Twickenham is the stadium and the home of England Rugby for all the home internationals and club finals. The stadium sits smack bang directly within a residential area which is a big problem. The rows of Victorian houses lining the roads leading to the stadium are also the access roads for those attending the fixtures at the stadium. Twickenham Stadium is officially licensed to host 10-12 sporting events per year plus 3 non sporting events. A stadium of this size is clearly underused, but officially cannot host any more events without a new license increasing those numbers.
If you are a resident in the area this is the one down side because you know 10 Saturdays every year you will have to put up with 82 000 spectators trudging past your property. The problem of accessing your property on those days would be a major mission. trust me as I know as I have driven up these roads trying my luck at parking my car on a match day with no luck. The parking is many miles away at a local school who I am sure benefits very nicely from having thousands of cars parked on their playing fields. Most spectators however use the local train station due to the convenience.
Some residents do benefit from the match day events cooking food in their front gardens and selling this to the spectators walking past. It is actually quite amazing what types of food are on offer and I am sure these households do really good business on those 10 days per year. The majority don't and would not be in favor of more match days or god forbid music concerts.
Having walked down these residential streets on many occasions attending matches at Twickenham you do kind of feel sorry for the residents. The crowds are very well behaved with a majority exiting the area directly after the match heading to the town center where there is the train station and many pubs and restaurants benefitting financially form the event. I am not sure
This leads me on to the reason for this post as Twickenham Stadium or more specifically England Rugby is trying to get the number of non sporting events per year which is currently officially at 3 to 15. This would take the number of days used by the stadium from around 13 to 25 so effectively doubling the stadiums use.
England Rugby is desperate to generate more funds and upping the use of the stadium is an obvious elephant in the room. The Richmond and Hounslow Council are the ones who will decide and should be the residents decision. I know in the past England Rugby applied to host more events and this was denied. The problem is through not having the extra events they are missing out on an estimated 100 million GBP per year.
If one compares Twickenham Stadium to the likes of Wembley stadium who have permission to host 50 events per annum or Tottenham football stadium being allowed 30 events Twickenham having only 13 the number seems low. Personally I can see the number of hosted events rising, but definitely not to the amount they are seeking because an extra 12 events is 12 more weekends ruined. The other rule they have to abide by is no consecutive days for the extra events over and above sporting rugby events.
There is a big difference in the types of crowds attending a rugby match versus a music concert so asking for more non sporting events is going to be a very hard sell with residents. Another thing which is rather important is the sporting events are allowed full capacity 82 000 and non sporting events is currently 52 000 trying to increase this to 75 000.