Legends Sales and Marketing has developed three premium seat products for Manchester City Football Club, including what Legends officials say are the first bunker suites in international football competition.
The four bunkers and two club spaces at Etihad Stadium, including the reconfigured Citizens club, debuted in mid-August for the Barclays Premier League season.
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Man City fans dine in the refurbed Citizens club.
Photo by: MANCHESTER CITY FOOTBALL CLUB
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Legends Sales and Marketing signed a multiyear deal with Man City in March, about three months after sister company Legends Hospitality took over the team’s food service, forming a joint venture with chef Jamie Oliver’s Fabulous Feasts.
CSL International, a third Legends entity, was hired by Man City to do a feasibility study this year tied to upgrading premium seats at the 11-year-old facility.
Man City paid for the improvements, Legends officials said. Team officials did not respond to a request for project costs.
“A lot of the study was done to test some concepts that have become common in the U.S. and are starting to push the envelope overseas,” said Ben Wrigley, vice president of project development for Legends Sales and Marketing.
The new club, Eleven, has 50 tables and is on the ground floor on the stadium’s west side. It reprograms space used for offices and occasional student classrooms.
For games in high demand, such as Manchester United and Chelsea, Legends sells the entire room as a group space for about $17,745 in U.S. currency. For other games, tables are sold individually with ticket prices of $300-plus a game per person, Wrigley said.
Those prices cover food and drink, including beer and wine, and tickets for seats in the northwest corner of the second level.
Eleven has a large side window providing patrons with a view of the players walking from their bus to the locker room 90 minutes before the match. The setup is similar to some event-level clubs at U.S. facilities, Wrigley said.
The Citizens club now has upgraded food selections and cooking stations relocated to the middle of the room to put a greater focus on the theatrical aspect of chefs’ operations. Citizens ticket holders now pay a higher price of $4,000 to $4,550 for a season ticket to sit in some of the best seats in the house, midfield on the second level.
The four bunker suites take over storage space behind Citizens. There are two six-person and two eight-person boxes outfitted with couches, chairs and televisions.
The individual ticket price is $7,040 for the season. Seats are in the first and second rows in the section where Citizens club members sit. As of last week, two bunkers were sold and a third had a commitment.
