Images: Aston Villa
For Aston Villa fans, a golden era is currently being experienced in the Premier League club’s recent history.
Success on the pitch is being met with concerted investment, and significant ambition, off it, with the West Midlands club’s stadium very much at the forefront of these efforts.
Villa is this season marking 150 years of history, with its Villa Park home also having a long story, having first opened in 1897. The stadium, located in the Aston neighbourhood of the city of Birmingham, has undergone many changes over the years, with the summer seeing a significant transformation take place, focused on revamping the stadium’s hospitality offering as Villa prepared to welcome UEFA Champions League football.
Laura Worsey, Aston Villa’s head of hospitality and catering, told TheStadiumBusiness.com: “We effectively kick started the project in February (2024), and that was just an initial concept of defining what we wanted to deliver.
“We got the opportunity to invest in the Doug Ellis Stand, which was quite underutilised and essentially resembled a corridor of boxes. But we also wanted to address some of the challenges which were restricting us in other areas, mainly being the Trinity Road Stand, so we really homed in on what we aspired our hospitality and premium experiences to be.”
Villa’s goal was to create a more dynamic, inclusive, and premium experience for its fans while preserving the iconic heritage of the stadium. This has resulted in an overhaul of hospitality spaces, with every area either refurbished or completely redeveloped, covering over 2,000sqm of space.
Going ‘food-first’
Villa fans now have 17 distinct hospitality options to choose from, ranging from casual dining areas like the Sports Bar to luxurious spaces like the Legends Lounge offering Michelin-starred tasting menus.
To achieve this, Villa adopted a ‘food-first’ approach, collaborating with catering partner Levy to redesign the food offering, including locally sourced menus and diverse dining options. Villa fan and Michelin-starred chef, Brad Carter, has curated exclusive matchday menus.
Kitchens, cellars, and other back-of-house areas were completely revamped to meet modern standards and improve service efficiency. Along with Levy, experience consultancy 20.20 was also a key collaborator, designing seven premium and ultra-premium spaces, all of which have luxurious interiors and are grounded by a narrative unique to the location and history of the club.
Located in the heart of the Trinity Stand is the Chairman’s Suite, a dedicated bar and dining area for the club’s owners and their closest guests; providing invite-only status and ultra-fine dining.
Along with The Trophy Suite; these two spaces are the most exclusive within Villa Park. Guests enjoy this luxurious restaurant, surrounded by wooden panelled walls, panelled ceilings, black marble tabletops, highlights of brushed gold and simple art deco lighting.
The Oak Room, meanwhile, was inspired by Villa Park’s original Oak Room, which was the first-ever restaurant within a football stadium. It celebrates the club’s proudest historic memories, showcasing the 1982 European Cup, the original Football League trophy and the FA Cup.
The walls are finished in timber panelling and ceramic tiles, the floor with natural stones and patterned timber. Italian mosaics surround the bar, and the original stained-glass windows divide the space.
The Oak Room, The Aston and Legends are the most exclusive destinations, serving five or seven-course curated menus with optional wine pairing. Taking inspiration from the Jacobean mansion that gave the club its name, The Aston has been designed as an intimate dining experience featuring pitch-facing loges, intricate ceilings, and unique tapestry wall hangings that celebrate Villa’s key moments.
The Legends Lounge is an expansive, social space, blending through its double-height windows into the tree canopy of the park behind. The Villans Lounge is intended as a celebration of the club’s rich community, providing a laidback casual dining offer with floor-to-ceiling windows that look onto the pitch.
The 150 Club runs the full length of the Doug Ellis Stand. It provided 20.20 with plenty of challenges, with new openings onto the stand, innovative F&B offers delivered from new kitchens and feature bars all required to enable its transition from an isolated, under-utilised space into a contemporary club environment with plenty of ambience and energy.
Worsey said: “We have now got options ranging from the enhanced concourse experience to a high-end fine dining experience with a tasting menu and high-end sharing experience that we do across multiple areas.
“The biggest thing that we wanted to do was to create choice across all experiences, giving people lots of options for what their matchday experience is. The starting point of creating the products was around the food and beverage, and the level of service that we can offer.
“With the best will in the world, we have no control over the 90 minutes of football that is played on the pitch and have had really positive feedback from a hospitality fan experience.
“We obviously changed a lot of the experiences, which did change the price points of things, but the choice that fans have now got has gone down really well. There is a lot of flexibility, a lot of different areas. Still great seat locations for the game itself, but a lot more choice around what we have got at the stadium.”
A ‘substantial’ investment
However, the summer’s work was not solely confined to hospitality. Villa added 3,500 safe-standing rail seats to the stadium bowl, while a new fan zone with space for 1,500 supporters has added live entertainment, food stalls, and interactive activities to enhance the pre-match experience.
