By Mark Baber
March 11 – As West Ham supporters pay their respects to the Upton Park/Boleyn Ground, the club’s Board has revealed that it is working to increase the capacity of their new home to 60,000.
A “message from the Board” on the club web welcomes the recent £30 cap on away supporter tickets and says: “The Board are also pleased to confirm that following extraordinary demand for tickets at the Hammers’ new world-class home, West Ham are now doing everything in their power to expand the capacity to 60,000.”
According to the statement: “Should that hard work pay off, there will be an additional 5,000 Band 5 seats and thus a total of 8,000 Season Tickets available for £289 a season. What’s more, the Club project that some 8,000 Season Tickets will be sold to Under-16s for just £99.”
There had been doubts over whether West Ham would be able to fill up the Olympic Stadium under the existing plans which are seeing the venue transformed into a UEFA Category 4 venue seating 54,000 spectators. However, in early February co-chairman David Gold told SkySports: “Certainly over 30,000 tickets have already been sold. We expect to sell all the season tickets.”
“Everybody has believed that with 35,000 at Upton Park that you are going to have empty seats with 54,000 seats at the Olympic Stadium. Well, we are going to sell those 54,000 [seats] and sadly there are going to be some disappointed fans.”
West Ham currently sit in 5th place in the Premier League table and have a realistic chance of qualifying for the Champions League. They also have a catchment area which stretches from Tower Hamlets eastwards along the north of the river out to Essex. However, West Ham’s highest ever home attendance at Upton Park was in the FA Cup on 8 January 1927 at 44,417, with their highest attendance in the League being on 17 October 1970 at 42,322 (11v11.com figures) – both fixtures against local rivals Tottenham, who have been unsurprisingly hostile to the Hammers’ move to a bigger home.
If West Ham get the capacity lifted to 60,000 it will give them the third larges club ground in England behind Arsenal who have a capacity of 60,432 at their Emirates Stadium and Manchester United who have a capacity of 75,731 at Old Trafford.
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