SWINDON Town Football Club says it has a five-year plan for the County Ground as a music venue, and hopes to keep getting bigger and better. 

But it all depends on the success of next year's weekend festival featuring Chris Moyles' 90s Hangover which will see Atomic Kitten, The Lightning Seeds and Five perform, alongside the 'Could Be Real' tribute festival. 

The club's chief commercial officer James Watts said next year's gigs were to 'get the ball rolling' and depending on its success he would like to see - depending on fixtures - the May Bank Holiday weekend become a regular event at the football stadium. 

"We first started talking about it around last Christmas, because I had done similar events at Newport and Hereford - but plans only really picked up around August this year," James explained. 

"I thought that bringing concerts back to the County Ground was a good idea, based on the past, the location of Swindon on the M4 and the transport links, as well as the club's fanbase with 8,500 coming to watch every week.

"It’s important in taking us to the next level. If the club wants to be a sustainable business in League One and beyond we need things like this. There are a lot of myths around League Two and a lot of fans don’t understand how much money these clubs throw at it.

"And so the main reason for big events like this is to generate extra revenue towards the playing budget and the costs of running the club and that's why things like this are vital."

So far 2,500 people have registered their interest for tickets, but James is targeting 5,000 for each day and if he gets that, he'll consider it a success. 

"Realistically, we want 10,000 over the weekend. That’s where we are. This is part of a five-year plan to make the events bigger and better each year.

"People talk about Elton John and Bryan Adams but the world was very different back then, there weren't purpose-built stadiums back then so realistically Swindon were in a much better place to attract the bigger names, now the costs are phenomenal, to have someone who is a headline act to the level that people are asking for, [we] would’ve had to charge £200 a ticket.

"So we’ve gone very much along the lines of if it’s 20 per cent more than a football match for the price of a ticket and we've put on shows full of acts that people know."