West Ham to pay £2.5m a year to rent 60,000-seater Olympic Stadium, documents reveal

The £700m stadium was built using public funds for the London 2012 Olympics

West Ham released artists' impressions of match days at the new stadium when the deal was announced (Getty Images)

West Ham will pay just £2.5 million a year to play in the converted Olympic Stadium after they move there at the end of this season, it has been revealed.

After a lengthy legal battle with Olympic bosses, details have finally been released of the deal to hand over the £700 million facility to the club.

West Ham will become the tenants of the stadium on a 99-year lease, the document reveals, with the first £4 million of any naming rights deal going to Newham borough and the public sector business set up to manage the Olympic park, the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC).

The 207-page document is likely to spark renewed complaints from critics that the privately owned football team has been granted a huge new stadium on the cheap, largely at the expense of the taxpayer.

Among the details of the deal is a clause which stipulates the club will pay the owners an additional £1 million if West Ham wins the Champions League – a signal of the team’s new ambitions as it moves from the 35,000-capacity Boleyn Ground to its new 60,000-seater home.

The stadium will have to be kept “clean” of advertising by third parties, the deal stipulates, and will be temporarily handed back to Olympic bosses in the summer of 2017 when Britain hosts both the IAAF World Championships and the IPC Athletics World Championships.

West Ham says its tenancy will prevent the stadium becoming a white elephant (Getty Images)

The publication of the full deal on the LLDC’s website comes after a sustained campaign by a group of fans, who hailed Thursday’s news as “a victory for the power of football supporters”.

It confirms some previously reported aspects, including that the taxpayer will be liable to fund a number of matchday facilities at West Ham games.

Even once the club has control of the stadium, it will be up to the grantor – LLDC and Newham borough – to make sure the pitch is “in a fit and proper condition”, the deal says.

Policing, stadium heating, floodlights, goalposts and corner flags will also be paid for by the public bodies, among costs which previous reports suggest could themselves run up to £2.5 million a year.

West Ham has insisted it offers a good deal to the stadium’s owners, arguing that a high-profile tenant will ensure the stadium does not become a “white elephant” like so many other Olympic facilities around the world.

LLDC said it was “disappointed” by the decision of an information tribunal that the stadium contract should be made public, arguing it had resisted doing so in order to “protect millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money”.

The £700m stadium is the centrepiece of the 'Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park' (Getty Images)

“The stadium needs to be a profitable and successful commercial operation otherwise it will rely on public subsidy,” a spokesman said.

“We were concerned that the publication of this contract and the precedent it may set for future agreements could make it harder to do this.”

West Ham played an historic final FA Cup match at the Boleyn Ground on Wednesday night, losing 2-1 to Manchester United. The club’s last home Premier League game at the stadium will also be against the same team, on 10 May.