22 Comments

Karren Brady defends London Stadium deal

Brady2A written response by Karren Brady to the Mayor of London’s independent review into the former Olympic Stadium has been published online after a freedom of information request. The eleven-page email was sent by Brady to Moore Stephens on 15th November just two weeks before the publication of the Moore Stephens report on 1st December last year.

Talking about the reason to move Brady said in response: “Our ground was too small to accommodate a large proportion of our local fanbase at a price they could afford. It was becoming increasingly difficult to access and was impossible to redevelop. We understood therefore that if we were ever to grow our capacity, it would have to be outside of the Boleyn Ground. West Ham United, along with the London Borough of Newham, seemed the obvious partnership as we were both here forever and the community being discussed were ours be they residents of the borough or supporters of the football Club. We also had quickly realised that many of our local community were priced out of being able to attend matches at the Boleyn Ground and with the capacity restricted there was little we could do to address that but with a greater capacity we realised we had an opportunity around something that my Board have always believed and invested heavily in – bringing affordable family football back to the Premier League. Many of our fanbase had also migrated out to Essex and we realised that with the transport links that Stratford enjoyed that would only improve as part of the Olympic investment, that there was an opportunity to bring many of them regularly back to East London to re-discover an area that we truly believed would at the heart of a significant regeneration project”

KarrenBradyLater in the Email  Brady said: “Our fans are at the heart of everything we do and we therefore saw the opportunity. We are only the custodians of our football Club on their behalf. Most football Clubs do not make money. Every penny we make is reinvested into our squad to keep us competitive in the most competitive league in the world. We saw that the Stadium could give us a platform from which to build. If we were to sell our ground and invest what we had into this proposition we could work hard to use the opportunity afforded by the increased capacity to grow in line with our supporters expectations. The Stadium is not failing to perform in line with expectation because of the deal struck with West Ham. At the time we bid we were told the Stadium could make a profit with West Ham but without it, it would make a substantial loss. Had the LLDC pursued any other option, we understand the long-term operational costs of maintaining the stadium would still have been highly substantial.”

Karren_Brady_in_front_of_Olympic_StadiumSpeaking about media coverage surrounding the London Stadium Brady added: “Every time a report, an investigation or scrutiny into the Stadium’s management takes place West Ham appear to take the brunt of the criticism. It makes for better headlines to talk about West Ham and the so labelled ‘great deal’ that we got. In reality we didn’t have to leave our Stadium that we owned and had full control over. We were asked to consider a monumental and costly move to the Olympic Stadium. At that time there were no other viable options that would retain the iconic building and deliver in line with the governments long term legacy goals to spark social and economic regeneration.”

You can read the full 11-page response from Karren Brady at https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/449832/response/1091134/attach/4/Moore%20Stephens%20Brady%20submission%20response%20to%20questions%20Redacted.pdf?cookie_passthrough=1

 

 

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

22 comments on “Karren Brady defends London Stadium deal

  1. She forgot to tell of the unforseen hardships in delivering on their spec to its supporters but even so left them millions of pounds better off in the long term next level or not !
    This was never done for us supporters , only a fool would accept that ? I’ll stop there !!
    You’re being very mischievous today Sybil 😉

  2. I am in a mischievous mood and I haven’t written the latest European State Aid complaint story yet by a rival London football club.

  3. Don’t people ever get bored of slagging off their own club? It doesn’t matter what the article is about the comments are the same. You could put up your shopping list & it still wouldn’t matter.

    • Don’t people ever get what they have done !!! On their shopping list was a huge profit orientated buisness deal called the London stadium ! Which is all achievable without spending a penny starting with the old girl ! See what you’ve done Sybil !!!😂

      • Her famous quote is my fav to get us on board ” a world class stadium filled with world class players”. That was with all the extra money we could spend oin players …full of **** comes too mind …what ever happened to the 40 million pound striker a couple years ago …great business for there pockets but not four our so called champions league side we were sposed to have by now 😂😂😂😂😂😂😖😖🙅🙅

  4. Well, let’s add to the mischief. Brady ultimately serves the same ideological interests as those advocated by a Tory government. Not the interests of Fans. Many clubs have redeveloped without destroying legacy, history, memories and location. Spurs under Levy’s astute leadership are doing that right now. So why couldn’t our club’s leadership have been more creative and imaginative in planning for a ‘New Boleyn’? Rhetorical: the answer is the greedy lure of private wealth. Achieving 50k plus home gates is a powerful lure.

    Put this into re-development perspective. On the docks where my Dad took me as a kid in the mid-50’s who’d have imagined a marina, an international airport, and an East London ‘branded’ University with a modern transport infrastructure. All in peaceful co-existence with ‘ye olde worlde’ Woolwich ferry.