Retail store innovation has also been a focus through the launch of a new state-of-the-art retail space blending digital and physical shopping experiences, catering to both local and global fans.
The upgrades were designed to enhance the overall fan experience while also driving the club’s commercial success, through what Villa said was a “substantial” investment from its part.
Worsey added: “From an overall stadium point of view, the club have also, as well as the hospitality areas, been investing in the general concourse areas.
“Obviously there are areas of an older stadium where you can’t increase the floorspace, however we’ve been looking at efficiencies such as bar locations, improving and adding toilet facilities, general décor. So, there is that background work going on that is happening across multiple stands.
“Again, just constantly improving the experience for any visitor or fan when they come to Villa Park. We opened up the Spacecube (the build system used to create the fan zone). I want to say that is a temporary building, but it’s a structure that’s not classed as temporary.
“This really increases the player arrival. Players arrive and walk through what is effectively the fanzone areas, where fans can greet them as well as having access to the Spacecube and the food outlets and traders there.”
Racing against the clock
Following its fourth-place finish in the 2023-24 Premier League, Villa has this season returned to top flight European competition for the first time since 1982-83. Champions League action, along with the small matter of a new Premier League season, necessitated that the redevelopment process was executed within a tight, five-month timeline, with work commencing at the end of the 2023-24 season.
The goal was to ensure minimal disruption to matchday activities while delivering the enhanced hospitality offerings in time for the 2024-25 season. All major renovations and updates were ultimately completed before the season opener, but not without some significant challenges, as Worsey explains.
“I suppose the biggest challenge was the timeframe,” she said. “We were restricted by when the season started. We have our first home game when we’re told we’ll have our first home game.
“We also held the Foo Fighters concert at the end of June, which meant we still needed to operate the stadium to accommodate 40,000 people for that event, right in the middle of construction.
“A lot of planning was involved, particularly communication around what the schedule of works would be, how this would impact and how we’d still be able to operate – making sure everyone was included and we shared the right information was key.
“So, from a very early stage we worked with our catering partner, Levy, both to define what we wanted to achieve at the end of the development, but also how we’d continue to operate the stadium and what they needed.
“We worked with the design team and the contractors, again setting out a clear plan of what we still needed to operate over the summer period and what was happening at the stadium. Also, with the concert promoters. Giving them the information early was important.”
The fan experience zone of the future
In December 2023, Chris Heck, president of business operations at Aston Villa, said that it would be a “bad idea” to rebuild the North Stand at Villa Park and reduce the stadium’s capacity for two seasons.
Villa had been planning on expanding the capacity of Villa Park to over 50,000, with a redeveloped North Stand central to the project. While the club’s current stadium expansion ambitions are unclear, it is not holding up on its vision of completely transforming the fan experience.
Back in December, Villa unveiled plans to create the “fan experience zone of the future”. Expected to go live Christmas 2025, the new project includes the launch of The Warehouse, a new multi-use venue set to become a centrepiece of the matchday experience and a hub for year-round entertainment, along with a new ticketing office, improved plaza in the North Grounds, and expanded footprint of the club shop.
Admission to The Warehouse, a project that has been in the works for over a year, will be free for ticketed supporters on matchdays, when Villa said it will become the largest beer hall in the Premier League.
Beyond matchdays, the club’s ambition for The Warehouse is for it to become the Midlands region’s premier concert venue and event space. The 3,500-seat venue will host world-class performances, from live music and sporting events to community activities, creating a versatile space for audiences of all kinds.
Completing the vision is the expanded plaza in the North Grounds, designed to amplify the matchday atmosphere. This space will host player receptions that will be bigger than ever before. The plaza will connect the stadium with The Warehouse and the new club shop that opened earlier this season.
Villa said the significant redevelopment project of the North Grounds is intended to generate additional revenue streams enhancing the club’s ability to comply with the Premier League’s financial control regulations, while “ultimately solidifying its position as a powerhouse capable of continually competing and winning at the highest level”.
Worsey added: “We’re trying to create a real destination that competes in the UK football and sports market and we want to create best-in-class experiences for fans and other visitors that come to Villa Park.
“The year before last was the first time we held concerts for 14 years. We’ve announced Guns N’ Roses for this year and we have got an ambition to hold more events. The investment in creating different aspects in how the stadium can be used for more events is a key part of the club’s perspective. We want to be known as a venue, as well as Aston Villa Football Club.
“A key part of Villa Park has always been how historical we are, from a club perspective. We’re this season celebrating 150 years and our stadium has always been at Villa Park, in Aston. It started off being in the grounds of Aston Hall so that link to history is really important to the club, while also bringing it into the modern-day business model of where football is.
“The level of investment that the owners have given this summer, for the hospitality spaces, really shows their commitment to creating these unique experiences and choice for fans at the stadium.”
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