Irons OS critics flattened by £20m plus answer!

Hard core critics of the deal which has seen the Hammers land the Olympic Stadium as their new home face a reality check.

For already – before a single game of football has been played in the Stadium – around £20 million has been harvested from other sporting events.

The Rugby World Cup finished with 307,255 Rugby fans visiting the Olympic Stadium either for the warm up game or one of the five contested at the venue.

This came on top of an estimated 100,000 athletics fans who attended the Great Newham Run or the three days of the Sainsburys Anniversary games back in July.

If you average a very conservative £50 per ticket across the estimated 407,000 tickets  the Olympic Stadium sold this year you get a sum in excess of £20m.

Precisely how much of this is shared with the Stadium owners E20 Stadium LLP  we can’t be sure but it would be a sizeable chunk.

This Saturday there is a Rugby League match at the OS with The Race of Champions motor event following on the  November 20. These events are likely sell out and add another 110,000 visitors to the Stadium and another £5.5m of ticket revenue.

These OS attendance figures and ticket revenue show clearly that the Olympic Stadium is a multi purpose Stadium which can generate revenue and income outside of football and was not merely converted for West Ham’s benefit.

Rugby Attendances at the Olympic Stadium

2015-08-29 Barbarians v Samoa – 41,039
2015-09-23 France v Romania – 50,626
2015-09-24 New Zealand v Namibia – 51,820
2015-10-04 Ireland v Italy – 53,187
2015-10-07 South Africa v USA – 54,658
2015-10-30 South Africa v Argentina – 55,925

We cover this very topic on the MooreThanJustAPodcast episode last week  which was the inspiration for this article

You can listen to the podcast at at http://www.moorethanjustapodcast.co.uk