Gigg Lane is an all-seater football stadium in Bury, Greater Manchester. One of the world's oldest professional football stadiums, it was built for Bury F.C. in 1885 and has been their home ever since. Currently, the ground is officially known for sponsorship reasons as the Energy Check Stadium but it will soon be renamed the Planet-U Energy Stadium following a deal signed by the club with Leeds-based Planet-U Energy on 19 February 2019.
History
The first match to be played at Gigg Lane was a friendly between Bury and Wigan on 12 September 1885, which Bury won 4–3. The first league game was a 4–2 victory over Manchester City on 8 September 1894 in the 1894–95 Football League Second Division. The stadium has had permanent floodlights since 1953, although the first floodlit match to be played there took place in 1889, before the Football League had authorised the use of floodlights in competitive matches. The capacity of the ground was once 35,000 and this was achieved when the ground's record crowd attended Bury's FA Cup third round tie against Bolton Wanderers on 9 January 1960. The game ended 1–1 and Bury lost the replay after extra time 4–2. In 1986, Gigg Lane saw its lowest ever crowd of just 461 for a Freight Rover Trophy game against Tranmere Rovers. There has never been a league crowd below 1,000 although the closest to that mark came in 1984 with a crowd of 1,096 against Northampton Town. The highest all-seater attendance at Gigg Lane was recorded when Bury played Manchester City on 12 September 1997, with an attendance of 11,216. The ground was renamed the JD Stadium in November 2013 after Bury announced a new sponsorship deal with JD Sports. The deal was ended in July 2015. In 2016 it was announced that the club was looking to build a new 15,000–20,000 capacity stadium in the borough of Bury. Since then, however, there has been a change of club ownership and a new stadium sponsorship deal. On 19 February 2019, it was announced that the ground is to be officially renamed the Planet-U Energy Stadium after Bury concluded a five-year sponsorship deal with the Leeds-based renewable energy supplier, Planet-U Energy. The stadium will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy.
Structure and facilities
The stadium's official capacity is 12,500. The South Stand is the largest stand and it was renamed the "Les Hart Stand" in the summer of 2010. The stand contains a pattern of blue and white seats that spell out "SHAKERS" After the Taylor Report forced all Football League clubs to switch to all-seater stadiums, the stadium began converting all four sides of the ground in 1993, with the Cemetery End being the final terraced section to be demolished in 1999. The East Stand on the rebuilt Cemetery End has a capacity of 2,500. The Manchester Road End was home to the club's electronic scoreboard until 2011. A new scoreboard was placed in the south-east corner of the ground a few months later. In September 2015 a screen was installed in the right-hand side of the Les Hart Stand. On matchdays the club show advertisements, match highlights and the scoreline. In November 2015, Bury announced that the Main Stand was to be renamed The Neville NevilleStand in honour of the late English cricketer and friend of the club, Neville Neville. Towards the end of the 2015–16 season, a fence was constructed between the Cemetery End and the Les Hart Stand in an attempt to stop the rise of hooliganism at the ground. This further separates home and away supporters but it has reduced the stadium's capacity with the consequent loss of 660 seats.
Other users
and Bolton Wanderers have hosted reserve-team matches at the ground. F.C. United of Manchester shared the ground from the 2005–06 season until 2014. They moved into their own ground for the 2015–16 season. F.C. United set a club record attendance of 6,731 when they played Brighton and Hove Albion in the FA Cup on 8 December 2010. A couple of teams have moved their "home" games to the stadium, including Preston North End for a League Cup tie in 1994. Non-league sides Rossendale United and Radcliffe Borough moved home F.A. Cup ties to Gigg Lane against Bolton Wanderers and York City respectively. In 1996, the stadium was used as the filming location for the TV film based on the Hillsborough disaster of 1989, where 96 Liverpool fans died as a result of a crush on the stadium's terraces. Hillsborough was seen as an unsuitable location for the film, partly to avoid causing further distress to survivors and bereaved families, and partly because the appearance of Gigg Lane was more akin to the 1989 Hillsborough than the actual stadium was seven years after the tragedy due to redevelopment. The stadium has been used for many sports other than football, such as rugby league, cricket, baseball and lacrosse.
