COLIN MAFHAM: How West Ham actually SAVED London by moving into the Olympic Stadium

Around 50,000 people turned up for that one, paying good money and keeping the turnstiles turning. Goodness knows what would have happened if they hadn’t. 

Like some other Olympic stadiums around the world it would have been dead as a dodo, not too many souls in sight, weeds sprouting all over the place, and literally haemorrhaging money by the millions.

Whether the Mayor of London likes it or not, if West Ham hadn’t moved in and taken a 99-year lease on the place that ‘old’ Olympic stadium would have been an acutely embarrassing – and very costly – white elephant which the Government would have found very difficult to explain or justify.

The millions squandered are nowhere near as much as we’re apparently willing to hand over to the European Union, but it’s a heckuva lot nonetheless. In fact the bill nudged nearly £500million before they ever realised they had spent so much on what was effectively a one horse pony.

For all the talk about an Olympic legacy no one seems to have worked out precisely how such a legacy was going to work long term, what it would cost, and who would be in overall charge on a day to day basis.

There would appear to have been no real financial Plan B . . . Until West Ham came to the rescue.

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Rather than the football club getting the deal of the century as Mayor Sadiq Khan calls it, the Hammers saved London, the Government, and his predecessor, Boris Johnson, from a financial disaster that could still cost taxpayers up to £1BILLION.

The bill potentially went up another £50million last week with plans to replace the retractable seats with an improved hydraulic system which has to be installed manually and could threaten the viability of the already cash guzzling stadium because of the time and labour that will take.

Now, it may suit the Labour Mayor to embarrass Boris and Mr Khan’s other political rivals as much as possible, and one could argue he’d have a point on this one.

The simple truth is that our present Foreign Secretary and financially profligate advisers were sucked in by Lord Seb Coe’s romantic dream of a cathedral for athletics. And all at OUR expense!

But his stadium of dreams was built in such a barmy way, and at such an incredibly crazy cost, that the only people it appears to have provided a legacy for are athletes who only need it for a handful of meetings a year! All at a time when it would probably have cost considerably less to update the i rundown, but fit for purpose, athletics stadium at Crystal Palace.

As I recall the Olympic cum London Stadium was supposed to stage all sorts of other events, but the truth is it was never actually fit for most, bar one, of those purposes. Forget not that such was the clueless thinking of those who first ran the show that essentials like toilets, as well as catering facilities and executive boxes all had to be built – afterwards.

Enter West Ham United and Baroness Karren Brady, a lady with more commercial nous and commonsense in her little fingers than Boris and Lord Coe would appear to possess in their entire bodies.

Given that her club needed a new place to expand in, it wasn’t West Ham’s fault that despite all the political shenanigans that went on for some time they were the only ones who wanted the place on a financially realistic basis. And, more importantly, with the potential earnings and infrastructure to make it pay.

Me thinks that if they had appeared on The Apprentice TV show in which she stars with Lord Sugar Messrs Johnson and Coe would have been told: You’re fired!

You will recall Coe and co complaining bitterly that the Hammers involvement, and any other alternative move for that matter, would be a betrayal of the athletics legacy they held so dear, if you excuse the pun.

West Ham’s bid to take over the stadium was challenged in the courts by Tottenham Hotspur – who wanted to knock the whole place down and start again – and Leyton Orient, whose interests and intentions were never totally clear. As a result the whole plan had to be scrapped, subject to a bruising war of words in front of the European Commission.

Some sort of sense eventually prevailed, West Ham’s 99-year agreement was finally confirmed in 2013, and then the real work began to make the stadium fit for footy and, so the plan went, for athletics, concerts and other events in the summer.

But then came the cost, more costs, and even more crippling costs. The naivety and inefficiency bordered on the criminal.

Because only two-thirds of the seats were covered the initial cost of a new roof and retractable seats to help fans get closer to the action was a whopping £160million.

Basically, a so called state of the art stadium that had already cost £700million (without proper loos) had to be almost rebuilt to ditch the Coe dream and convert the stadium into a 54,000 capacity dual-use arena (with proper loos).

West Ham agreed to pay £15m towards the overall conversion costs, plus a basic £2.5m a year in rent, including extra payments if they are successful and a rent reduction if, God forbid, they are relegated. The rest of the conversion budget is funded by the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), whoever they might be.

So, here we are again, with politicians wrangling over how to spend – and waste – other people’s money. You would have thought they would have learned from old mistakes (remember what the O2 used to be before it was a soaraway success?) and got the hang of balancing the books like the rest of us have to.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of meddling in businesses they know nothing about, they deferred to proper professionals to do the job – and let West Ham run the lot!

Their players might be struggling on the field right now, but Baroness Brady and club owners David Gold and Sullivan have been running businesses successfully for years. 

They, at least, know what they’re doing – and they don’t cost us taxpayers a penny we don’t want to spend.