It seems that any suggestion that West Ham’s new-look board may be up for doing a deal with London Mayor Sadiq Khan over the future of London Stadium is, as we suggested a couple of days ago, very much wide of the mark.
Clearly, the ‘official’ stance (even if it just a negotiating gambit) is that the new ownership sees the Stadium as something of a poisoned chalice, needing both huge investment and major incentives before the club are remotely interested in buying the white elephant former Olympic venue.
London mayor Sadiq Khan is unlikely to see West Ham rush in to solve his London Stadium headache any time soon
As we surmised in our article “Sadiq Khan’s hope for quick fix sale for London Stadium may be clutching at straws” (Claret and Hugh, 27th September) news has come from within the football club to back up our suggestions.
Hammers.news in their ‘exclusive’ today quote their own club insider as being lukewarm, to say the least, about owning outright what amounts to a massive liability. Just as the current owners have found to their cost, the stadium with West Ham in situ is losing about £19 million a year. The outlet:
“put it to a top source inside West Ham whether the new-look ownership structure could buy the London Stadium and redevelop it in line with supporters’ wishes…
“It’s worth zero as you take on a £20m per year loss and quite soon there is possibly some very heavy capital expenditure on the ground itself,”
“It only works if they throw in some more land or property but the real problem is the contract with UK Athletics.
“It’s a very complicated issue.”
So no easy fix for the Mayor.
Daniel Kretinsky is far too wily an opponent to do anything anytime soon and is more likely to wait a while until the legal owners, London Stadium LLP, (wholly owned by the Greater London Authority), are in a far greater world of financial pain before popping up with an offer to take it off their hands with, no doubt, all of the surrounding land thrown in.
Five years? Could well be. No rush for the Czech Sphinx, shortly to be confirmed as West Ham’s largest shareholder and now evidently flexing his muscles behind the scenes. After all, with a 99 year ‘bullet proof’ lease protecting West Ham’s position in the meantime, he has plenty of time to squeeze the current owners until the pips squeak.
Unless the Mayor finds another buyer to take over as ‘owner’ of the West Ham head lease. Does he have Staveley’s phone number? Now that could be interesting.
Martin, Having never resorted to obscenities or libellous comments I am at a loss to understand why you have stopped publishing any comment I try to post. A underlying lack of confidence perhaps, manifesting itself in a super sensitivity to any alternative views?
Lol Steve.. comments without obsceneties will make it onto the site- as you’ve just discovered.
Sorry Martin and all those comments from others, but Khan can’t simply sell the stadium to Staveley or any other third party without the defacto permission of West Han and UK Athletics.
They can’t simply bypass the agreements already in place and Staveley would want to demolish the stadium and redevelop something that is impossible without the permission of both tenants. There is a lot of naivety about this actual legal agreements in place.
Stavely and co are not going to invest in stadium and land etc without control of the club. They would just turn into the new landlords making a loss and hindered by Kretinsky and Sullivan throwing spanner’s in the works.
Say what you like about Brady though as a rental agreement it was the deal of the century.
Policing costs are huge for the stadium because of it’s accessibility and we know that sponsorship as it is is a problem because the stadium has a name The Olympic Stadium or London Stadium that is established a bit like being typecast as an actor it’s hard for a new one to take root.
The solution is to knock it down, not only the athletics contract but also the contract with Delaware North is a problem and the food and drink available are bang average.
Kretinsky can wait until they fix those things and provide planning permission to make it viable to make the changes necessary to convert it.
Good to know or at least believe that the owners of West Ham United are in it for the football rather than for the development of real estate.
Just hope that our owners don’t fall foul of the ridiculous rules of FIFA, UEFA or FA which have apparently been broken by the Manchester City crew. These same rules have put WHU and many others into financial straightjackets. Offsetting purchases by offering long, long contracts so that they may spread the costs and avoid sanctions imposed by the ‘sport’s’ administrators.
COYI
So it’s as we are stuck in a soulless bowl with no plans to at least make it fit football , I think the wrong person got it staveleys consortium had real plans to buy the club the stadium and surrounding land, kretinsky has no plans it’s status quo,no change
We are in a great position to sit tight and see what develops, the only issue could be if the GLA sell the stadium to another party that is disadvantageous to West Ham.
i said the same thing the other day that there is nothing to stop Staveley from buying the land and stadium as thats what they are after anyway.