Last week the Government rejected a call by a coalition of 14 supporters trusts to hold a public inquiry into details of West Ham’s agreement with the LLDC in renting the Olympic Stadium. But the issue doesn’t seem to want to go away with a Supporters’ trust coalition statement describing the government’s response as “wholly inadequate”.
The Petition was backed by a host of supporters’ trusts, including Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Manchester United, Fulham, QPR, Aston Villa, Norwich City, Everton, Leicester City, Charlton Athletic, AFC Wimbledon and Leyton Orient.
I don’t remember these same supporters coming together to a demand for a public inquiry when Manchester City struck a far better deal at the expense of taxpayers in 2003!
£112m of lottery and public money was used to build the Manchester stadium for the 2002 Commonwealth Games and Manchester city council still owns the stadium to this day, on which it spent £22m of council tax payers’ money to have the running track removed and convert it for Man City to occupy as tenants after the Commonwealth Games.
Manchester City handed their former Maine Road home to the council, and spent £20m installing bars, restaurants and corporate entertaining areas. The terms of the initial rent agreement were for City to pay the council a proportion of ticket income above Maine Road’s 32,000 capacity, which has produced an average of £2m for the council annually between 2003-2011 (£16m in total). Under 32,000 spectators they paid absolutely nothing instead paying 50% of every ticket sold over 32,000 after costs were deducted.
In 2011 Manchester City renegotiated the terms of their agreement to rent the stadium from Manchester City Council. Manchester City now a flat fee of £2.5m for the annual rent plus a further £2m per year for the naming rights of the Stadium.
That same year Man City agreed a £400m 10 year deal with Etihad Airways which included the naming rights of the Stadium said to worth £10m of the £40m per year Man City received according to the Daily Telegraph in 2011.
So Manchester City allegedly make £5.5m per profit from their deal with Manchester City Council after the naming rights are taken into account. Not bad for the richest club in the Premier League I would argue. Yet it is West Ham who are subjected to the Spanish inquisition by these supporters’ trusts fuelled by the hungry media.
The rise of social media, eh? Every Tom, ******** and Harry now has access to a mass audience they didn’t have in 2003 and thinks they’re entitled to not just have a view, but to have it taken seriously by everyone else.
There are endless threads on this and sites addressing the OS issues, but tellingly they’re all fuelled by fans, not clubs. Self-righteous, pontificating keyboard warriors who would rather snipe at us than spend their time supporting their own clubs. But the truth is that the potential claimants on the ‘State Aid’ charge – the affected commercial entities, i.e. the other London clubs – have all taken legal advice and been told there’s no case to answer, so they’re not wasting their time pursuing it. They’re not even commenting or encouraging their own fans’ groups. The silence from those who supposedly have most to lose is deafening.
Seriously, if Daniel Levy though he could make life difficult for West Ham, would he not be shouting ‘foul’ from the rooftops?
Sean, could the club bid for naming rights, say, for a long term 10 or 20 year deal, payable in installments? Such a deal would be at today’s prices and discounted for the long term nature of the contract. They could then resell the rights on shorter term contracts, say 4 year terms. That might (or might not) lose a couple of million on the first resale but after that should be earning a regular profit on future deals’ especially as inflation kicks in.
Hi Sean, great post, I can’t see what they actually hope to gain from seeing the agreement anyway… from what I can guess, they just want to have the hollow victory of saying I told you so, well breaking news for them the LLDC already wasted £572m on a stadium that was poorly designed with legacy concerns put to the back of their minds even when it was obvious that there were fundamental flaws in its ability to be converted post Olympic’s, in fact it was the Chairpeople of our club that highlighted this to them prior to the Olympics and us being awarded any bid wins.
Great article Sean, I tried to explain some of what you’ve written on the Charlton Life forum (who are driving this petition) but they are very selective in what they take on board while accusing West Ham fans of lapping up the propaganda from Gold, Sullivan, Brady and West Ham fan Martin Samuels.
They claim their petition is not aimed at West Ham when all they hope for is a renegotiating of the (yet unknown) terms of our deal so West Ham wiould have to pay more rent, more money upfront towards conversion or both. Hypocritical or what ?
They are also concerned about West Ham apparently being able to flood the area with cheap or free tickets and steal (potential) Charlton fans.
Fact is: All clubs use cheap ticket schmes (kids for a quid) when trying to sell out their grounds, including Charlton.
That measure is not dependent on income streams and finances, it just makes sense if you’d rather have a full ground to have a better atmosphere.
If and to what degree West Ham may struggle trying to fill the OS remains to be seen.
But early indications are that the club may actually be looking to increase capacity in the OS by another 10.000 seats which would suggest that demand for West Ham tickets in the OS is there.
No one is keeping anybody from becoming a lifelong Charlton Athletic fan.
It fills me with a degree of confidence though that the petition seems to be grinding to a standstill at around 25.000 signatures.
Maybe not too many football fans/taxpayers are that concerned after all.
If you look at the money involved here 280 million are a storm in a teacup really, peanuts actually when you consider how governments manage to waste much bigger amounts on a daily basis, usually on some sort of pointless infrastructure project that shortens travel times by train between London and Birmingham by ten minutes or buying overpriced military equipment which doesn’t suit its purpose and may for that reason rarely or never be used.
That stuff would be much more worthy of starting petitions and asking questions.