Jim Frevola on planned changes to Vitality Stadium

In recent years, supporters have met in the 1910 Bar for their pre-match pints, but that will no longer be an option from this season.

In a bid to maximise revenue, the club are changing that space into a hospitality area.

• EXCLUSIVE: Part one - Frevola discusses rising ticket prices and new schemes to grow fanbase

In the immediate term, fans will be encouraged to enter the concourses early, but work is underway to create a new space for supporters.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Echo, Frevola explained: “The 1910 is going to be a new hospitality offering.

“That room holds capacity of approximately 250 people. We had queues outside of people that just couldn’t get in there.

“The reality is that that room, from a financial perspective, didn’t really generate the revenue for the space it was taking up. It was just not utilised very efficiently.

“We identified a way to utilise it much more efficiently, that’s going to better the club in the long run.

“My job is to maximise the growth of the business. But that doesn’t mean I’m immune to where folks are going to go for a pint before the match.

“In the short-term, we’re figuring out ways. We opened the bar last year underneath, we’ll have that again for the pre-season friendlies.

“But we’ve been working with the council and we’re finalising the plans - we’re going to build basically a marquee behind the South Stand.

“We’re going to have two marquees back there. We’re going to level the ground, we’re going to put permeable pavers back there, it’s going to be nice.

“It will have TVs, it will have seats and heaters, it’s going to be weather protected, it’s going to be enclosed. Picture a golf marquee at a golf tournament, like at The Open over the weekend.

“We’re going to put two containers out there for serving food and drinks. We’ll have a nice offering out there.”

He added: “We have to go through the formal process, it’s a planning issue, it takes time.

“Two months in the off-season is not a lot of time to get that done.

“The planning is in, the council have been very supportive in this initiative. We had to get their support, we couldn’t just go and do this.

“It required a lot of legwork and a lot of commitment to do it. It’s an expensive project, it’s not going to be cheap to do it, but it makes sense for us to do it.

“We want a place pre-match for people to go and at half-time, we’re going to open up the doors to the back of the South Stand and people can go back into the marquees and get a pint.

“They’ve never been able to get a pint before in the South Stand. It kind of kills two birds with one stone.

“We’ll have a separate tent that will probably be part-hospitality, that we’ll also put back there. We’re excited about it. It certainly won’t be ready for the friendlies and it might not be ready for the first match or two, but it is coming, the council has been really supportive.

“I hope by the time people get here for West Ham, they’re going to see progress back there and they’re going to know it’s happening.

“It's happening very fast. There’s probably not a day that goes by that I don’t walk in and go, ‘what’s going on with the south plaza?’ - we’re coming up with a name for it.

“I want to get this ground levelled, I want to see progress. I think we might even start to see ground moved this week.

“It won’t take long. The planning and architectural drawings and getting in the room with the council and getting the change of use paperwork done, which we’re still working on, it will happen pretty fast after that.

"It takes about a month.”

Since Bill Foley completed his takeover of the club in December, hiring Frevola shortly afterwards, there have been improvements made in and around the stadium.

Asked how important it was to make quick changes to show the intent from the off, Frevola said: “I give Bill all the credit for that.

“When he came over, even before I was here, he talked to me about the stadium. He said it can be made a little bit better, it doesn’t look perfect, there’s a lot of things he wanted to tweak immediately.

“One, for him to probably show up to a place and be proud of it, but also for the fans, for them to feel like this is a home that their club is paying attention to and taking care of and putting investment into.

“We’re doing some more this off-season, there’s more things going on.”

He added: “We actually hired somebody specifically for game entertainment now that’s new.

“He’ll be working this year on some new ideas, new projects. We want supporter feedback.

“We want it to be a little bit more of a fun environment.

“We respect the traditions of football. We’re not trying to do anything that drastically different.

“But we’re open to ideas and trying things and what we’re not afraid of is it not working.

“If it doesn’t work we pivot, move along and we’ll do something different.”

Discussing the past two months without any first-team fixtures at the stadium, Frevola said: “It’s still hectic. In the business side of the world, the off-season is really our busy season.

“This is when you get all the planning done for the season. You have to make sure the tickets are sold, the sponsorships are sold, the buildings are up-to-date and all the different off-season projects are ready to go, get your marketing strategies in place.

“With so many different things that we’re doing, we’re still hiring staff and bringing people on, it’s been tricky.

“And it was a shorter off-season because of the World Cup break, which pushed everything back a few weeks.

“So if you think about it, between Everton and Atalanta, we’ve only had two months. So we’re busy.”

