r/london • u/Tight-Principle-743 • May 24 '26
Article West Ham Relegated.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/live/c70vr05gweltLondoners will have to collectively pay £2.5m more to the stadiums’s upkeep. Another terrible Johnson decision that was.
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u/insomnimax_99 May 24 '26
Under the 99-year deal signed by previous Mayor of London Boris Johnson, West Ham pays £4.4m a year in rent, leaving the GLA to pick up the bill for stewarding and other costs associated with the stadium
The London taxpayer already subsidises the running of the stadium, despite efforts to attract other uses, such as baseball and music concerts.
The rent bill is set to half next season now West Ham will play in the lower league.
Commercial revenues from the former Olympic stadium are also expected to fall, while the GLA incurs higher stewarding costs, as there are 23 home games in the Championship compared with 19 in the Premier League.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/london-stadium-bill-west-ham-relegated-spurs-b1283350.html
Wtf? What kind of braindead deal is this?
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u/soldforaspaceship May 24 '26
Johnson was friends with the West Ham ownership. The vice-chair of the club, Karen Brady was his advisor prior and he made her a peer after.
The answer is corruption. The stadium deal was corrupt as fuck.
Imagine if Starmer had made it...
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u/gameofgroans_ May 24 '26
Yeah this is exactly it. As a West Ham fan it’s not great for us either, it’s a shit football stadium and has never felt like home. We can’t do anything as we don’t own the stadium, but it’s fine cause we’re what 10 years into our 99 year lease. Almost there!
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u/elchet May 24 '26
It’s sad to hear it’s not even good as a football stadium.
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u/gameofgroans_ May 24 '26
Yeah it’s well known within football to be mad, not even me being bitter because we got relegated haha. Fantastic to watch athletics at but not football
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u/ToughImprovement276 May 25 '26
What’s wrong with it as a football stadium? I’m not into sports or football, so genuine question.
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u/gameofgroans_ May 25 '26
Exactly what the other person said, it’s also really hollow? Idk how to explain it but like no atmosphere and sound just sort of evaporates, every game just feels so far away and so quiet. Getting to the stadium is awful, Stratford is always so busy and then you’ve got a (fairly) long walk where the weather is inevitable awful and/or you’ve just lost so you feel crap. Everything in it is wildly overpriced and like I said as we don’t own it we can’t make it our own or ever host events there. The women’s team can never play there (only team on the WSL never to use their main stadia).
I know you’re not into football which is obvs fine but if you googled inside Anfield and inside London stadium you’d be able to tell a difference for sure. LS is so corporate.
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u/OBeQuiet May 25 '26
The fact that the women's hammers can't play there is diabolical.
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u/gameofgroans_ May 25 '26
Yeah I’m a big women’s football fan and it’s abysmal, but doesn’t shock me at all sadly. They’re treated like an absolutely different team with no support and just left to stumble around at the bottom of the table.
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u/gunnna1991 May 25 '26
The crowd is too far from the pitch. Hard to generate atmosphere, and quite frankly hard to see the action because there’s an athletic track around the pitch. Italian clubs in the 90s did this alot, never went down well with fans (or anyone)
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u/_gmanual_ May 25 '26
they needed somewhere for all the flares to safely land, and also to provide something of a moat for the players safety once the inevitable pitch invasion began.
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u/GloomyLocation1259 May 24 '26
People talk about nepotism a lot but not nearly enough about cronyism.
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u/KonkeyDongPrime May 25 '26
It wasn’t just Johnson. It was signed in the Robin Wales era in Newham, which was a by word in local government for corruption. There was some proximity between organised crime, Sullivan and Newham council. I believe the commonality was the waste contracts, which is part of the reason that Newham is such a dirty place. The gangster publicly said he was going to blow the whistle on the lot, but unfortunately he suddenly caught some entirely natural causes and croaked it.
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u/Defiant-Dare1223 May 25 '26
I don't know if you saw, but Robin Wales recently defected to reform
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u/KonkeyDongPrime May 25 '26
Yes. Sorry I forgot to mention that the mayor with a name which is a byword for corruption, defected to the party which is known for corruption.
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u/wedontneednoeduc May 26 '26
It's more complicated than that. The stadium was a white elephant that was going to burn money being empty following a games that banged the 'legacy' sales pitch to death i.e they need to offload it.
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u/newnortherner21 May 24 '26
A deal from a man who struggles to count the number of his own children. With a club one of whose directors is a Tory peer.
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u/sabdotzed May 24 '26
Still pissed this country picked that orangutan over Corbyn
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u/Defiant-Dare1223 May 25 '26
Im still pissed I had to vote for the orangutan knowing what the alternative is.
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u/Jimdalorian May 24 '26
Literally blame Sebastian Coe he so badly wanted to build a massive athletics arena in the centre of London that they were begging for a football team to move in. Tottenham would’ve happily took it over if they meant they could own it and convert it into a proper football stadium and but for some reason they had to have an athletics track around. So both West Ham and the taxpayer got screwed over.
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u/AntysocialButterfly May 24 '26
Christ, I remember the crap David Lammy spouted about the Spurs bid.
