UPDATE: West Ham have drawn Bolton Wanderers at home in the next round of the League Cup. The tie will be played on 18 or 19 September
Blind Hammer asks if E20 are still good partners for West Ham?
There are worrying signs that all is not rosy in the garden shared between the London Stadium Operators E20 and West Ham United
The most obvious indication of this lays in the stalemate around the returning of Stadium capacity to 60,000. E20 appear to be protracting the application for a safety certificate.
Last season, as a supposed “temporary measure”, capacity was reduced from 60,000 to 57,000 after early difficulties with crowd management.
Despite the fact that over the season arrangements at the Stadium have settled down, and the appearance at least that every authority, including the police, have settled into routine crowd management, there has been no suggestion that the reduction in capacity be reversed. The crucial point is that the power to make an application for restoring Stadium capacity lies with E20 and not West Ham.
No application has been forthcoming from E20. There appears not just little interest from the Stadium Operators in reversing the cut in capacity but also a generally decidedly chillier attitude when compared to the positivity which existed before the move.
Sean Whetstone, on Claret and Hugh, asked E20 6 months ago when an application would be made to the Safety Advisory Board to restore stadium capacity. The response they he received was that there was a need for a health and safety assessment.
Fair enough you might think but when this question was repeated last week Claret and Hugh received the following response.
““Any future application for an increased capacity at the Stadium is dependent upon an ongoing assessment from a legal, health and safety, and commercial perspective. This has yet to be concluded.”””
In other words any plans to increase stadium capacity have been put out into bureaucratic long grass. There is no positive indication of when an application is likely to be made. It even places in question if any application will be made at any time.
You have to wonder what the E20 Agenda is. The reference to the Health and Safety Assessment seems disingenuous in the extreme. Health and Safety is always important but a Risk Assessment should take days to complete rather than months. The suspicion that the Stadium Operators have in reality another agenda is reinforced by the fact that E20 have shown that they have few if any “Health and Safety” concerns in relation to the vast crowds assembling for the recent World Athletics Championship. They have shown that they are perfectly happy to deal with crowds of 65,000 over several days of the championship.
Apparently having 65,000 filling the stadium for day long events lasting for several hours from the afternoon into the evening is perfectly acceptable from a health and safety perspective whilst returning 3,000 spectators to a smaller capacity event for a 2 hour football match is currently not on any agenda.
Further evidence of a potentially contrary attitude was revealed in the response to the request by fans for “Draught Beer” as the London Stadium. Whilst this is a relatively minor issue the nature of the chilly and distant E20 response is instructive. This is what they said.
“E20 and its operator provide catering at the Stadium in line with the Concession Agreement requirements. The Concession Agreement does not require draught beer to be provided, although E20 nevertheless does provide it in many areas of the stadium. E20 intends to honour all of its obligations under the Concession Agreement.”
The tone of the response is not one of genuinely engaging with and trying to meet the needs of customers at the stadium but instead a more defensive minimalist position of honouring all of its obligations under the Concession Agreement.” It reads like they are “working to rule”.
So what is the agenda which may be causing E20 to appear so unhelpful and obstructive? The critical term in the first E20 statement about their failure to make an application to increase capacity may be their references to “commercial assessment”. The suspicion is growing that motivating these chilly statements may be a desire for E20 to renegotiate the concession agreement with West Ham.
As reported elsewhere on claret and \Hugh the Stadium is currently budgeted to experience Operating Losses of around £36 million until 2020. The Achilles heel of the Stadium project is the cost of relocating seats during the yearly transition from Athletics to Football mode.
In other words a feeling is growing that E20 may want to use its power to apply for stadium capacity increases as a way of leveraging extra commercial return from West Ham. You get a sense that E20 are “hard balling” for a new contract agreement. If this is the case then West Ham may have cause for serious worry.
If you consult the Concession Agreement there is no guarantee that even 57,000 seats will be available, let alone 60,000. Under the concession agreement only 53,500 seats are guaranteed in Football mode. In Athletics mode the Stadium only has to provide 49,000 seats. As an aside the possibility of using the stadium in Athletics mode with 49,000 seats may be a part if not ideal solution to the problem of early Europa League games scheduled before the Stadium has transitioned from Athletics to Football mode.
So there is scope for the Stadium to use, in the future, further reductions in capacity to try and pressurise West Ham into paying more for the Agreement. If there are any idiots out there who intend anti-social behaviour in the Stadium they should be aware that this is the very real threat which hangs over us. Further incidents may well result in further reductions in capacity.
Certainly the often quoted ambitions of the owners to increase the Stadium capacity to 66,000 seats seems a distant pipedream in the face of this apparent reluctance to engage with growth from E20.
E20, along with other legacy bodies, are responsible for ensuring the sporting legacy of the Olympic Games. Obstructing the addition of potentially not just 3,000 but 9,000 spectators every 2 weeks into the London Stadium does not seem a fitting or just disposal of the responsibilities associated with safeguarding this sporting legacy.
Surely E20 should be doing all in their power to maximise the attendance at the London Stadium. This is their clearest responsibility in line with the successful legacy from the 2012 games. It is to be hoped that other agendas do not distract from this most important imperative. E20 can dispel this growing suspicion of their motives by making a clear and public commitment to maximise stadium capacity in football mode. Watch this space in case this emerges but I personally will not hold my breath.
COYI
David Griffith.