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.