About the KCOM Stadium

The Stadium is operated by Superstadium Management Company (SMC) on a 50 year lease. The construction of the KCOM Stadium was funded by Hull City Council for the benefit of the City of Kingston-Upon-Hull. This was financed by the Council's sale of their majority shareholding in KCOM, who ironically are the Stadium's title sponsor since first opening the doors in December 2002.

In recognition of the Council funding the building of the Stadium an Egyptian style obelisk monument was unveiled by the Lord Mayor of Kingston-Upon-Hull and the leader of Hull City Council and also recognises the contribution of the many stakeholders involved in the construction of the Stadium. The Superstadium Management Company (SMC) is committed to maintaining this monument which takes pride of place outside the main West Stand reception and along the main pedestrian walkway through West Park.

The Location

• Located next to a Victorian Park, the stadium complex is the first in the UK in a parkland setting. The Stadium manages 34.2 acres of land.

The Design

• Designed by the Miller Partnership, adopting initial concept proposals by Arup Associates, the stadium comprises a state-of-the-art all-seater spectator arena with a capacity of 25,586.
• It is designed as a single tier, asymmetrical bowl of approximately 20,000 seats with a second upper tier to the West Stand of over 5,000 seats.
• The seat colours are predominantly black with a white and amber band around the stadium and logos depicted in amber and white.
• The four external columns, which can be seen from the exterior of the Building, use the corporate colours of the Hull City Council – blue and yellow.

The Capacity

• Future expansion of the stadium will be possible to raise the capacity to 30,000.
• North Stand: 4,000 capacity.
• East Stand: 6,000 capacity.
• South Stand: 4,000 capacity.
• West Stand Lower: 6,000 capacity.
• West Stand Upper: 5,000 capacity.

The Construction

• Also incorporated in the Stadium complex is a Sports Arena, two multi-use all weather pitches, and a learning zone (run by Hull College).
• The total project cost was approximately £44 million.
• Construction of the Stadium took 14 months to complete.
• Approximately 3225 tonnes of steel was used in the construction of the Stadium Complex.
• It took approximately 6469 cubic metres of concrete to build the Stadium.

The Playing Surface

• The grass surface measures 114m x 74m providing a FIFA standard-sized football pitch of 105m x 68m and a full-length rugby league pitch of 100m x 68m with in goal areas 6m deep.
• The grass is 100% natural, comprised of 90% sand and 10% loam. It also has 3% additive of man-made fibre. The fibre is woven into the roots of the grass and goes down 200mm. If threaded together, these fibres would circle the globe!
• The pitch has an automatic irrigation system as well as under pitch heating.
• When the temperature drops to below 4°C under soil heating provides enough heat to raise the temperature to a minimum of 9°C.
• On construction, water porosity of the pitch at source was 25-30mm per hour.
• There are 22 miles of under soil heating pipes.

Corporate Rooms

• The Stadium includes 2,000 square feet of conference and exhibition space, which caters for private or corporate functions.
• This corporate accommodation includes 28 executive boxes, a restaurant overlooking the pitch, 4 banqueting/hospitality suites and a Sports Bar.
• The Stadium regularly hosts functions, and has hosted wedding fayres, wedding parties and a wide range of exhibitions.
• Over 140 ‘off field’ events are held every month.
• The Stadium caters for over 2,000 corporate guests on matchdays.

Traffic

• The site, including the Walton Street Car Park, accommodates up to 1,100 vehicles.
• The link foot bridge from Londesborough Street to the Stadium takes away approximately 30% of pedestrian traffic to and from the Stadium.

Miscellaneous

• Between events, overnight changes need to be made to the Stadium. These include pitch markings, posts and stadium cleaning.
• The target evacuation time for the entire Stadium at full capacity is 8 minutes.
• A generator of 600KVA supplies enough power to evacuate the stadium safely if a powercut occurs.
• The floodlights at the Stadium are 1700 lux, compared to 274 lux at Hull City’s old ground, Boothferry Park, and 250 lux at Hull FC’s old ground, the Boulevard.
• The Stadium has a total of 67 CCTV cameras.
• A computerised turnstile monitoring system linked into the control room, keeps check on how many people are entering each stand.