West Ham must negotiate Olympic Stadium terms
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LONDON (REUTERS) - West Ham United face more hard bargaining if the English Premier League soccer club are to fulfil their ambition of moving to a new 60,000-seater home in London's Olympic Stadium.
The promoted club were named on Wednesday as the leading bidders to become anchor tenants in the stadium, but London mayor Boris Johnson warned that a "Plan B" was being developed in case a deal could not be finalised.
Finding a tenant who can regularly draw big crowds to the stadium in east London is seen as vital to ensuring the area gains lasting benefits from the billions of pounds invested in it before the Games. However, the process seems to have been going around in circles for the past couple of years.
West Ham were named as preferred bidders to take over the stadium in February 2011, but that deal collapsed because of legal wrangling. A new agreement would leave the 430 million pounds (S$843.5 million) stadium in public ownership but grant the soccer club a 99-year lease.