American Frevola formerly worked with the likes of Tampa Bay Lightning, Vegas Golden Knights and Miami Dolphins at the elite sporting level.

Asked how he has found life in Bournemouth, Frevola said: “It’s been about seven months now I’ve been here, loving every minute of it.

“I feel like I’m finally settled. I’m finally in a permanent house, I’m out of my rental apartment, I have a car, it feels like home to me now. This is absolutely my home.

“I love being out and about. I like to tweet if I’m at a pub watching a football match, love to talk to our supporters, love to talk to people, if they want to come up to me and ask questions, fire away.

“I’m really open to it. I want to get to know people on a more kind of personal level.”

As with any business venture, difficult decisions have to be made.

Some of those have seen backlash from a section of the fanbase, notably when it comes to raising prices.

One topic over the summer, which led to scrutiny and ultimately a reversal from the club, was the decision to include the price of two women’s matches in the season ticket renewals package.

The total additional compulsory charge to adults for those matches was £14 for two games at Vitality Stadium, with Cherries keen to grow the women’s side of the club. But after complaints from many supporters, it became an optional addition instead.

Asked if he had any regrets over the handling of the situation regarding adding women’s matches to the season ticket package, Frevola insisted: “No regrets. I still think the idea of the women’s matches and the support behind it was right.

“I still think that the idea of supporting the women’s team is important.

“We were planning to bring the women’s team in-house before we made that decision.

“I was disappointed by the reaction to it, to be honest with you. Not disappointed that people had the right to complain, everyone has the right to complain.

“I just felt they took it out a little bit too much on the women’s team. That was why we changed course.

“I didn’t want it to be a distraction to the women’s team. It wasn’t fair to them that the reaction was being negative towards the women’s team.

“We’ll take the heat that it happened, but I don’t regret whatsoever.”

He added: “It shocked me. It was one of the biggest shocks and disappointments since I’ve been here, that so much was made out of that.

“I didn’t think we’d get that reaction at all.

“We still had over half our season ticket base buy the women’s tickets.

“People can make their own decisions, I respect that.

“But we have a great amount of folks that did buy the women’s match tickets, so I’m very happy about that.”

There was also a rise in the cost of replica shirt prices, with Cherries fans now having to shell out £65 for an adult shirt, up from £55 last year.

“It’s an 18 per cent rise,” said Frevola.

“We’re lower half (across the league). Umbro is a great partner.

“The world changed.

“I’m not trying to take the sting off of a price increase, but we are making, profit-wise, less on that shirt than we did last year. Our prices went up higher than the price that we put up.

“It stinks, I hate it, and it’s a fair question. But the sales of the shirts has been phenomenal.

“I think the other one is the training gear shirt, which got a bit of heat. The reality is we order 200 training wear shirts, it’s not a lot. We don’t sell a lot of those.

“But we have to have them and, again, we’re making less on those this year than we did last year despite the prices going up. Our prices went up higher than what we raised them, percentage wise, so we’re making less.

“I think the prices in our shop are really reasonable on t-shirts, hoodies, caps. I think there’s a lot of really affordable pricing options in there. But we’re extremely in-line on the shirts.”

There has been a perception among some supporters that in the first summer under the new ownership regime, prices appear to be going up across the board.

But Frevola refuted that claim.

“I’m very aware that that’s the perception,” he said.

“Two things have gone up. So to say ‘everything has gone up’, there’s only two things that could have gone up.

“Yes, you could say 100 per cent of them went up. But that’s not true – 100 per cent of all our shirts didn’t go up, 100 per cent of all of our hats didn’t go up. A lot of them none went up.

“So percentage-wise, if you want to talk about volumes of the amount of items that went up, I’d say if we have 100 items in the shop and three were going up between shirts, training tops and something else, that’s three per cent of our prices went up.

“That’s not ‘everything is going up’. It’s this perception, but most clubs raise their shirt prices every year.

“It’s the first time in eight years we’ve raised ticket prices. I don’t like the perception that people are saying ‘everything is going up this year’.

“It’s the first time that we’ve gone up, so any time you go up, it’s ‘everything went up’.

“Seventeen out of 20 clubs all raised their shirt and ticket prices this year – everything went up for them. It’s not fair, it’s just silly.”

Asked if he anticipates similar scale rises again next summer, Frevola added: “I’m not saying we’re not going to raise prices next year and I’m not saying we are going to raise prices, I have no idea.

“I don’t know what the manufacturers prices are on those shirts, I don’t know what our sales velocities are, I don’t know what our stadium situation will be like next year, I don’t know how the club is performing. I can’t predict what next year will be.

“But I will say we’re certainly paying attention to all parts of the business.”