flock for a night of immersion in a land-based casino, there is no denying the explosion in the popularity of remote gambling sites. They have many advantages. For example, some of the best platforms offer welcome bonuses and free spins with no deposit required, as well as a wide selection of games you wouldn’t normally find in physical venues. But what about land-based casinos? How big can they get, and would one the size of Old Trafford work?

How Big Is Old Trafford?

Old Trafford has a capacity of more than 74,000, second only in size to Wembley Stadium in England. There have been rumblings that the club are seeking a new 100,000 stadium to be developed, which will take them away from what has been their home since 1910.

The pitch at Old Trafford is more than 7,000 square metres, then you add the space the stadium takes up to the tally, plus the volume of space inside the Theatre of Dreams, and it’s enormous. The club actually owns around 100 acres around Old Trafford, with around a quarter of that unused.

Too Big for a Casino?

Building a casino the size of Old Trafford wouldn’t be too much of a problem, because there are already some much bigger, behemoth-sized ones around the world.

The WinStar World Casino in Oklahoma for example is the largest land-based casino in the world, and it has over 55,000 square metres of gambling space. The Venetian Macao in China comes in as a relatively close second at around 51,000 square metres.

With all that gaming space spread across resorts that span several floors, imagining a casino the size of Old Trafford isn’t exactly hard. There is nothing but money and zoning regulations to prevent such a big casino from being built.

A Theatre of Dreams-Sized Casino

The issue isn’t about whether such a thing could be built, but should it? Trying to build a mega casino on the Old Trafford site, of course, would probably be a little too much. In such an area, there’s likely not going to be anywhere near enough of a capture area of customers looking for a weekend night out of gambling, to warrant something of such a size.

But if the existing stadium Old Trafford Stadium itself was demolished and replaced by a brand-new casino resort, it could comfortably be a good size and could include fantastic space for parking and a hotel as well.

Viability

The challenges, however, would come in terms of financial viability. Large resort casinos are largely designed as tourist attractions, specifically built for crowding in as many visitors and gamblers into the given space as possible.

In comparison, The Hippodrome in London is the largest casino in the country, and is around 7,000 square metres, roughly the size of the Old Trafford pitch. The venue draws in around 1.5 million people per year, but it is also a leading entertainment venue for top shows, as well as being a gambling destination and has a huge capture area.

The issue in comparing that with a casino the size of Old Trafford at the current stadium site, is that London draws in much larger tourist numbers. It also has a significantly bigger population of almost 10 million to draw from, compared to 570,000 people in Manchester. So a Manchester casino may benefit from being smaller.

Can It Be Done?

A casino the size of Old Trafford could be built, but bigger isn’t always better. If it was so vast that two-thirds of the gambling floor was empty on a Saturday night, for example, that would be a lot of real estate and overhead expenses going to waste.

A casino has to be profitable and that profit comes from the number of people that walk through the door. A new Old Trafford of 100,000 capacity wouldn’t be viable if the demand for tickets wasn’t there. A casino that could fit 5,000 slots wouldn’t be viable if only 10% of those were going to be used regularly.