OLD OAK COMMON is a stretch of scrubby land in west London dominated by railway depots, industrial parks and a huge second-hand car dealership. Some of the area is already marked for redevelopment by 2026 as part of plans for HS2, a proposed high-speed railway. But on September 4th Queen’s Park Rangers (QPR), a football club in the English Premier League, unveiled plans to build a new 40,000-seat stadium there within the next five years. Tottenham Hotspur, another London club, also intends to build a new stadium, as does Brentford football club. Local officials are cheering.

Once associated with hooliganism, British football has become much more respectable. After the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, when 96 fans were crushed to death, top-flight football clubs were required to install seats and make other improvements. A deal with BSkyB, a satellite broadcaster, made clubs rich; fans grew older and more discerning. In most stadiums the toilets are now a little cleaner and the food a little less greasy. Supporters are encouraged to take public transport rather than driving to the ground. All this makes stadiums better neighbours.

But the main reason local councils now look favourably on the new constructions is the money they can extract from football clubs. When Manchester City moved into a new stadium in 2003, which had been built partly with public money for the Commonwealth games, the club paid for new lighting in primary school playgrounds, among other things. In 2006 Arsenal, a London team, moved within the borough of Islington. In order to mitigate the adverse effects of the development the club shelled out £60m ($108m at the time) on rebuilding a waste-recycling plant and spruced up nearby train stations. The club is currently building a separate sports centre, which can be used by local people.

Clubs are keen to promote stadiums as “catalysts for regeneration”. Plans from QPR—which are being overseen by the developer who worked on Arsenal’s project—suggest that the area has the capacity for a whopping 24,000 new flats. Some boosters point to studies, such as that by Gabriel Ahlfeldt of the London School of Economics, which show that house prices increase more rapidly in the vicinity of a new stadium. Local councils, squeezed hard by austerity, are keen to grasp at any opportunity for development, says Gareth Bacon of the Greater London Authority.

This is almost the opposite of what happens in America, where clubs extract money from local officials. The number of NFL American football teams is tightly restricted, points out Stefan Szymanski, a sports expert at the University of Michigan. This means that clubs can threaten to leave if cities—who have more cash and more powers over taxes—fail to build them new homes. By contrast, few British clubs ever move far. When Wimbledon moved to Milton Keynes in 2003 it caused uproar among fans, some of whom set up their own team; even temporary moves are unpopular. Clubs can thus be caught between cash-strapped authorities and disgruntled supporters. Keeping both sides happy is an expensive sport.