By Hughie Southon
The E20 LLC is claimed to have lost an astonishing £300million, having signed a long agreement with West Ham United back in 2016.
That’s according to finance expert Kieran Maguire who has been revealing details of the company’s debt issues since agreeing to allow the Hammers to use the stadium as their home ground on a 99-year lease on what is now at a cost of £3.5million annually.
He explained in The Price of Football that West Ham only pay the rent for the matches in which they participate. And he adds that the running costs of E20 Stadium LLC are high because E20 signed what he refers to as an onerous contract.
He added that they were now locked into a “hash of the deal” and are locked into it for a long period of time.
He declares: “I was looking at the latest E20 accounts and they’ve already made losses of over £300million. They had a £7million floodlight upgrade, now West Ham have benefitted from that, but West Ham didn’t have to pay a penny.
They’ve got an agreement with UK athletics that when there’s an athletics tournament, is that E20 Stadium are responsible for the reconfiguration of the seats. That costs an absolute fortune.”
Claret and Hugh says: Many fans have been calling for the club to buy the stadium outright but why on earth would they do that when they are in the position described in Maguire’s quotes. Whichever way you look at it the board struck a fantastic deal with the LLC who spent much time early in the contract blaming them for their financial problems. However, this was entirely the public body’s fault for agreeing to such a deal which is so heavily loaded in the Hammers favour they have only themselves to blame and remember as yet the organisation hasn’t managed to even find naming partners. Very, very poor business by them – a coup by the Hammers.
And the second best financial coup by the West Ham board is the sale of Declan Rice to Arsenal. The Gooners have also been sucked in. (Sorry Declan, we miss you really!)
Of course the down side of moving to the London Stadium is that it is really quite unsuitable for football because of the relative distance from the pitch in comparison with a rectangular stadium. And, although some improvements have been made, it will obviously never be ideal with the configuration as built. In the mean time the club are enjoying the financial benefits of a stadium much larger in capacity than the old Boleyn Ground. You’ve got to concede that David Sullivan and the other board members have made a nice little earner there. As Del Boy might say, “Cushty, Rodney, cushty!”