London's Olympic Stadium traded 80,000 Games seats for a football club tenant
For the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, the stadium in Stratford held 80,000 spectators for athletics and all four ceremonies. Afterwards it was rebuilt with 66,000 seats and became home to West Ham United, but deciding its future took two bidding rounds and a complaint to the European Commission.
The venue stands in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in the Lower Lea Valley, about 10 kilometres east of central London. Ground preparation began in mid-2007 and construction formally started on 22 May 2008. Britain's path to hosting had been long: it bid for three straight Summer Games between 1992 and 2000, twice for Manchester and once for Birmingham, before the International Olympic Committee signalled, according to British Olympic Association chief Simon Clegg, that only a London bid would be taken seriously. In 1997 the association hired David Luckes to study the idea.
The first attempt to settle the stadium's post-Games owner collapsed amid legal challenges and a state aid complaint to Brussels. A second round kept the ground publicly owned and looked for an anchor tenant rather than a buyer. Between 2013 and 2015 it was remodelled with 66,000 seats, though the lease caps football crowds at 60,000, and West Ham moved in for the 2016 season. UK Athletics shares it, staging the annual London Grand Prix round of the Diamond League.
Ownership has passed through a thicket of bodies. The organising committee handed the park to the London Legacy Development Corporation in October 2012, which with Newham Council formed E20 Stadium LLP to run the ground; Newham bowed out in November 2017. The French firm Vinci took a 25-year operating contract from April 2015 through a company called London Stadium 185, the number marking the medals British athletes won at the home Games. It was Vinci's first stadium outside France.
After a 3.5 million pound loss, the legacy corporation bought London Stadium 185 back in January 2019, keeping all its staff. To simplify matters, the stadium interests moved in January 2025 to GLA Holdings, owned by the Greater London Authority, and E20 Stadium LLP became London Stadium LLP on 3 April 2025.
Source: London Stadium