    Reading Lady Brady’s statement. – cheers Sean – It crossed my mind that we shouldn’t confuse anticipated profits with wannabe prophets.

  5. Essex – slagging off leadership of our club is not disloyalty. I have loved the Irons since my first game with my cousin in 1960 against the Villa, mesmerised as only kids can be by swirling mist in the floodlights pressed to the wall of the chicken run. I love the Irons that my ancestor Jimmy Ruffell turned out for. My Mum played piano at the wedding reception of Jim Barrett Jnr to her cousin. My son played on the Boleyn against the Hammers for Swindon Town conflicted as to his loyalties for 90 minutes as an avid Iron himself. That love will never die.

    My point is that while it’s possible to love our club – its history, its future – it’s also fair game to constructively critique the quality of leadership offered by those with the relative wealth, power and privilege to control its direction.

  6. Yep, Lazarus, that’s also what I see.

    • 100% ruff ! Beat me by a year ! We’ve earned the right mate , we say what we do because of our love affair with this great club ! My old man was a docker too mate ! West India docks ,
      Charlie browns ? Brought some memories back their bruv ! 👍

  7. When the club was owned by the Icelandic consortium they had a option on the land behind West Ham tube station where the old London overseas mail office was the idea was to bu8ld a new stadium but we all know what happened to the owners when the economic crash happened WH was virtually bankrupt & became owned by the Banks. I hope Brady remained that idiot Khan that the government had agreed to sell the stadium to WH but after Levy threatened legal action Boris got cold feet & cancelled the sale, so none of this is the fault of WH right from the start of the building programme Blair was told that after the Olympics it could only utilised as a football stadium but he did not want to pay the cost to ensure it was built so it could be easily converted to football so Mr Khan over to your Labour friends who are ultimately responsible for the whole fiasco

  8. I guess we all have a different view of it, I would take Sullivan and Gold over Cearns or Terry Brown any day of the week and twice on Sunday, the numbers are all in black and white, without Gold and Sullivan we would probably be in League two or worse, its hard to understand snobbery among some of our own support because they wanted us to remain in a sh1thole with little future. some of the worst refreshments food and drink of any stadium and an atmosphere no better or worse than the LS for many years since the pitch was rotated for the last expansion. Imho seems like saying it was sh1thole yes but our sh1thole, maybe we can talk Rowan Atkinson into making a blackadder series of it with 35000 baldericks ? Only joking of course but don’t go all Dan Roan on us in not letting any facts get in the way of a good story boys. Football is a business every club deals with the same story, they all think the chairmen are screwing them over, look at the accounts we aren’t making any money each season, Sean provides us the info through good journalism. Lets look forward together instead of being bitter about what is now history.

    • Totally agree re Terry Brown, he was the one who went cheap and picked Roeder which in my view we never recovered from that relegation and we sold the heart of the team.
      Unfortunately Brown still owns a share of the club, he sold out and made a fortune to the icelandics, then bought back in cheap when it all went ti*s .He’s still hanging in there waiting to make a turn again.

    • Fek me 32 they were barrow boys earlier with a air of discontent ? Make you’re mind up for fek sake as you’re starting to confuse me ? Dave puts you’re comments in line with most of us baldricks mate , but the dildos have a cunning plan of their own ! And its been rumbled !
      No west ham supporter should take these clowns for face value ! They saw an opportunity before someone else did , shame that because we could still be at the shytehole as you call it but most of us call it home ! Smellyer the better ! Like a kid with a favourite pillow ! And in a new or developing refit ! The shytehole is the track !! But each to his own !.

      • Lol Laz, they are barrow boys the two opinions aren’t mutually exclusive, the facts are though that for whatever reason they saved us and they were a lot better than the last few lots, it would have made far more sense to let us go into liquidation and buy us on the cheap without the £110m of debt, UP was dilapidated, I loved the place the same as everyone else but it was too small, the atmosphere changed the moment they moved the pitch and the game has moved on, I want us to actually win something in whats left of my life and to have the best chance of that we had to make a move, the LS was a big step up, maybe the way the transfer market is going we will see those rich owners coming in and taking it off them because they won’t spend £100m on a player, I have the same suspisions as you mate but time will tell. They spend a lot more than many chairmen and they back their managers up to a point, the way things are going we have a bright future and are pretty stable there is a lot to be said for that. I can’t see what benefit there is to crying over spilled milk for some of our supporters, UP is history now, we never achieved that much there truth be told even when we had the nucleus of the 66 World Cup squad, times change the only thing that remains the same is us fans so imho lets look to the future and creating a new history, ignore the stupid comments that come out of the chairmen and focus on what we see on the pitch we can’t do bugger all about it anyway andthe chairmen will probably be dead a long time before most of us as they say they are only custodians for the fans.