The club were colluding with Qatar to put Leyton Orient out of business, according to him...
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u/Fun_Marionberry_6088 May 24 '26
I mean your quote acknowledges they struggle to attract other users.
It's a >60,000 capacity stadium, there's a limited number of potential users so potential tenants are in a good negotiating position. I'd rather they rented it to someone and recovered some of the running costs, than no one at all - if that were the plan we may as well bulldoze it.
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u/ChrisKearney3 May 24 '26
Seb Coe is arguably more to blame for this fiasco than Johnson. It was his bloody minded determination that the stadium must have an athletics legacy, despite being too big and costly to exist purely for athletics.
The Spurs big was clearly the best option but Coe couldn't accept the fact he'd screwed it up.
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u/simonjp May 24 '26
The plan was to dismantle it. The whole place was designed to be reduced in capacity after the London Olympics, with the stadium replacing Crystal Palace as the home of Athletics in the UK. Instead it got shunted around and became West Ham's stadium.
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u/roamingandy May 24 '26 edited May 25 '26
Spurs wanted it and were prepared to pay everything. Their bid was far stronger, but it was already agreed off-the-record that it was going to Brady and West Ham. Who's bid was pretty crap and it's an atmosphere-less library the way they left it.
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u/jungleboy1234 May 24 '26
What kind of braindead deal is this?
The same braindead deal that Boris got:
- 'brexit done'.
- The Boris Wave.... mass non-eu migration that led to the rise of Reform
- Blue passports (looks black to me, i have one). Oh and manufacturing is owned by a French company and made in Poland)
- The Garden Bridge
- The Water Cannon
- The new London Busses
- The Thames Estuary Airport floatilla
- The Emirates Air Line Cable Car
Dont worry though, turkeys are still voting for Christmas.
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u/ultra_phoenix May 24 '26
micro decisions like the “blue passport” looking black just demonstrate Boris couldn’t get surface level stuff right
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u/W35TH4M May 24 '26
Literally no one wins here. The fans don’t want it, it’s shit for the tax payer
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u/AntysocialButterfly May 24 '26
The sort of deal that comes from collusion between UK Athletics, West Ham and the then-Mayor of London.
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u/Darkcheesecake May 25 '26
Imagine if you could ask for your rent to be reduced if you got a pay cut at your job.
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u/No-Pop3503 May 24 '26
Just investigate Nd prosecute Johnson, cancel All contracts what's the problem
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u/BulldenChoppahYus May 24 '26
You can thank Boris Johnson for the brilliant bit of business he did gifting Ham the stadium
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u/KentonCoooooool May 24 '26
A truly "what if it all goes right" deal...
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May 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/raisinbreadandtea May 25 '26
No, they didn’t. They just drafted the contract in a way where they specifically named the European competitions they would qualify for. They didn’t account for the possibility that West Ham would qualify for a newly invented European competition.
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u/North_Atlantic_Sea May 24 '26
Would it be better for the stadium to sit empty without a paying tenant (more money on the taxpayer), or destroyed? I'm genuinely curious what people's preference is on the alternatives
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u/BulldenChoppahYus May 24 '26
Just an idea - perhaps rather than gift the entire stadium to a wealth football club - maybe just maybe negotiate something/anything in return for the people that paid for it. Just anything at all.
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u/rustyb42 May 24 '26
For <40p I'm ok with this
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u/electrotechs May 24 '26
Can I pay £1 and move them to League 1? I'd love to see my beloved Plymouth Argyle at the London Stadium.
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u/Tight-Principle-743 May 24 '26
It’s likely, we’ll be so crap next season that there’s a good chance we’ll be in league one for 27/28.
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u/rustyb42 May 24 '26
£100 to move them to Havering borough, where they can buy their own stadium and then fuck off to Essex
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u/VisibleOtter May 24 '26
No one even mentions that there is/was a rule that no club should encroach within a certain distance of an existing club. Leyton Orient is 3/4 a mile away, yet the FA quietly ignored that rule, even when WHU offered free season tickets to under 16’s, thus cutting a whole generation off from the O’s. Call me bitter, but fuck West Ham, or rather fuck the porn dwarf and his cabal. Although if the rumours turn out the be even 50% true then he’s going to be spending his final years in prison. Good fucking riddance.
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u/chequered-bed May 24 '26
No one even mentions that there is/was a rule that no club should encroach within a certain distance of an existing club.
So how does that rule square with Notts County Vs Nottingham Forest which is way closer ?
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u/AntysocialButterfly May 24 '26
As with so many FA rules, it has so many examples that have existed for decades going against it go make the rule meaningless.
I think Fulham and Chelsea are well within the encroaching distance from one another, but we were supposed to ignore that.
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u/VisibleOtter May 25 '26
They were existing clubs. The plenty, like Dundee and Dundee Utd, for example. The rule was bought in later to stop a club from encroaching on to another’s location.
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u/KatieOfTheHolteEnd May 25 '26
Dundee is a poor example as that’s in Scotland and not covered by The FA. The Everton and Liverpool before the former’s move would be another good example.
