Capacity to rise at Sandy Park
Capacity at Sandy Park is set to rise ahead of the new 2017/18 season, allowing more spectators to take in games at the home of the newly-crowned Premiership champions, Exeter Chiefs.
The first phase of ground's redevelopment, carried out in time for the 2015 Rugby World Cup, saw the number of people who could watch a game at any one time rise to 12,500.
However, such is the interest in supporters wishing to watch Rob Baxter's side in competitive action - both in the Premiership and European Champions Cup - that club officials are raising the stadium capacity once more.
Exeter Chairman & Chief Executive, Tony Rowe OBE, told the Sunday Independent: "We are going to make some alterations to the terraces and the South West Communications Stand to move our capacity up to just under 13,500 in time for the start of the new season.
"Our average attendance in the Premiership last season was over 11,000, which is absolutely brilliant, but we are getting close to capacity all the time, so we want to increase it a little bit."
Raising capacity at the stadium is just part of the club's exciting redevelopment plans, which has included the recent submission of a planning application to build a new, 250-bed hotel at a cost of £25m.
That forms part of a £50m investment, which will see a new stand also built at the south end of the stadium, with additional conference and banqueting facilities.
"All of the experts have told me not to increase Sandy Park's conference and banqueting facilities without a hotel," explained Rowe. "That is one of our biggest drawbacks. We don't get some big events because we do not have a hotel on site, and that there is not one within walking distance either. If you are coming for a big function, you have got to arrange to go somewhere else to stay, so it's quite imperative we get the hotel.
"Hopefully, we will secure planning permission for it, and parallel to that, we are looking at how we finance the development of the south end of the ground, which is another £25m. We are still going through the process of how we are going to fund what we are going to do and how we are going to do it. But if we get the planning permission, we will built the hotel as soon as possible because we need that in our business now.
"Even if we press the button on the south end now, it is two years away, so just to increase the capacity of the ground a bit, we have been able to get some alterations done which will add around 800 to 900 to our capacity for this coming season."