E20 want £300,000 per year for West Ham Pitch surround

London Assembly Member and West Ham fan Keith Prince today also quizzed LLDC senior management about the London Stadium and in particular the pitch surround and the expert determination.

LLDC CEO Lyn Garner replied: ‘It was an expert determination as part of the examination of the concession agreement, the expert who is a QC determined that the track cover needed to be fit for purpose and his preference was that it be a different colour to the pitch so a contrasting colour and the reason we were at expert determination was that West Ham bought forward a case that the track cover should be claret and that was declined by the expert, he said West Ham did not have the right for the track cover to be Claret. Following the expert determination, West Ham have come to us and said we would really like a Claret track actually, can we have one and we will pay for it. What they have offered to pay for is the cost of putting it in and taking it out of storage. The cost of a 4G track cover is around £280,000 to £300,000, its a one-off cost for E20 and it will last between 7 and 9 years in terms of 4G. I want to say a little bit why we decided to reject that offer. The unique nature of the London Stadium means the track cover is visible in the television arch over the globe to millions.  Given its unique nature and given its promotional value to the club and any future potential naming rights partner that might want to take an interest. We have said we would be willing to sit down to design a dual-branded  track cover, part West Ham, part London Stadium with us reserving the London Stadium bit for any Naming rights partner who might want to put their colour in.”        

“We think that the club should pay not a one-off fee for the track cover but an annual fee, so we have gone back and said we not prepared to accept the one-off price but we would like to talk to you about a commercial fee where you pay us an amount of money per year to pay for the track cover to be put in and we will bear the capital cost”

Garner confirmed the annual fee being sought from West Ham is around £300,000 per annum.

Garner also confirmed that the pitch surround cannot be branded with logos or names of a future naming rights partner as it would breach Premier league rules but she said they was nothing to stop them using the corporate colour of a naming rights partner.

The coverage can be found at  https://www.london.gov.uk/london-assembly-plenary-2018-09-06 Fast forward to 2 hours and 41 minutes.