There are some headlines that make every West Ham fan wince, and “Former 68,000-capacity Premier League stadium is now effectively worth zero” is one of them.
That’s how The Sun put it this week, picking up a Hammers News report quoting an unnamed senior club source. The source reportedly said the London Stadium is “worth zero” to us as a purchase, because any buyer would take on losses of around £20m a year, possibly some very heavy capital spending on the ground before long, and the long-term deal with UK Athletics.
But if we’re honest, it’s not wrong. Not financially, anyway.
The London Stadium’s own chair has said the arrangement costs London taxpayers roughly £19m a year. Sadiq Khan has said City Hall would consider a “credible” offer from the club. And the reported response from inside West Ham is basically: why would we?
Why buy a money pit when you can rent it?
That’s the bit that stings for us fans. Because for all the anger about the move from the Boleyn, the 99-year deal is one of the few contracts in football that’s actually worked in our favour.
We were paying £4.6m a year in rent. Since relegation, that has dropped to somewhere between £2m and £2.5m, and there’s no break clause that lets the landlord turf us out. The taxpayer picks up the losses. We pick up the matchday income.
As a business decision, walking away from Khan’s offer makes total sense. You don’t spend tens of millions on an asset that loses £20m a year unless someone throws in land or property to make it worth your while, and the source is reported to have said exactly that.
Football clubs aren’t just businesses, and the London Stadium isn’t just an asset on a balance sheet. It’s where we go every other Saturday. And nine years in, a lot of us still don’t feel at home there.
If owning it is off the table, then the club and the stadium owners need to stop treating “we’re only the tenants” as an excuse for doing nothing.
Some of the fixes are already on the table. The stadium’s own management has floated turning the seats claret to make the place feel “more intimate, more West Ham”, developing the land around it, and holding more non-football events to cut the losses. Brilliant. Get on with it.
Because whoever technically owns the deeds, the people who fill that bowl are West Ham supporters. If it’s “worth zero” to buy, it should be worth a lot more effort to make it feel like ours.
The rent is expected to go back up if we achieve promotion. So the club’s financial interest and the fans’ interest are about to line up nicely: get back to the Premier League, fill the place, and push for a ground that finally feels like home.
So no, I don’t want us sinking a fortune into buying a loss-making stadium during a Championship season. I’d rather that money went on the squad.
But “worth zero” can’t become “not our problem”. It’s our home. It’s time someone acted like it.
