London Mayor Sadiq Khan has ordered a probe into why costs of the London Stadium have overrun by £51m. The total cost of the former Olympic Stadium is now estimated at around £750m which is similar to the cost of Wembley Stadium which was seen as costing too much money. The original stadium was built on time and on budget, but it is the conversion costs to turn it into a football stadium that have soared out of control.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has ordered a probe into why costs of the London Stadium have overrun by £51m. The total cost of the former Olympic Stadium is now estimated at around £750m which is similar to the cost of Wembley Stadium which was seen as costing too much money. The original stadium was built on time and on budget, but it is the conversion costs to turn it into a football stadium that have soared out of control.
It turns out that the retractable seats can only be shifted manually which means that it will take 15 days to remove them and another 15 days to put them back. The cost of doing this could be around £8m whereas the original estimate was £300,000. However, the company that was going to do the work has gone bust. It may interfere in the summer programme for the stadium and delay the start of the season at home for West Ham.
One problem is that originally it was intended just to have additional seats behind the goals where spectators would have been a particularly long way from the pitch. The seats that have been added along the main stand have caused particular difficulties.
West Ham’s annual rent of £2.5m is not going to help much with the additional costs. Hydraulic retractable seating could be installed, but that would be neither cheap nor easy.