Just 1,024 tickets have been allocated to Irish supporters travelling to Prague for the Boys in Green’s do-or-die World Cup Playoff matchup with Czechia on 26 March. This low number is not a result of any particular unfairness from the Czech Football Association, however. It is instead because Fortuna Arena, the site of the game, and Czechia’s largest football stadium, only has a capacity of 19,370.
For reference, over 3,000 Irish fans watched Troy Parrott’s miraculous hat-trick in Budapest’s 67,215-seat Puskás Arena in November. 2,700 were in Lisbon the previous month to watch Ireland play Portugal in front of a crowd of 48,821.
Ireland itself, a country with just over 50% of Czechia’s population, boasts five stadiums with more than 20,000 seats, and a further twelve with safe capacities (mostly standing) that exceed any operating outdoor arenas in Czechia.
So why is the largest football venue in a country of nearly 11 million people so comparatively small?
The answer is far from straightforward, but offers a glimpse into the intriguing and frustrating world of stadium development.
Development Hell
Ireland is not unfamiliar with the trials and tribulations of the planning process. Here, just a dozen objectors can threaten to derail the largest infrastructure project in the country (see the MetroLink). Well-intending regulations have long stagnated needed developments across the island. Building is expensive, but fighting court battles for the very right to build can drain coffers and time before a single brick is laid.
Czechia suffers from a similar set of planning problems, maybe even to a greater extent than Ireland. In the 2019 World Bank rankings of permit efficiency, Czechia was ranked 156th out of 190 economies, with planning applications often taking between five and ten years to be approved. This stagnation affects every aspect of the nation’s infrastructure. The Czech transport network is overly reliant on old and decaying systems, with the rate of new development lagging far behind present and future demand. Prague has a housing shortage comparable to Dublin’s.
On the stadium front, these regulations have made it difficult for any new developments to come into fruition. It took over twenty years of planning doldrums and slow construction before the Fortuna Arena finally opened in 2008 (some blame can be placed on the impact of the fall of communism in 1989).
In December 2003, just after Czechia qualified for the 2004 European Championships, a plan was put in place to build a new 52,000 seat stadium in Prague’s Strahov district. It was deemed then, 22 years ago, that a capacity of 20,000 was not sufficient for the demand of the football fans of Czechia. However, this proposal was eventually killed by Prague City Hall due to “issues with the site’s historical legacy.”
That historical legacy is admittedly sizable. The Strahov sports complex is home to two stadiums: Stadion Evžena Rošického, an old football stadium with a capacity of 19,032, and the Great Strahov Stadium, built in 1926 for gymnastics demonstrations, with a capacity of 250,000. Yes, you read that correctly. 250,000. The Great Strahov Stadium is the largest stadium in the world, and potentially second only to Ancient Rome’s Circus Maximus in terms of the number of people it has held. So why don’t the Czech football team use it?
Well, Great Strahov is simply too large. It was designed to play host to tens of thousands of gymnasts, and is now used as the primary training ground for local football club AC Sparta Prague, with eight football fields fitting comfortably within the stadium’s walls. The stadium itself is crumbling, as is next door Stadion Evžena Rošického, which was forced to close in 2022 because of safety concerns. So yes, the site has huge historical significance, but perhaps not enough to completely halt such a redevelopment plan. There was likely another issue in play: money.
Pocket Problems
Stadium development is not just a Czech problem, and planning permission is not its only obstacle. The securing of funding is often the key factor preventing stadium construction or redevelopment, a truth well known by this island’s football fans. Despite being included in proposals for the Ireland and UK bid to host the 2028 Euros, Belfast’s Casement Park was not granted the necessary funding from the British government to be redeveloped in time for the competition. This means that no games will be played in Northern Ireland during the Euros, it is longer considered a “host nation,” and the nation’s football team will not benefit from the same qualification advantages as Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales.
This issue of stadium financing has had extreme effects across the pond. In the US and Canada, professional sports teams are not explicitly tied to any location. No matter how long a team has played in a region, it can theoretically leave and move to different pastures at any time. The main reason for a team to actually move though, is because of disputes over stadium funding.
In 2005, Montreal lost its baseball team after the government of Quebec refused to fund a new stadium and the ownership group consequently relocated the team to Washington DC. In 2008, the same happened when the NBA’s Seattle Supersonics moved to Oklahoma following disagreements with local government over funding the redevelopment of the team’s arena.
These relocations are considered sports horror stories by residents of Montreal, Seattle, and beyond. It’s difficult for a European fan to imagine the trauma of losing your local sports team. People in these cities are still campaigning for their teams to return. Billionaire owners are well aware of this pain felt by fans, and have repeatedly used it to their advantage.
In 2021, the owners of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills were seeking funding from the New York State government in order to build a new stadium. During the lobbying process, they leaked reports that they would move the team across the country to Texas if they didn’t receive any public money. By leveraging the horror of past relocations, in April 2022 the Bills were successful in securing the required state funds.
Relocation is less of a worry in Czechia, but funding is absolutely an issue. In 2013, when the Czech FA proposed the redevelopment of the decaying Stadion Evžena Rošického into a modern 30,000-seater arena, the plan simply never went forward due to a lack of any financing options. The football association didn’t possess the requisite deep pockets, no private investors were interested, and the government, which could not be pressured into investing via relocation threats, saw no reason to commit a significant amount of public money to such a project.
The Path Forward
Things seem to be looking up for the stadium infrastructure of Czechia though. Both of Prague’s biggest clubs are now owned by billionaire Czech businessmen. Slavia Prague are reportedly considering an expansion of the Fortuna Arena to 30,000 seats, and a new plan to build an “Airport City” in the capital apparently includes a proposal for a new national football stadium.
On more concrete terms, the 2013 plan to redevelop Stadion Evžena Rošického looks to be finally going ahead with a targeted capacity of 35,000. Sparta Prague will foot the bill in exchange for a 30-year lease from the Czech Football Association. But don’t expect to be seeing this new stadium on your TV screen in the near future. Czechia’s slow permit process is still a major hindrance, with planning set to run until 2030, and construction until 2035.
