QUOTE LOCOG ADDED 6AM 27/3/10 

2012 organisers delivered a short but sharp rebuke to West Ham United football club today, further damaging hopes that the Hammers may move into the Olympic Stadium.

During a guided press tour of the East London site, Paul Deighton, Chief Executive of the London 2012 Organising Committee said: "It would be a nice stadium, for a Championship side." A less than veiled dig at the clubs relegation battle.

Local West Ham supporters will not be impressed, already putting up with construction disruption and news they will not receive free or priority tickets.

West Ham owners David Sullivan and David Gold, who took control of West Ham in January, maintain that their plan is the only "sensible option." However, the outfit are saddled with £45m debts.

The cost of relegation from the Premier League is put at around £35m; while corporate hospitality, merchandising and gate receipts are included in that figure, £30m of it is taken up by television revenues. By comparison Championship clubs earn around £2.5m a year from pooled television rights sales.

If relegated, any hope of taking up residency at the stadium would be dead on arrival. The club were unavailable for comment.

David Higgins, Chief Executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority quickly moved the subject on and Deighton later insisted no decision had been made as to who would take over the venue or what the conversion costs would eventually be.

"Appalling waste of money"

There has been an escalating war of words between the Premiership side and 2012 bosses for months over what will happen to the £537m arena. West Ham co-owner David Sullivan slammed plans to convert the Olympic Stadium into an athletics venue as an "appalling waste of public money".

This week, United and Newham Council announced they are working on a joint bid to take over the Olympic stadium but Gianfranco Zola's team are fighting for their Premiership lives, hovering just three points above the drop zone.

The 2012s Chief Executive's put-down also came the same week as a £140m 'conversion cost' was floated - the amount needed to bring the venue up to a 50,000/60,000 Premier League code is nearly 50 per cent higher than original estimates. That figure excludes inflation, VAT and fixtures and fittings, so the final figure could be closer to £200m.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company wants to secure a tenant by March 2011, the Hammers cannot move in until 2015 and there will be no public subsidy.

Stadium is a giant "meccano set"

Higgins described the stadium as a giant "meccano set" as the 55,000 seats above the main bowl can be removed.

Legacy bidders can choose from options ranging from the original plan of a post-Games 25,000-seat venue to a 78,000-seat option. The OPLC have repeatedly underlined that an athletics track must remain around the pitch. But bidders have also been warned they may have to pick up the tab for a 400-metre warm-up track near the stadium, a prerequisite for staging major athletics events.

A  LOCOG spokesman with reference to the report on Paul Deighton said:

"The comment made by Paul Deighton was not in any way a rebuke to West Ham. We have always stated that the Stadium would be a multi-purpose facility after the Games and that this could include football, alongside athletics and other community uses. It would be wrong to imply anything else from the remark." 

Photo - London 2012