Have West Ham made secret deal with Westfield?

Internet 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.”