West Ham appear to have all but confirmed a story Claret and Hugh published earlier this week. We understand that there are now 34,000 fans on the Olympic Stadium OS season ticket priority waiting list with just 9,000 seats available.
In the club’s official stadium newsletter released this week West Ham confirm that “upward of 98 per cent (of current season ticket holders) taking up their seat, the Club have begun the process of inviting supporters on the 30,000-plus strong Priority List.With some six months still to go before the big kick-off in August, the Hammers have already sold more Season Tickets at their new 54,000-seater home than the 35,016 capacity of the Boleyn Ground. “
We know the current number of season ticket holders at the Boleyn Ground is 26,000 so we can now calculate that around 25,500 (98%) decided to renew their season ticket. The newsletter also confirms that the total number of Olympic season tickets sold has surpassed the capacity of the Boleyn Ground (35,000). We know that West Ham has almost sold out the 3,700 corporate seats so a fair estimate would be that they have sold around standard 31,000 season tickets so far meaning existing season ticket holders introduced around 6,500 new season ticket holders on their plus two policy.
Claret and Hugh understands the season ticket limit for the former Olympic Stadium has been set at 40,000 for a variety of reasons which means around 9,000 season tickets will be available to the 34,000 supporters on the list.
Don’t forget the additional ‘free’ 5,000 tickets per match going to Local Organisations as part of the deal with the Newham Council and the LLDC.
They have accounted for that although it is up to 100,000 tickets per year rather than a stipulation of 5,000 per match. I.E category A games against Spurs, Man City, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea could be zero while Stoke, West Brom, Watford etc could be up to 10,000. Could also include Cup games so as long as they offer up to 100,000 tickets they fulfil the contractual obligation.
So from 54,000 (40,000 goes to season ticket holders, 3,700 to corporate members, 3,000 for away fans) That adds up to 46,700 so around 7,300 remaining. The premier league insist that 5% of stadium capacity should remain for home general sale (2,700) leaving 4,500 for the Newham deal.
The first season was always going to be a sell out because of the curiosity value. The real test will be renewals for the second year at Stratford. Its a good situation to be in for the fans as the pressure will be on the club and the manager to produce good football with results in order to keep these new season ticket holders.
We got to keep the ‘West Ham Way’ going on the pitch each season, get better players in & really go for it. Watch some of city’s games on the telly & you can’t help but see hundreds of empty seats. Cup games are the worst for them. Hate to see that happen at OS for us…. not looking forward to this move.. nothing anywhere beats a game udder the lights at the Boleyn. That is something that we will never be able to recreate at any new ground, especially a souless bowl with a token amount of ‘Westhamification’ bolted on. Teams fear coming to us at the moment, next season it will feel like we are the away team as much as the other team.. our pictch is one of the smallest in the PL & my guess we will have one of the biggest next year to try & make the fans nearer the action. If this not correct plz feel free to enlighten me..
Well we may as well all go and top ourselves eh? I bet you’r a bundle of fun at a party.Why are some people never happy unless they are putting a downer on everything and everyone?
This begs the question, why don’t they open up all the covered seats for our PL games and sell the tickets, I know there are stipulations about being no more than 150metres from the pitch for the Uefa License but who cares if the taxpayer gets more money and more people get to watch football each week, I don’t see why they can’t just cover the seats again for any matches that required the Uefa category stadium ?