The Lost Grounds Index: Which Demolished Stadiums Football Fans Still Buy

We sell an illustrated print of almost every English league ground, past and present. That means our order book is an odd but honest record of which lost stadiums fans still want on the wall, and which ones they have quietly let go.

This page sets out what our own sales say. It covers 6,203 orders placed between 1 September 2025 and 4 September 2026, counting units sold of the illustrated stadium print for each ground. Where a club has moved, we compare the print of the former ground against the print of the current one. We have called that the nostalgia ratio: above 1.0 means the old ground outsells the new one.

The headline finding is not the one we expected. Fans do not automatically prefer the old ground. Across the seven clubs where we sell both prints, the current grounds outsell the former ones overall, 815 units to 930. What the data actually shows is that some moves were forgiven and some were not, and the gap between those two groups is enormous.

The Lost Grounds Index

Units are prints sold, all sizes, framed and unframed combined. Poster Kingz first-party sales data, 1 September 2025 to 4 September 2026. Free to cite with a link to this page.

West Ham is the outlier, by a distance

Our Boleyn Ground print outsold our London Stadium print by 13.5 to one. No other club in our data comes close. Ten years after the move to Stratford, West Ham supporters are still buying the castle turrets of Upton Park and almost nobody is buying the athletics bowl. If you want a single number for how a relocation was received by the people who actually pay for the wall art, this is it.

Everton and Derby: the old ground still wins

Goodison Park outsold the Hill Dickinson Stadium 126 to 89 in the first year of the move. That one may narrow: the new ground only opened for the 2025/26 season, and some of the Goodison demand is farewell demand.

Derby is the more striking result, because there is no recency to explain it. The Baseball Ground closed in 1997 and still outsells Pride Park, 97 to 89, nearly thirty years later. A ground that no living matchgoing teenager has ever been inside is still the one Derby fans hang up.

Arsenal: a dead heat, twenty years on

Highbury sold 192 against the Emirates on 211. That is as close to parity as our catalogue gets, and it is the reason we sell the two as a matched pair. Arsenal supporters appear to want both homes on the wall rather than choosing between them.

The moves fans accepted: Tottenham, Manchester City, Cardiff

At the other end, the new ground wins comfortably. The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium outsold White Hart Lane by roughly four to one, which is unsurprising given Spurs rebuilt on the same site rather than leaving the neighbourhood. The Etihad outsold Maine Road two to one, and Cardiff City Stadium outsold Ninian Park five to one.

The pattern that fits our numbers best is not age and not trophies. It is whether the club stayed in its own neighbourhood, and whether supporters felt the move was done to them or with them.

Grounds that outlive their replacements entirely

Two former grounds sell steadily even though we have no current-ground print to compare them with. Highfield Road, demolished in 2005, sold 53 prints in the year. Bolton's Reebok Stadium sold 48, and it is worth noting that this one is a naming-rights ghost rather than a demolition: the ground still stands, but the name fans want on the wall is the one it had when they first went.

What we think this means

Football nostalgia is not uniform and it is not simply a function of how long ago the move happened. Derby's Baseball Ground has been gone for nearly thirty years and still outsells the current ground. White Hart Lane has been gone for eight and does not. The difference is not time. It is whether the new place ever became home.

Using this data

These are our own sales figures and we are happy for journalists, bloggers and club historians to use them, with a link back to this page. If you want a breakdown for a specific club, or the figures for a ground not listed here, email sales@posterkingzuk.com and we will pull it.

Every ground mentioned is available as an illustrated print in our stadium posters collection. Where a club has moved, we sell the two homes as a matched Then & Now pair.

Method

Unit sales of illustrated stadium prints, all sizes and both framed and unframed, from 6,203 Poster Kingz orders placed between 1 September 2025 and 4 September 2026. Stadium map prints and club colour prints are excluded so that like is compared with like. Clubs are included only where we sell an illustrated print of both the former and the current ground; the two exceptions are listed separately above. Figures are units sold, not revenue.