How Birmingham City’s new stadium will compare to 55,000 Wrexham AFC plans | OneFootball

A look at how Birmingham City's proposed new stadium compares to what Wrexham are planning to do with their own ground.

As Birmingham City head back into the Championship this season following their record-breaking League One campaign, the Blues are looking to be ambitious both on and off the pitch with further investment into the squad as well as plans for their new stadium.

Birmingham suffered a surprise relegation to the third-tier but managed to propel themselves straight back up this year with Chris Davies overseeing a dominant campaign whereby they collected 111 points from their 46 games – beating the previous all-time EFL points record tally of 106, set by Reading in the 2005/06 Championship season.

The Blues have ambitious owners and their squad already seems well set to be a challenger for Premier League promotion next season, especially with the expectation of further investment into the personnel.

Chairman and co-owner Tom Wagner has discussed his desire for the new Sports Quarter to be built, describing the possibility of it not getting approval from local government as "a crime against the city."

With the proposed new ground set to have a capacity of 62,000 seats, Football League World has compared that with what Wrexham are planning to do with their own stadium planning.

Birmingham’s plans in comparison to Wrexham’s

Birmingham’s so-called ‘Sports Quarter’, which is to be built on the former Birmingham Wheels site, not too far from St Andrews, has plans to have a 62,000-seater stadium as well as regeneration of the local area.

The second city club aim to have the stadium completed by 2029 with plans for office spaces, restaurants, fan parks, a hotel as well as an academy and training facility within the development.

They currently play at St Andrews, which opened on Boxing Day 1906, and has a current capacity of 29,409; which is over twice the capacity of the team that finished a place below them in League One this season, Wrexham.

The Red Dragons’ famous old stadium, the Racecourse Ground, has a capacity of 13,341 following its expansion of 2,289 with a temporary stadium put in at the Kop End. They are also hoping to extend that stand further to 5,500 by the start of the 2026/27 season, having been granted permission by Wrexham County Borough Council.

However, Wrexham’s owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney do not want to stop there with plans to expand and redevelop the whole ground in order to make it a 55,000-seater capacity stadium.

McElhenney has discussed the fact that Wrexham want to build and redevelop "from stand to stand’ to eventually get to a position where their ground is "between 45,000 and 55,000 people,” which could mean it has a higher capacity than grounds such as Stamford Bridge or St James’ Park.

Whilst Birmingham seek to make sweeping changes to the area and completely build a new stadium from scratch to 62,000-seats; Wrexham are opting to gradually build upon the old Racecourse Ground until it very nearly matches what Birmingham’s plans.

Wrexham going up with Birmingham

The two clubs have experienced very different periods of late and yet they aligned this season to both gain automatic promotion from League One at the first time of asking, having entered into the division last season.

Birmingham came down from the Championship, whilst Wrexham leapt into the third-tier after back-to-back automatic promotions from the National League and then from League Two.

Aside from gaining promotion from the third-tier this season alongside each other, another thing the two sides share is their craving for publicity with their famous American ownership group; with McElhenney and Reynolds in at Wrexham, whilst Tom Brady is involved at Birmingham.

They will both be hoping to not only compete but do well in next season’s Championship with seemingly ambitious plans in the transfer window and those ambitions go some way off the pitch, too, as they both seek to completely revamp or move where they play their football in the coming years.