Eircom Park advance sales £10m less than claimed

Figures released to the directors of the FAI yesterday reveal that the value of advance sales for premium seats and corporate boxes achieved by IMG for Eircom Park is more than u £10 million less than what has been consistently claimed over the past year by leading officials in the association.

According to a document presented just before the end of yesterday's meeting of the board of management in Dublin, 21, rather than 54, corporate boxes and 1,400, rather than 3,100, premium seats have been sold by the marketing company.

With each box costing u £250,000 and the seats priced at u £3,000 or more, this would knock at least u £10.85 million off the revenue which, it had been insisted, had already been generated through advance sales.

The figures, which had been long demanded by critics of the proposed stadium - most notably the association's treasurer, Brendan Menton - will come as a severe blow to the chief executive, Bernard O'Byrne, who had repeatedly insisted that IMG had been hugely successful in marketing the scheme.

The gap between the level of sales that had been claimed and what was shown to be the case yesterday amounts to at least one eighth of the total projected revenue from IMG's marketing activities. But the shortfall could be even greater, as many of the individual seats which were previously said to have been sold for u £5,500 went for u £3,000. If the company met its original target of some u £80 million in sales, it would have earned estimated commission approaching one third of that figure, while the remaining u £55 million provided the backbone of O'Byrne's claim that the entire scheme was "fully funded" before work commenced.

There had always been widespread scepticism both inside and outside the association about such claims. Now, having been shown to be correct on the revenue front, critics who have argued that the real cost of proceeding with the project is well in excess of the u £90 million claimed by O'Byrne feel that they have been shown to be the more credible party.

"It's an important day for us because it's the first piece of credible information we've received during the entire process," said one such critic last night, "and it has had the effect of vindicating everything that we have been doing for months now."

The figures released yesterday may now be discussed at Monday's meeting of the full FAI council, although some of those who received them said that they wished to "fully digest them" before deciding on what action of take.

The whole business plan is due to be reviewed at the January 22nd meeting of the board of management, and there may well be a major push at that meeting to have the scheme abandoned.

Meanwhile, the English Football Association yesterday scrapped all existing plans for the new Wembley stadium, insisting that a new, cheaper project needed to be devised.

The radical decision means the £660 million sterling project will return to the drawing board, with architects and project officials ordered to come up with a new blueprint for the stadium.

The decision followed a compromise deal between Chelsea chairman Ken Bates and FA chief executive Adam Crozier. In return for agreeing to abolish the existing project, Bates was allowed to continue as chairman of Wembley National Stadium Limited (WNSL), the FA subsidiary company set up to oversee the project.

It had been widely expected that Bates would be removed from the project, following criticism of his leadership.

Around £18 million has already been spent on the design of the stadium, but the FA insisted it needed to start again to ensure it could construct a world class stadium aimed at football supporters.

Following an emergency FA board meeting officials declared that the organisation would assume greater day-to-day control of the project.