The stadium

kevinchicharito

I am a big hammer from Norway, been to the new stadium a couple of times. Haven't been to Boleyn, (only watched every documentary about it) but just can't help the bitterness of missing the ground and the old West Ham feeling.
What do you guys actually think of the stadium and the atmosphere.
Do you guys think we will move away from London Stadium anytime soon? and actually get our own stadium.
Anyways good game yesterday, we really looked like an football team today, give him 10 years!

buffybegood

It's been a while since I last went to the London Stadium, and I wasn't that impressed tbh, and, reading here and on other forums, it's only getting worse (in part by the fact that it's starting to age already). The main thing for me is the stadium itself, the fans are so far away from the pitch. It wasn't designed to be a football stadium, or even a permanent stadium of the current size as the top half was supposed to be dismantled leaving capacity at about 23k I think. The rake of the seating is just too shallow, so, even allowing for the athletics track, the shallow rake means that the seats go out rather than up, and it isn't anywhere near as easy to create a good atmosphere. I'm not saying a good atmosphere is impossible, just that it's much harder.

Added to this is the fact that a constant complaint seems to be the number of neutral supporters or, even worse, openly opposition fans in the home sections which not only dilutes the atmosphere but has started to lead to trouble between opposing fans within home sections.

As to moving away, my gut feeling is that we're going to stick it out until we're allowed to buy the stadium; it's losing millions of pounds every year, and the maintenance costs are only going to keep rising. Whether we then look to buy it to build a new, purpose built stadium on the site, or only buy it with planning permission to completely redevelop a prime piece of real estate into, say, housing with us moving to a new site, who knows? I can't see the stadium still in council hands in 20 years' time if it's still losing a fortune and costing Londoners money each and every year, thanks to a lease they can't get out of.

ASLEFshrugged

Where would we move?

There’s nowhere to build a stadium in Newham so it would be outside the borough and given the cost of land it might have to be outside London

Wherever we went there wouldn’t be the level of public transport that Stratford has

OutcastLondoner

You can’t create atmosphere if most people don’t want to get involved. Plenty of grumbling but so many actually just stay quiet whenever someone tries to get a song going. It’s not about neutrals, I’ve got a season ticket right next to the away fans, which is probably one of the best parts of the stadium but still can be very disappointing.

Stadium’s not great but I think it’s more about the modern premier league fan.

claretandbluesky

I suspect we will remain as tenants until the Govt feel they can off load it without too much political kickback. At that point we will buy it at a good price using the work needing doing as the means to negotiate down. We will then redevelop what's there into a slightly better football stadium. I imagine this will take place after a new owner comes in for us. I felt sure that Kaplinsky was going to buy out Sullivan and Gold's shares once the sales clause with the Govt had expired, but with his purchase of the Post Office he may have changed his intentions.

buffybegood

I'm guessing you meant Kretinsky and Royal Mail? Not sure who Kaplinsky (Natasha? 🤣😂🤣) is and no-one is buying the Post Office, certainly not while the mis-carriage of justice is still being resolved.

claretandbluesky

That's the one...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg93390808o

This is where it's at at present regard Royal Mail. He seems very committed to it.

ASLEFshrugged

The stadium is owned by the Mayor of London/Greater London Authority rather than the government and the sales clause expired in March 2023

When asked in July about selling Sadiq Khan said "If a deal was too good to say no to then we’d have to have a conversation". I don't think we'll be getting it cheap

buffybegood

ASLEFshrugged said:

The stadium is owned by the Mayor of London/Greater London Authority rather than the government and the sales clause expired in March 2023

When asked in July about selling Sadiq Khan said "If a deal was too good to say no to then we’d have to have a conversation". I don't think we'll be getting it cheap

Give it another 15 years of losing millions of pounds each year, with necessary maintenance costs rising, and I think they'll just be looking to offload it. By that stage the people making the decisions will be distanced from the original deal and any legacy sentiment; they'll just be looking at how much it's costing them every year.

