Taxpayer to profit by just £200,000 next year after West Ham's Olympic Stadium move despite footing £257m bill to convert it
- West Ham will move into the Olympic Stadium for the 2016-17 season
- Hammers will pay £2.5m-a-year to rent the venue from the LLDC
- But they are only set to make a £200,000 profit from the stadium next year
- Taxpayer footed £257m bill to convert it while West Ham contributed £15m
- Fans' groups have described the revelations as 'seriously worrying'
The public purse will profit by just a few hundred thousand pounds next year when West Ham move into the Olympic Stadium - a revelation that fans’ groups who want more transparency over that deal have blasted as ‘seriously worrying’ and ‘simply unbelievable’.
They have also called on the authorities to make public secret details of West Ham’s tenancy that thus far have been redacted in public documents.
It has long been known that West Ham have paid just £15million of the £272m conversion costs of the stadium before it becomes their home from the 2016-17 season.
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West Ham will be the new tenant of the Olympic Stadium from the 2016-17 season
Hammers will pay £2.5million per year to rent the stadium from the London Legacy Development Corporation
It is understood they will pay around £2.5m-a-year rent to the stadium’s owners, E20 LLP, a joint venture between two public bodies, the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) and Newham Council.
The stadium owners have refused to confirm the rent, saying it is ‘commercially confidential’ information, and the government have backed that stance of controversial secrecy.
But the Mail on Sunday exclusively reveals that internal LLDC paperwork shows they expect to make a profit of only £200,000 in 2016-17 from all activity at the Olympic Stadium. That will include not just from West Ham games but athletics events, concerts and probably some rugby and motor sport.
That means most of West Ham’s rent to E20 will be spent on services for West Ham’s benefit, including pitch maintenance and stewarding, costs that other football clubs pay for themselves. The public purse meanwhile, via the £200,000 to LLDC and a smaller sum to Newham, will benefit by just a small six-figure sum.
Much of the total stadium income, expected to be many millions annually in the years ahead, will go on running costs and profits to operating company Vinci, as well as on services for West Ham’s benefit.
By comparison, Manchester City rent their ground from the local council for £4m a year and pay their own running costs.
The cost of converting the stadium into is £272m of which West Ham have contributed just £15m
The stadium will also feature retractable seating on all four sides to allow fans a closer look at the action
Sources have confirmed to the MoS that the LLDC £200,000 Olympic Stadium profit forecast figure is accurate and was put in writing earlier this year in an internal budget document.
West Ham have always maintained they won the right to be anchor tenants in a fair and transparent contest and that their use of the stadium will stop it being a white elephant.
LLDC sources stress that even a small profit for the public purse is better than none.
But a coalition of football fans from clubs as varied as Orient, Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea are furious at the lack of transparency, and at what they see as a deal that uses public money to subsidise the running of West Ham, a commercial entity and rival club.
‘Confirmation of such a minimal profit forecast for LLDC is seriously worrying and goes to confirm our concerns that this is not the fabulous deal for the taxpayer that we have been led to believe it is,’ coalition spokesman Mat Roper said.
‘The decisions made by various authorities show that they are playing fast and loose with the public purse.
West Ham will look to fill the Olympic Stadium with 54,000 supporters for each home league encounter
Two construction workers look out over the iconic stadium, one wearing a West Ham-branded high-vis jacket
‘Even mid-table Premier League clubs will pocket in excess of £100m from TV cash from central funds alone in 2016-17. It is simply unbelievable that one club, well capable of paying its own way, will be handed the opportunity to play in a state-of-the-art stadium and reap the benefits of gate revenues that same season, while the taxpayer picks up a good proportion of the costs related to match day operations.
‘With more than £250m of public funds spent on revamping a perfectly good venue, and being told that this was the only feasible deal, the revelations that the public purse will be furnished with just a few hundred thousand pounds in the first and possible subsequent years, only goes to prove that this is totally unacceptable when public services are under threat of closure.
‘The fact that the rental agreement has been redacted for so long starts to make you wonder what else could be contained in it, and we call on Boris Johnson and the LLDC to end months of speculation by publishing, in full, all documentation relating to the deal.’
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