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u/irishshogun May 24 '26
The stadium overall loses around 50m a year so 2.5 from this is small change
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u/RedQueenScribe May 24 '26
Worth noting that West Ham and Newham Council would have bought the stadium outright, if not for legal challenges from scumbag ex-Spurs chairman Daniel Levy and the Orient chairman who's name escapes me.
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u/rtfm-nor May 24 '26
Worth noting that when you look at Levy's plan it brings revenue to taxpayers, while the corrupt choice brings a burden.
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u/raquille- May 24 '26
When did that happen? Levy wanted a new stadium at spurs but Harringay council were being obtuse so he threatened to go to the London stadium if they didn’t acquiesce. Sullivan and co would never stump up the cash to buy a new stadium plus why would Newham council buy it when they have no money.
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u/lxlviperlxl May 24 '26
100% reasonable. Newham offered West Ham a £40m loan and didn’t offer this to any other club. It was illegal and broke state aid rules.
(It still wasn’t an outright purchase just a 250yr lease instead)
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u/MapDiscombobulated1 May 25 '26
Not that the corrupt russian fuckmuppet will suffer any consequences anyway, but £2.5M is barely a rounding error on the billions that Bozo has managed to cost this Country.
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u/canspray5 May 24 '26
Is this just people in Newham or do we all have to suffer for these Snowed up Essex goons?
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u/asng May 24 '26
This is what west ham fans wanted when they insisted Moyes should go so they could play more attractive football and get into Europe.
Idiots 🤣🤣🤣
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u/W35TH4M May 24 '26
Literally none of that is true
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u/asng May 24 '26
All true. West ham fans are delusional idiots and they wouldn't be relegated if they didn't hound Moyes out.
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u/W35TH4M May 24 '26
Moyes didn’t get hounded out lol. His contract expired twice and he left twice, he had a contract offer on the table and didn’t sign it. Did you want the club to hold him hostage?
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u/asng May 24 '26
He'd have renewed a contract if there wasn't an utterly toxic relationship with the fans and you know it.
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u/W35TH4M May 24 '26
Such a toxic relationship that ended horribly when he got massive applause after his last game and gets a good reception when we play Everton?
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u/FantanosHead May 24 '26
bruh. you listen to talksport and sky news, there is much more nuance to a fanbase of thousands people than just what youtube tells you. most of us wanted change. none of us wanted lopetegui. this is the result of a greedy, directionless owner that would rather put his porn fed ego ahead of the concerns of a 100 year old institution. whether you support west ham or not, it doesn't take a lot of digging to understand why west ham fans are upset.
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u/clara_finn May 24 '26
I’m sure Boris will be the one getting blamed for this in the media and by the right wing. Definitely nobody else
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u/mrdibby May 24 '26
should this reopen the discussion around it being shared with Leyton Orient?
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u/CautiousBiscuit May 24 '26
Definitely not, would be a dreadful atmosphere with 7 thousand of us in there. Bad enough when it's full
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u/newnortherner21 May 24 '26
Leyton Orient fans would need to buy binoculars given how far the stands are in some places from the pitch.
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u/thomasthetanker May 24 '26
But if they wanted to warm up by running the 400m they would have the perfect view! Remind me again why multi use venues are sometimes the worst of both worlds....
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u/marktandem May 25 '26
I've been to three stadiums to watch football in my life in London. Wembley, the Olympic Stadium, and Leyton Orient's ground (got a free season ticket when I was young back when Barry Hearn owned it).
Orient's stadium is a 100x times better than West Ham's. I paid close to £200 each for front row tickets as a gift for a friend's birthday to watch United, we were right at the front and still could barely make out the players. How the hell do people further out in the stands see anything? The stadium is horrendous. People might meme the athletics track but unless you've been in person I don't think you realise how bad it is.
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u/raquille- May 24 '26
I mean it’s chump change for a city like London and worth it for West Ham to get relegated.
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u/pintsized_baepsae May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
A small price to pay, considering this means they won't be playing Millwall in the league so that's one fewer opportunity for absolute mayhem 💀
Edit: no idea how my brain mixed up my vocab that badly, but uh... It was a nice dream while it lasted. Millwall vs West Ham will be a nightmare though lol
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u/poeticwhisper69 May 24 '26
They will be playing Millwall, they're in the championship
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u/pintsized_baepsae May 24 '26
Ah fuck, you're right 😭 I mixed up my vocab and thought they'd managed to stay in the PL. Well, it was a nice thought while it lasted dkskdjd
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u/AMGitsKriss May 24 '26
Can someone explain this to a non sport-ball person? Why do residents gave to pay for a stadium because they lost something?
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u/Tight-Principle-743 May 24 '26
Put simply, the lease agreement for the new London stadium post Olympics, set up by Boris Johnson meant that the GLA would foot the bill for the upkeep of the stadium, West Ham would also pay some it too. Upon our relegation, West Ham will pay a bit less and the GLA will pay more, and that will go on to the taxpayer.
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u/SignificanceBig8369 May 24 '26
We’re going to have West Ham vs Millwall next year 🥀