ASLEFshrugged

A bit of context

Stadium loss 2023/24
£20.9m

Total GLA expenditure inc Met Police, TfL
2023/24
£16.3bn

ASLEFshrugged

Sean Whetstone put this on Twitter Monday

"The London Stadium is extremely unlikely to be directly owned by West Ham in our lifetimes without huge hurdles being overcome. Last week, we revealed that costs for the London Stadium have passed £1.2 billion, with £710m of that coming from accumulated losses.

In 2013 London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) signed a 99-year concessionaire agreement with West Ham worth an initial £2.5m per year, which has since grown to £4m per season.

With so much public money invested, no living politician will approve the public asset sale, and if truth be known, no one would want to buy it unless it was for a nominal fee. Onerous contracts also made it almost impossible to sell without paying many more millions in compensation.

The final obstacle is state aid regulations, EU regulations that prohibit public authorities from giving selective financial advantages to companies, including football clubs, which distorts competition. UEFA, the governing body for football in Europe, must ensure its member clubs comply with these rules despite the UK leaving the EU.

It had been hoped that the potential dismantling of the LLDC in 2025 would lead to the London Stadium being leased by a third party, but in the end, the LLDC was just slimmed down instead after losing its planning powers in April this year, and the toxic London Stadium asset was transferred to a Greater London Authority (GLA) holding company.

There had been talk over companies leasing the wider Queen Elizabeth Park and all of the venues, including the London Stadium, but the separation of the stadium from the park now makes that unlikely.

Long-term, the most sensible solution is to lease West Ham the stadium to operate it themselves in a similar model to that Manchester City enjoys.

The challenge to that deal is the indivduals involved. London Mayor Sadiq Khan and West Ham Vice Chairman Karren Brady don't get on politically or personally, and it is difficult to see a deal being concluded while both are still in their posts.

Khan will not face another election until May 2028, while Brady has been at West Ham since 2010 and shows no sign of stepping down despite pressure from protestors to leave.

Either one, or both vacating their current roles could be the the key to unlocking West Ham's stadium ambitions and creating the breakthrough to conclude a deal for West Ham to have control.

The current London Stadium contract runs until 2112, when the politicians who made the decisions will be long gone and so will most of us.

That is most likely the most obvious date to transfer ownership to West Ham, but by then, the club may decide to move elsewhere or build a new stadium"

claretandbluesky

It was a deal which made great sense to a Sullivan type as he got to sell the Boleyn Ground and move us to the new place on a great rental, but the problem was it wasn't a football ground. The alternative would have been to finance a new build as Spurs have done. I feel had he done that we would have been very attractive to investors and buyers who could have taken us further, but as it is we will only be on limited interest. We still have the advantage of being a good size club in the capital city with a good local and decent global fan base, but the lack of a home ground that is owned and poor training facilities will mean whoever wants to take it on will need deep pockets.

I think the job of a club owner is to leave the club in a better place than they received it. On account of the place we were when the Icelandic's left it is arguable that they will have done that, but I also feel they have not really done so long term. A true legacy would have been to build a stadium and update the training facilities in which case as long as we were also where we are now as an established Premier league club, then Sully and Gold could have held their head very high and expected appreciation.

On the purely football side it's hard to be too critical in my view as they have provided a period of success that it's hard to find exceeded in our post war history. Now whether Sully is applauded for that or the person who recommend we sign Declan Rice when he was released from Chelsea is debatable.

ASLEFshrugged

Moving to the Olympic Stadium wasn't a new idea

The Icelandics asked but the Olympic committee planned to reduce the stadium to 25k for athletics which obviously wouldn't have worked

They considered a new stadium on the old Parcelforce depot near to West Ham station but instead we got planning permission to rebuild the East Stand which would have brought us to 40,500

Then the Icelandics went bust and S&G took over

They tried something similar with Birmingham City, a new stadium jointly funded by the club, the council, a casino group and Warwickshire CC but in the end all the others pulled out of the scheme

Lucky for them Boris had replaced Ken as Mayor and had said that after the Olympics the stadium needed a football team to be profitable

Sullivan thought Avram Grant was the manager to take us to the next level so I very much doubt he had anything to do with signing Declan Rice as a kid. Any success we've enjoyed over the last 15 years was entirely due to David Moyes who Sullivan didn't think was good enough to sign on a long term basis and was rejected for Pellegrini.