While things are going well on the pitch, I believe that things off the pitch still need to improve soon. We talk about Sunderland AFC being a Premier League club, so why shouldn't every aspect of the club be held to Premier League standards?
THE AREA AROUND THE STADIUM
There are many things lacking when it comes to the area around the stadium, making the walk to the stadium seem rather uninspiring. It should be a time of excitement for young kids going across the bridge and making their way to the stadium, building the excitement. For example there are several images of famous moments here at the SoL dotted around, such as Ji's famous last minute winner against Man City. However they aren’t in a good state, peeling away and having lost some of their colour, they could definitely do with replacing. Whether that’s with more recent famous moments at the SoL or just replacing the already existing ones is another question but a change is certainly needed without a doubt. There are a few other minor issues as well, such as the red and white bollards you see when you get off at St Peter’s metro station needing a repaint, the general signage needs replacing (same issues as the images of the famous moments) and lamp posts that have spots for flags don’t have anything on them. You could easily stick a red and white flag on there and it just makes the place seem that little bit more lively. The Stadium of Light Metro station, which is decorated with the club's crest, could do with a makeover as well - although I’m not sure the club actually can do anything about that. Maybe we could also have a return of the Fanzone which has seemingly disappeared. It was located in the car park opposite ALS HQ. They had a merch stall selling replica shirts (although now they'd just be out of stock) and would have a handful of injured players on hand to meet fans, sign autographs and take selfies.
INSIDE THE GROUND
There is one notable design flaw with the Stadium of Light: the concourses aren’t big enough when there’s a high volume of people (notably at half-time). Extending the concourses would be difficult and expensive, but that is far from the only solution we have available. One unique idea would be an open area just outside of the concourses around the ground to extend them without expensive construction work. This may be more difficult for some of the stands than others, and may involve blocking roads and making the car park smaller, so the feasibility of doing this is questionable. If it is possible to do then it should definitely be done to ensure all supporters have a better match day experience. Another solution is to hire more staff to pour a higher volume of pints, to reduce queueing times. Furthermore, the SoL could do with a repaint in a lot of areas, some of the seats are fading slightly (we don’t want a repeat of the famous pink seats again). And famously, the sound system could do with some work - it doesn't work for the majority of the ground, and in parts of the East Stand where it does work it seems to be blasted on full volume. One of the digital screens always seems to have some dead pixels as well.
MERCHANDISING
This is the one area of the club that puzzles many supporters, it is severely lacking and surely makes the club miss out on a lot of potential revenue. The club shop is quite small and not stocked adequately. We used to have another club shop in the Bridges which is now shut, and whilst in the modern era opening up a club shop in the city centre would probably not be profitable enough to warrant it, we could surely do some other things in this area. There have been numerous suggestions in this area, one was a stall in the train station that is getting renovated and many of our supporters have suggested opening up stalls in the city centre and other locations in Sunderland. Certainly on a match day this would be a good idea, the club shop is somewhat out of the way and you have to purposefully head for it to go there. By making it easier to access merch on match days people would almost certainly buy more of it. Stalls seem like a simple, yet effective solution, certainly cheaper than opening up another location for a club shop. ALS have a merch stall outside of the Roker End Cafe, but also have one at St Peter's Metro station which works very efficiently. All of this would be pretty useless if we don’t sort out two issues with the current club shop though: one, it isn’t stocked well enough and two, it doesn’t have as great of a variety of products as it probably should have. The stock issue is clear, we don’t have enough shirts (be that the red and white strips or even polo shirts and t-shirts) outside of very large or very small sizes. This is a particular issue later on in the season, when seemingly after Christmas the club stops restocking. I don't know if this is more of a Nike issue or a SAFC issue, but it's no longer acceptable to wheel out the excuses of Covid pandemic delays or issues with Brexit. The ALS shop has 37 various t-shirt designs which are all fully stocked despite the previously-mentioned supply issues. The general variety is an issue as well. From visiting other club shops, I know other clubs have a much wider range of merchandise than we do. Customers in the ALS shop are always telling us that they visit the SAFC store for a mug or a badge, and are regularly told to visit the ALS shop because it's got a wider variety! Merchandising could be a brilliant way to raise more revenue for the club, and with the size of our fanbase we need to use it to our advantage.
TICKETING
The ticket office is hopefully going to be less of an issue moving forward with the club transitioning to digital tickets and the ticket office now being somewhat of a help desk. It’s still an issue though, as we have many older fans who prefer going to the ticket office to renew season tickets or buy match tickets and they shouldn’t be forgotten about. Long queues and a lack of staff are commonplace when there’s a big match on or lots of people are trying to renew season cards. The club should be addressing these problems so all of our fans are included as best as possible. Also a thank you in the post, like fans of other clubs get at all levels for buying a season ticket, would be nice. I remember last season our season cards arrived in paper envelopes and some supporters' season cards didn't even have the red and white design, they were just blank! It could be something simple like a letter or some small bits of merchandise like a pin badge for example, just something to make our supporters feel more like fans and less like customers. Even Barrow fans received a little 'thank you' package to reward supporters for their loyal support.
