With the recent announcement that West Ham United Football Club have secured the Olympic Stadium, the questions now looms, is this the right move?
The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park venue cost £429m to create, and West Ham will pay a mere £15m for the 99 year lease, even though conversion costs could tot up to a total of £190m.
The football club’s concession will commence in summer 2016, once it has been transformed into a UEFA category 4 venue, with 54,000 seats.
With such little financial input from the premier league club, the question on most people’s minds will inevitably be, how is it being funded?
Along with West Ham’s meager sum and the funds to be provided by the Legacy Corporation for the adaptations works, Newham Council will invest £40m, and the Government have agreed to provide additional support of up to £25m, should it be required once the tenders are returned.
For athletics fans concerned that the stadium will lose its original essence, all is not lost, yet. The venue will host the 2017 IAAF World Championships, as well as greeting community sports, and events such as the Diamond League this summer.
The venue will have a retractable system, enabling it to be converted from a football stadium to an athletics arena within days.
West Ham’s venture to the Olympic Stadium has sparked mixed feedback, with former sports minister Richard Caborn dubbing it as the “biggest mistake of the London Olympics.”
Caborn welcomed the fact that the future of the stadium had been secured, but added: “we should realise that the public sector is picking up the tab.”
It is thought that the stadium could have been adapted for a fraction of the cost if it had been built with the view of transforming it into a football venue afterwards. This is of course, true. But, then again, it’s always easy to judge a situation in hindsight.
Money may be lost due to the decision not being made earlier, but surely a lot will be gained, too. The venue will host some of the worlds most watched football games, surely bringing in substantial revenue, as well as the income that will be retrieved from the World Championships in a few years time.
The deal will also generate hundreds of new jobs, and hopefully attract thousands of visitors to the local area, thus bringing in more money.
Lord Sebastian Coe, the Chair of the London Organising Committee, on the other hand, spoke of only positives in relations to West Ham’s move.
“Having a well thought out future for the centre piece venue in Queen Elizabeth Park is an exceptional result, and I hope the great athletics performances that took place in the stadium over the summer of 2012 will echo and inspire future teams, future sports and future spectators.”
Considering some stadiums around the world are left derelict, it is an achievement in itself that the stadium will be used frequently, across numerous sports, as well as hopefully generating money.
The financial bill footing the cost of West Ham’s move is obviously a hefty, and somewhat unnecessary one, but overall, the deal has to be seen as a beneficial one.