  9. Many people might have forgot the original plans at the time of the Bond scheme had planning permission to make Upton Park 45,000 with all the corners filled in, I remember at the time thinking wow.
    They also had plans drawn up to be able to make the old East stand bigger but the bus Garage couldn’t be moved and the council refused to relocate it.
    As we all know the Bus garage shut down several years ago, and the option was there to build over the road behind the east stand.
    For Brady to say they couldn’t redevelop Upton Park is crap, they had plans signed off in 89 when the bond scheme failed.
    Our board didn’t want to spend £300m redeveloping Upton Park, let alone £700m Tottenham / Chelsea / Arsenal and now I see Palace are doing Selhurst to 45,000 then to 55,000 (without moving)
    Unfortunately we (the club) have paid G&S £50m on interest on their loan so far, which would have gone a long way to paying the debt back if they had made it interest free like most of the other owners ( Man U excluded ). Remember they have sold our main asset ( our ground) and not put a penny in. They have just loaned the club the money and dragged West Ham’s name through the mire for the last 4 years.
    To me they have broken so many promises to the fans I don’t think you can ever trust them.
    Brady spends most of her time trying to get in the media as does G&S, fans of top clubs in the world leave it to their managers to talk to the press.
    I could go on and on, and on but I’m probably boring everyone already and not saying anything new.
    Makes you feel better though …..

  10. No one but no one can destroy our history or our memories. Very emotive words but absolutely impossible.

  11. I suppose not many will agree with me but I thought this rather good response from Brady. Albeit it does suffer in places from rather poor English and a lack being proof read but then I am a retired civil servant !

    The one thing I do get from reading the response is that it reads like an opening salvo in a campaign to be the stadium operator succeeding LS185 and E20. I think they could do worse.

  12. How much the cost of running a stadium this size , then how much profit for stadium type players as promised , on what will they pawn to do that ? Remortgage the stadium ???
    Tickets ,up? Everything up ? Another hit from us , the moment they take over ? If? They will be in dept for eons , and if they borrow the money from themselves ! Fek me !! BINGO !!!!!!.
    They can’t lose can they . believe and hope in today’s world in business is worse off than 20 years ago , its rife in greed , believe what ever you want but I’ve got me rocks from eBay and intend to use em lol! As for the pitch change what the fek do you call the track 😂 it should be called the grand canyon. Lol. Let’s see a statement in this window , they’ve got billions ! Make a non profit loan , the money in the stadium is more than cover for them ! And let’s get it right its not going to collapse financially is it , they certainly don’t think so do they ! So do the right thing and take us to the next level , you can’t lose ?? Make a statement and shut me up , one week left ! Do it , dig deep and spend some money . as for saviours as said someone else would have bought it anyway , as said the liquidators would have been inundated with offers and even before when advertised we were going under. But we ended up with a bunch of amateurs from brum !! All they’ve ever done is spend minimal and float , Birmingham supporters hounded them out ffs they couldn’t even buy players there because its only ever the clubs money they use , same with us , without the TV money we would be crushed ,
    Let’s hope its never pulled ?? As that’s our next level lol. I’m going back on eBay now to buy some beards 😂 ,I’ll keep me eyes open for a couple of players as well !😉. spend some money !!!!
    Top teams do ! The next level ones ffs , RIP 32 😂😂 could be the long haul!!!

    • How many clubs wont be fkd if the Sky money went?? Half would fold over night..
      I’m not saying that no one should say anything against SuGo as I agree with alot of what has been said. My point was that the same comments are being made over & over again on every article. Some media hack throws another name into the ring & it’s taken as gospel, cue the ‘liars, porn twins, mugged us off, pulled the wool over our eyes’ etc etc

      I have been going on & off since the mid 70s & I have fully taken off my claret & bkue specs. Let’s not kid ourselves, the BG that was pulled down was not the same ground as it was when I first started going or anyone else that was born before 1990. Trigger’s broom comes to mind. Three sides had been replaced & the ‘chicken run’ wasn’t the same when the seats went in. The pitch had been moved as well. The only thing that didn’t change was where it was & it was a b1tch to get away from after the game.
      This extra money promised from the move to take us to the next level wont come flowing in overnight, this is only our secound season & the move cost the club millions.
      The transfer market has gone over a cliff since PSG had a brain fart & spent so much on Naymar, average players are now worth £20m+. The only way clubs our size can keep pace is to sell out to a nameless billionaire with more money than sense. If that makes SuGo sh1t loads of dosh, so what.

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