The SMISA Stadium

St Mirren Park, also known as The Simple Digital Arena and The SMISA Stadium for sponsorship reasons, is a football stadium in Paisley, Scotland. It is the home of St Mirren. The stadium is the sixth home of the club and replaced Love Street.

History

Talks over a new stadium began on 15 January 2003, when the club met representatives from Aldi and Lidl. The club were looking to sell their ground at Love Street for retail development. Selling Love Street would secure the necessary funding to build the new stadium. Planning applications for a retail development at Love Street were passed on 24 May 2005 and the club subsequently sold the ground to Tesco on 25 April 2007 for £15 million. The new stadium site broke ground on 7 January 2008 and was officially opened on 31 January 2009 at a cost of £8 million. Before the first game at the new stadium there was a parade from Love Street to Greenhill Road to celebrate the opening of the stadium. Club chairman Stewart Gilmour and First Minister Alex Salmond were also present at the first match at the new ground. Alex Salmond unveiled a plaque before the game to commemorate the opening. The game between St Mirren and Kilmarnock finished in a 1–1 draw, with the first goal at the new stadium being scored by Kilmarnock striker Kevin Kyle.Dennis Wyness scored St Mirren's first goal at the new ground, in the same match. The opening match set the record attendance of 7,542, and was only surpassed in the Scottish Premiership play-off match against Dundee United, when 7,732 fans attended on 26 May 2019. St Mirren Park has also become the regular home of the Scotland national under-21 football team.

In November 2015, St Mirren agreed a two-year sponsorship deal with Renfrewshire Council to rename the stadium as the Paisley 2021 Stadium. This was to promote Paisley's bid to become a UK City of Culture in 2021. In June 2018, the stadium was renamed as The Simple Digital Arena as part of a four-year deal with Glasgow-based IT firm Simple Digital Soluti