A good deal on the London Stadium was never an option
In securing a future for the Olympic’s London Stadium, the choice was never a great deal versus a bad deal, but between any deal or no deal at all, argues James Ford
I am not a football fan. I don’t think I have sat through an entire Premier League match, either in person or on TV. I do not even support a team. But, if I did, I’d probably be an Arsenal fan. (After all, I am painfully middle class and know next to nothing about the game). I would go so far as to say that I know as little about football as the current Mayor of London does about big-money real estate deals on sporting venues.
I was, therefore, surprised to see well-known Liverpool fan, occasional Mayor of London and master of hindsight Sadiq Khan urging Londoners to cheer for West Ham to avoid relegation recently. Of course, this was not harmless punditry on Khan’s part, but rather a chance to take a swipe at his popular predecessor Boris Johnson. In 2013, whilst attempting to secure a future for the former Olympic Stadium, Johnson did a controversial 99-year deal with West Ham to swap Upton Park for the Olympic Park. Khan has described the pact with West Ham as “the worst deal imaginable” and warned that the Hammers relegation is set to cost London £2.5m.
Finding afterlives for Olympic venues is notoriously difficult
I am not going to defend the deal that was done with West Ham on the London Stadium. The best gloss I can probably put on it is that it is flawed. (Any deal where the financial liabilities to the taxpayer are predicated on the idea that West Ham is, you know, consistently good at football sounds fundamentally flawed to me). But it is worth noting that a genuinely great deal for the London Stadium was never on the table.
Securing a meaningful legacy for former Olympic and World Cup venues is notoriously difficult. Most – like those built for the Athens (2004) and Rio (2016) games – end up as embarrassing white elephants, underused, crumbling and gathering moss once the Olympic flame has moved on. Olympic stadia are usually too large to accommodate most football franchises. London Stadium has a greater seated capacity for sporting events than the Emirates, for example. Persuading a major team to relocate to a stadium that is too big and was designed to hold athletics is always going to be a tough sell. The venues from London 2012 have achieved a much better afterlife than their contemporaries in other countries.
I don’t want to sound cynical, but I think Sadiq Khan knows all this. After all, the same Sadiq Khan who criticised the London Stadium deal also recently suggested that London’s Olympic venues should feature prominently in a future UK Olympic bid.
London Stadium deal was better than no deal at all
Indeed, when it comes to really bad deals for security and stewarding (the basis of the London Stadium deal), the current Mayor is very much in a glass house throwing stones. As well as paying for security and stewarding costs at West Ham matches, City Hall also pays for security and stewarding costs at the Notting Hill Carnival each year. This year, the mayor has committed £5.6m in funding for the carnival, more than double the costs that City Hall is incurring due to West Ham’s relegation. The amount that City Hall spends on the carnival has grown by 1,000 per cent since Sadiq Khan took office and this year’s grant is at least £4.6m more than was allocated in 2024.
Unlike the West Ham deal, City Hall’s funding of the Notting Hill Carnival is not subject to a 99-year ironclad contract but is set on a rolling basis from year to year. (It is a choice, not an obligation). We can either deduce that Sadiq Khan simply has taxpayer money to burn (but would rather spend it on a free street party than on keeping a sporting venue open) or that Boris Johnson is not the biggest mug to serve as Mayor of London.
It is tempting to conclude that City Hall is perhaps ill-equipped to be negotiating either multi-million-pound stadium deals or organising a piss-up in the streets of West London. But, whilst Sadiq Khan may like to pooh-pooh the London Stadium deal, we should all be able to agree that the bad deal that was done was better than no deal at all. (And there is certainly no evidence that Khan could have negotiated a better stadium deal). The real scandal here would have been to leave the largest venue of London 2012 to the tumbleweeds. That would have been the gravest betrayal of London’s Olympic legacy.
James Ford is a former adviser to Mayor of London Boris Johnson