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Premier League side West Ham and its London Stadium landlords are "involved in a legal dispute over plans for 3,000 additional seats," according to the London TELEGRAPH. West Ham is the lead tenant of the former Olympic Stadium on a £2.5M ($3.4M)-per-year, 99-year lease. The club wishes to add 9,000 seats to take the capacity of the arena to 66,000, acting London Legacy Development Corp. CEO Gerry Murphy told the London Assembly on Wednesday. West Ham said that its first wish is to add 3,000 seats to its present capacity of 57,000 "to initially reach a capacity of 60,000." The dispute with the LLDC centers on the "operating costs of making the additional seats available for use -- they are already in the arena -- plus the revenue from those seats if they are made available." Murphy told a London Assembly Budget Monitoring Sub-Committee meeting, "There is a dispute with West Ham about what the contract says in terms of capacity. West Ham have absolutely said that they want to increase the capacity to 60,000. And actually they want to further increase the capacity to 66,000. ... We feel that actually if West Ham want to enjoy more seats, then they should commensurately pay more." A West Ham spokesperson said in a statement, "These seats are in London Stadium already, have always been there, and have already been paid for under the terms of our concession agreement" (
TELEGRAPH, 12/13).
