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Have West Ham made secret deal with Westfield?

westfiledInternet rumours suggest West Ham may have done a secret deal with Westfield Shopping centre in Stratford to avoid a home football crowd at the London Stadium on Boxing day. Our picture below shows the crowds swarming throughout the shopping centre the day after Christmas.

West Ham played 230 miles away from Stratford this Boxing day in Wales as they beat Swansea 4-1 but the claim suggests we may have to get used to playing away from home on Boxing day fixtures as it is the busiest day of the year for the shopping centre as tens of thousands extra shoppers flock for the start of the sales.

Glenn Thompson, who works for Atos, the IT company in charge of compiling the Premier League fixtures has previously explained some football clubs and police ask for clubs to play away on Boxing day for a variety of reasons:

“One of the things the clubs submit, along with their data requests, is the clubs they don’t wish to play on Boxing Day. You will get a lot of clubs who say they don’t want to play their local rivals on Boxing Day. There are a lot of reasons for that. Clubs will always get a bumper crowd on Boxing Day, no matter who they play, so they want the fixture on another Saturday to guarantee high revenue gates. It might be that, if they play their local derby and it’s a high category game, it will require a lot of police and, as it’s a bank holiday, it will incur additional police charges. The police may ask for certain fixtures not to be played on Boxing Day as well.”

 

About Sean Whetstone

I am Season Ticket Holder in West stand lower at the London Stadium and before that, I used to stand in the Sir Trevor Brooking Lower Row R seat 159 in the Boleyn Ground and in the Eighties I stood on the terraces of the old South Bank. I am a presenter on the West Ham Podcast called MooreThanJustaPodcast.co.uk. A Blogger on WestHamTillIdie.com a member of the West Ham Supporters Advisory Board (SAB), Founder of a Youtube channel called Mr West Ham Football at http://www.youtube.com/MrWestHamFootball, I am also the associate editor here at Claret and Hugh. Life Long singer of bubbles! Come on you Irons! Follow me at @Westhamfootball on twitter

6 comments on “Have West Ham made secret deal with Westfield?

  1. Such a deal would make perfect sense. I wondered why we were away on Boxing Day and New Years Eve.

  2. Makes sense if they have, so long as it’s not a northern club it’s a pretty good idea, bearing in mind we are away New Year’s Day as well is it possible it extended to that also ?

  3. what a load of BS the FA sort out the fixtures, they have a meeting with all chairmen and take their input then they generate the fixtures, clubs can’t choose who they play or when, especially if its got anything to do with shopping. where do you get this from….?

    • Any club can put requests in to play home or away. For example we have put in a request to play our first games away from home next season as the 2017 World Championship will be played at the London Stadium until 13th August and it takes up to two weeks to convert the stadium back to football mode. This means we may have to play our first two games away from home. I am not saying the above rumour is true but I could see it being part of the compromise of playing in a multi use, multi venue stadium and area.

    • The criteria used for fixtures includes ‘We also have to work round events like political conferences, carnivals and other major sporting events….’ and ‘Any club away on Boxing Day should be at home on New Year’s day and vice versa’. So it would seem like clubs can request when to play.

  4. I dont know how true this is but there is certainly some logic to it i would have thought.

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