Arena Coventry Limited boss Daniel Gidney has defended the decision not to submit a bid to be a host city for the 2018 World Cup which it is hoped will be in England.
Despite opposition from some Coventry Councillors, the ACL Board took the decision not to enter a bid which were all submitted at Wembley yesterday on the grounds of the cost needed to incease the capacity to the 40,000 which the FA were looking for.
Speaking to the CT, Mr Gidney said; "ACL have been consulting with the FA for some time but due to the key fact of the capacity issue, the decision was made by the Board in late summer not to proceed.
"We have not considered extending the Ricoh Arena because there is no business case to support the significant additional capital costs circa £30m-£40m, Coventry's highest average league attendances in recent years has been around 20,000.
"At best, in the World Cup, we would be given three matches to stage and clearly the business model makes no economic sense, particularly bearing in mind we are far from being the host country.
"We do meet the criteria for the Olympic Games in 2012 and the 2015 Rugby World Cup. We are delighted that we are being considered to host preliminary matches at the Olympics and that we will be hosting pool matches at the Rugby World Cup in 2015."