Arsenal's plans to expand the Emirates Stadium to 80,000 seats will require "another small stadium on top" and costs running into "hundreds of millions."

Architects highlight a number of challenges

Co-chairman Josh Kroenke revealed that the club is exploring ways to bring more fans to the Emirates Stadium, with the goal of surpassing their North London rivals, Tottenham, in stadium capacity—after Arsenal fell behind Spurs, West Ham, Liverpool, and Manchester United. However, construction work at the Arsenal stadium will be complicated—especially as the club plans to add 20,000 new seats. Nick Tyrer, a director at the architectural firm BDP Pattern and the lead designer of Everton's new stadium, said in an interview with The i Paper that Arsenal is basically adding another small stadium on top of the existing structure.

Tyrer elaborated on the challenges Arsenal faces when working on a stadium that has already been integrated into the crowded N5 area: It's efficient, everything fits together like a well-arranged puzzle. It's impressive what they've done with such limited space, but the problem with a puzzle that fits well is that when you want to make big changes, it becomes difficult. The architect continued, One of the big challenges is the elegant roof, which is supported, if I’m not mistaken, in eight places. The entire roof rests on these eight points, and if you want to make any expansion, you have to remove the structure that’s blocking you, but the only way to do that is by taking off the roof and putting on a new, wider one. If that requires removing and replacing, let’s say, the new roof, you're building a stadium roof for 80,000 seats. In that case, we’re talking about a new project, a new stadium from that perspective.

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Meanwhile, Jon-Scott Kohli, a director of architects at BDP, admitted that the costs associated with achieving an 80,000-seat stadium for Arsenal could run into hundreds of millions. He added, You’re almost building a new stadium, but you’re building it in the air, so you need the entire structure and the infrastructure to make that possible, plus everything required by the city council in terms of transportation.