There's people being forced to work untill they drop., and when they drop they're told their Nat' Pension Fund can't support them resulting in a generation(s) of poverty stricken old people. There are record amounts of decent families living below the poverty mark and lets not forget the generation of young people that can't even find employment to start to build a future.... Poverty is no joke. And now this:- Tax Payers money being pissed up the wall !. Tax payers money being pissed up the wall like this is nothing short of a SCANDAL. Indeed DISGUSTING. Almost INHUMAN. I hope the West Hammers enjoy their seats.
If the experience here with stadiums, especially baseball stadiums, is relevant, everyone will lose, including the taxpayers and especially West Ham fans. Everything depends on providing a great experience for fans going to the game. I don't like baseball, and the Pirates have now gone longer without a winning season than any baseball team in history. But I'm happy to go to occasional games because they have a beautiful stadium that's enjoyable to spend time in. A stadium that's in the wrong place, too big and created for another sport is reminiscient of the all-sports soulless horrors that went the way of the dinosaur in the eighties. No doubt the conversion will help, but it's hard to see it doing enough to make the stadium a plus rather than a minus for the fans.
UK Athletics will win - they get a brand new stadium without having to pay for it out of their own pockets. At the end of the day, that is what Seb Coent and his cronies wanted from day one. Even though there's nothing wrong with the Crystal Palace stadium, and the fact that athletics doesn't fill the 24,000 seats, ever since London conned the IOC into hosting the Games there with some fraudulent figures about what it would cost to host the games UK Athletics has been rubbing their hands in glee at a modern, publicly-funded stadium and were determined that athletics would take place there. Even with the shady dealings between West Ham, Newham Council and the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the fact is West Ham are nothing more than patsies - they got the stadium so UK Athletics could have it for themselves. As for the comment about soulless arenas in the wrong place...Wembley ring a bell?
It should be good for the Spammers. Underfunded sides with big new stadiums have done really well.Look at Sunderland, Middlesborough Coventry. They still won't be able to afford anybody half decent as they will have to give the tickets away to get the poor people of Newham (even poorer now) to watch the dross they put out. Still it'll be nice to spread the "legacy" into the Championship. The porn brothers have effectively destroyed the club. Unless they put all the money made from the sale of the Boleyn into buying new players; they will remain mid table at best. They won't and they will (if they are lucky.) Business as usual, except they are fleecing the taxpayer as well as their own season ticket holders now. Shoddy.
Conversion costs = £170,000,000 West Ham are paying: 15m + (99 x 2m) = £213,000,000. You should all be thanking West Ham for preventing another "white elephant". You are all very welcome.
Can't wait for the local advertising, giving seats away for a fiver trying to fill it...you'll be thanking visiting teams for some atmosphere. Can you really see 60k every game?
If we moved in right now then no, of course not. But we are consistently selling out at the Boleyn and that is with the disastrous 7 years we have just endured. I think it's fair to say that we are close to outgrowing our current ground. The Olympic stadium will be 54k. Just 19,000 more than what we have now. If we can attract some investment, buy better players, achieve some top 6 finishes, the odd cup run and generally enjoy a bit of success (by our standards), I see no reason why we can't fill the ground in the long term can you? Especially with the better access to the ground and the cheap tickets for kids and OAP's. We want to progress and as much as we would love to stay at the Boleyn, the Olympic Stadium offers us the chance to do just that.
That's not even half the story and you know it. Not only does that represent a virtual 'interest-free' scenario over 99 years, but your club also has the opportunity to gain increased revenues over that period. (From increased capacity and merchandising etc subject to you being able to fill the extra seats of course). As has been identified elsewhere, Wet Spam are the beneficial patsies in a convoluted deal that was only ever intended to benefit UK Athletics. What is distasteful is that tax-payers money, much-needed NOW, is being wasted on what should be a private commercial venture.
If you believe the hot air from the 3 buffoons that run your club then fine...there's demo's outside your current home against it...why? You're doing an Arsenal rejecting your roots as far as I'm concerned...West Ham in Stratford!
What a strange thing to say? A quick look on Google Maps shows that Stratford is actually closer to West Ham than Upton Park is. Ah yes, I saw the one woman demo on sky sports yesterday.
Given the full-pages ads your club has to put in Metro and the Standard in a vain effort to get the attendances for games at Upton Park up, why do you think 19,000 other people will suddenly decide to support West Ham when they move to the SS Great Eastern? Darlington couldn't fill the 8500-seat Feethams, then moves to the 25,000 seat Reynolds Arena, and how has that helped them become more financially viable or attract better players? It hasn't, it's done the exact opposite - it's a financial millstone that has crippled the club.
We have been selling out and and getting close to selling out every game this season. If we want to go up a level we will need a bigger stadium. 54,000, for a club of West Ham's stature sounds about right if we can improve on the pitch. As I said on another thread, it was only a few years ago we finished level on points with you. We have had a bad few years and you have done well. There is no reason why we can't get to the level you are at now in the short to medium term, and if we do, we will have the stadium in place to cope with the extra demand. We wouldn't fill it right now, but the stadium gives us the growing room we will hopefully need.
Anyone that ever has the misfortune of listening to Talksport or who reads the Metro or has a Ticketmaster account will know that West Ham tickets don't sell out. Blanket advertising, kids for a quid and other discounts and they still end up unsold. As for finishing on level points with us, that was one year under Ramos. Trying to claim that this somehow puts us on an even keel is just bizarre. West Ham have won one tie in Europe since the 1980/81 season and that was against NK Osijek of Croatia. Not a single game outside of that. The stadium's not there because Sullivan and Gold think that the potential is there to fill it. It's there because it's on the cheap. Why pretend otherwise? I have no problem with West Ham fans wanting to see the club improve and expand, as every fan wants that for their club. I doubt that any neutral would see this as a good move for the taxpayer, the local council or for the game itself, though.
Very good point! And as for the general distaste about vast amounts of foreign money being thrown at Citeh and Chelski to make them unfairly "competitive", it isn't much different to what WetSpam are being given - an artificial boost that has not been earned. I also agree what was said about how much the porn brothers want this. They want it purely for increased revenue and because it will massively increase the sell on value - how that happens they clearly don't care. Prior to them leaving Birmingham I remember a few articles about how well run the club was. When they left it turned out most certainly not to be the case. This deal may have saved them though, not only do they get the benefits of a free stadium, but they get to pocket the cash for selling the old one - what are they doing with that money?
