Diales Compendium Issue 3 - Flipbook - Page 6
A Seat with a View
Getting the
London Stadium
ready for the
Premier League
Rob Gray
Diales Associate Director
What do you do when you don’t have a
great view of the match? For West Ham
United, which took over the London
Stadium in 2015, the answer was to
move the seats.
The London Stadium, built for the 2012 Olympics, is used
for many sports throughout the year, along with football.
The stadium plays host to athletics meetings, Major League
Baseball and concerts, and each of these events requires a
different arena arrangement to give spectators the optimal
experience. For football, bringing the fans close to the pitch
considerably enhances the atmosphere, but the challenge
for the Hammers was how this could be achieved while still
allowing rapid conversion of the stadium into its athletics
configuration. The solution was to build two temporary
stands on top of the track, which could be removed during
the football off-season.
For events specialist Arena, however, it wasn’t as simple as
placing some seating over the track. The new seating had to
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