14 Comments

Hammers play waiting game on stadium ownership

stadiumReports that West Ham will buy the London Stadium and turn it into a proper football stadium have been described as “very premature.”

There are no current plans to make an offer to buy with the Irons happy to play a waiting game rather than make the first move.

The club believes the stadium is already suitable for playing football and all possible modifications have been looked at and rejected.

Even moving the seats closer to pitch isn’t an option that would be taken up were the club to one day buy the stadium. Any major modification is cost prohibitive.

The stadium owners are expected to lose £35m this year with a £8.4m operating loss budgeted for next year. However when a naming rights partner is finally found and police and stewarding costs are brought down this could see the arena break even five years hence.

Politically, the sale of a state asset which cost £753m to build twice would be difficult to square with taxpayers and voters and there would still be a possible claim of state aid even after we have left Europe following Brexit.

We were told the stadium owner’s business plan is still sound and the insider said: “I am sure they will able to reduce their annual losses over time.”

 

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

14 comments on “Hammers play waiting game on stadium ownership

  1. Deficit of £45M and the prospect of breaking even annually in 5 years time by which time the biggest contributor the naming rights partner is chipping in. Whoopee Mr Tax payer!!

    West Ham to buy for under £40M by 2022.

  2. It makes you wonder if from the get go they have been told by advisers to sit in tight for a few seasons while things are far from perfect but eventually they will get the opportunity to purchase.
    Im sure there are many,many things we mere fans have not a clue about when it comes to the stadium.

  3. We offered to buy it some time ago. Spurs and Leyton Orient put paid to that. We could have knocked the site down and rebuilt it. I’m sick of people slagging us for being at the stadium at the tax payers expense. Blame Seb Coe and his naivety for wanting an athletics legacy. We are doing the country a favour being there in the first place. Otherwise it would be rotting. I would love for us to buy the site and rebuild. It has such potential to be a great venue.

  4. “Even moving the seats closer to pitch isn’t an option that would be taken up were the club to one day buy the stadium. Any major modification is cost prohibitive.”

    But they would say that wouldn’t they? This quote now being taken as gospel by the gullible! They’re hardly going to say “yeh with luck we will buy it for a song and for a couple of mill we can solve all the problems, move the seats forward, do away with the running track, move Stratford station closer and get rid of the popcorn”

    Believe me anything is possible.

  5. Oh sorry catching up here. Someone said there is no sense buying the stadium on the cheap as it doesn’t increase the value of the club! No of course buying a £750M stadium for £40M doesn’t increase the value of the Dave’s investment lmao 😂😂

  6. Why not just build a 1000 seat dugout on the running track for all our wannabe managers to sit on and moan about Slav and then increase the amount of executive seats to around 5k for all those financial wizards and wannabe chairman ( without the money) who spout on and on about how they could do better to park there backsides on? 😂😂😂

    • GW – Genius 😩😂

    • Will the extended executive area be called ‘The 7% Interest’ seating section 😂😂

      • No just simply the “We know better” seating enclosure equipped with state of the art Wifi to keep an eye on there £1 stock market investment which has made them all business gurus 😂😂

        • Buy Buy,Sell Sell,forget the football the interest rate has just risen to 8%.It an utter disgrace 😂😂

    • The government should cut their losses in a few years. Let us build a stadium on that grass area between the current stadium and Carpenters Road. Then reduce the existing stadium to the first tier for running & jumping events. The tax payer should contribute towards it as we’ll be saving them money in the long run.

  7. when we talk about ‘ cost £753m to build twice ‘, we need to remember that it would have been demolished after the first 480 or so million, so we only need to think about the last cost of refurbishment, and when you look at that and the’ loss ‘ it makes the government, it makes sense to let us have it cheap lol.
    I still don’t believe the goverment need to make a loss, when you include all the catering revenue and naming rights money they get.

  8. I am slightly lost with their costings, they can turn a £45 million loss this year into an £8.4 million loss next year, a great achievement, how then will it take five years to recover the rest when naming rights should give them £5 million a year alone?

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