Following surveys suggesting that supporters are unhappy with the club’s first season in the Olympic Stadium, the stadium’s owners are considering changes to the design that they claim will make the venue "more suitable for football".
As a reaction to supporter criticism of sight-lines that many felt bore little resemblance to those computer-generated images shown during last season’s season-ticket renewal process, stadium owners E20 Stadium LLP have come up with a radical proposal that they hope will make supporters feel closer to the action.Stadium spokesman Keir Leitch explained: "The main problem seems to be that patrons located in the stands along the touchline are set back further from the pitch than those sat behind the goals.
"We can understand how frustrating that would be for some supporters so what we intend to do is to rotate the pitch through 90 degrees.
"The World Athletics championships this summer will mean that we won’t be able to do it this year but, all being well, we should be good to go for 2018-19.
"Obviously this will impact on those currently located behind the goals who will find themselves further away from the action than they have been used to," added Leitch. "We did consider introducing a migration process for those wishing to move seat.
"However, after talking to [stadium operators] London Stadium 185 and the club we noted the migration problems they have already encountered, and we have come to a joint decision that it would simply be much easier to rotate the pitch through 90 degrees at the end of every season to give everyone a fair crack of the whip."
The proposed changes will present their own technological challenges, Leitch explained.
"Because we can’t actually dig down as such we will initially have to install a platform raised on some kind of stilts," he said. "However, once we have done that we are hopeful that the technology will be there in the future that will enable us to change the pitch orientation at a moment’s notice.
"This would enable us to stage alternate matches in the different configurations. In fact, in theory, as long as the Mayor’s office is willing to fund the project, there would be nothing to stop us rotating the pitch through 360 degrees over the course of a 90 minute match, though I don’t suppose the FA would be too keen on that at present."
We’ll have more on this later once we've had a chance to speak to someone at the club.
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