Pride Park Stadium

Pride Park Stadium is an all-seater football stadium in Derby, England, which is the home ground of English Football League club Derby County. With a capacity of 33,597, it is the 16th-largest football ground in England. Pride Park is a business park on the outskirts of Derby city centre, and the stadium was built as part of the commercial redevelopment of the area in the 1990s. Derby County have played at the ground since it opened in 1997 as a replacement for the Baseball Ground.

Pride Park has hosted two full international matches, England v. Mexico in 2001 and Brazil v. Ukraine in 2010, several England under-21 matches, and the 2009 FA Women's Cup final. It also hosted the 2025 Women's League Cup Final.

Before moving to the Pride Park Stadium, Derby County had played at the Baseball Ground since 1895. Although at its peak the ground had held over 40,000 (the record attendance being 41,826 for a match against Tottenham Hotspur in 1969) the Taylor Report, actioned after the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster had seen the legal requirement for English football stadia to become all-seater by the 1994–95 season resulting in its capacity dwindling to just 17,500 by the mid-1990s, not enough for the then-ambitious second-tier club. An additional problem came with the ground's wooden components (considered unacceptable in the wake of the Bradford City stadium fire in 1985) and, in February 1996, chairman Lionel Pickering made the decision to move the club to a new stadium, having originally planned to rebuild the Baseball Ground as a 26,000-seat stadium.

The club originally planned to build a purpose-built 30,000-seat stadium at Pride Park, with 4,000 car parking spaces, a restaurant and conference facilities, a fitness centre, a supporters club and a new training ground. A year later the stadium plan was changed to become part of a £46 million project by the Stadivarios group that would also include a 10,000-seat indoor arena. Peter Gadsby, however, the club's associate director at the time and head of the Miller Birch construction company, felt the project was both too ambitious and expensive and instead plans were drawn up by new chairman Lionel Pickering to modernise and extend the Baseball Ground to hold 26,000, at a cost of £10 million. However, despite signing a construction agreement with Taylor Woodrow, Gadsby suggested the club make a second attempt at securing the then-redeveloping Pride Park business park, settling with Derby City Council for a smaller site than previously agreed. On 21 February 1996, prior to a match against Luton Town at The Baseball Ground, the club announced to supporters the decision to move to a £16 million state-of-the-art stadium for the start of the 1997–98 season.

Derby City Council were paid £1.8 million for the land and the club's four directors – Lionel Pickering, Peter Gadsby, Stuart Webb and John Kirkland each paid £2.5 million towards a package deal to pay for the stadium. The stadium itself was based upon Middlesbrough's Riverside Stadium, which opened in 1995, though it had more than 30 amendments to the original plans. After toying with the idea of naming the new ground "The New Baseball Ground", it was settled that the club's new home would be called The Pride Park Stadium.

Engaging the same architects as Middlesbrough, the Miller Partnership, Derby's plans predominantly followed those of the Riverside Stadium, with the first stage being a detached main stand facing a horseshoe running unbroken round the other three sides, with the possibility of the corners being filled in later and the ground's capacity being increased if and when necessary by raising the horseshoe roof.

"From my youth I only remember this area as railway sidings and a municipal tip and what has happened to Pride Park is wonderful for Derby. So many businesses were attracted to the site once we had moved. I still get a buzz when I arrive for a home game – it’s a dramatic sight, a true county landmark."

Pickering laid the foundation stone in November 1995 and, after decontamination, the first of the more than 1,000 pre-cast concrete piles was sunk in September 1996. This was followed by 6,500 tonnes of concrete and more than 2,100 tonnes of steelwork as the ground began to take shape. Tapping into the excitement amongst supporters, the club set up a visitors centre which included a computer-generated tour of the stadium taking shape and attracted more than 75,000 fans. The opportunity was also made available for supporters to buy special bricks – on to which they could engrave a message of their choosing – which would be set around the outside of the completed stadium.