Sheffield Wednesday face hurdles in hosting Dalton Smith fight and concerts - but ambition is there

Speaking to an audience of Wednesday supporters at a fan forum hosted at the stadium last week, Owls owner Dejphon Chansiri made clear that conversations had taken place about the possibility of hosting such events during his time at the club.

Changes would have to be made in order to satisfy licenses awarded by Sheffield City Council’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) and the timing of any event would have to be finely selected given the limited time between the football season itself and work that would neeed to be completed on the Hillsborough playing surface ahead of any new campaign.

“We have thought about concerts in the summer in recent years,” Chansiri said. “It’s difficult for them to come and we only have a short time [between seasons]. If we’re going to do a concert or some event, they need to fit to our time.

“This makes it more difficult, though we want to do that. We would need to get permission from SAG and have the correct licenses. Sitting here now, it’s not easy.

“Everything you have to ask for the correct license. It is also dependent on them.”

The ambition to upscale and to be able to host such events - Sheffield United hosted Def Leppard at Bramall Lane earlier this summer - is there.

Wednesdayite boxing champion Dalton Smith has long since spoken about the desire to fight at Hillsborough and with his popularity growing, it’s felt his career is hurtling towards the point he could make a good fist of a stadium fight.

On Saturday Smith will step into the ring at Sheffield’s Utilita Arena to contend with Liverpool’s Sam Maxwell for the British and Commonwealth super-lightweight titles. But there’s always one eye on S6.

“I want to bring the big fights to Sheffield,” he said. “Sheffield Wednesday are right behind me, the supporters there, and not only that, the whole of Sheffield.

"I'm putting big nights of boxing back into Sheffield - especially the Hillsborough one, I'm confident as long as I keep winning I'm going to make that dream become a reality next year.”

In an exclusive interview with The Star earlier this year, Chief Operating Officer Liam Dooley discussed the future potential of hosting large-scale events outside of football but admitted work would need to be done to achieve that reality.

Chansiri has discussed the need to achieve new sources of outside revenue to the club.

“The long-term vision is that we want to be in a position where we can host events like a Dalton Smith fight, but we also want to be a music venue in years to come,” he explained.

“We would rather, in five years’ time, have one of our brilliant local bands to be playing Hillsborough Stadium, but there are things we need to do infrastructure-wise to facilitate that.

“Instead of just having matchdays circa 25 days a year, we want to host events – we can then drive revenues and improve the facilities simultaneously. There is no set timescale, but these are the kind of ambitions we have as a club and something we want to move towards.”