Friday 24 April 2015 07:52, UK
West Ham manager Sam Allardyce has backed the club’s decision to reduce season ticket prices when they move to their new home.
The cheapest season ticket at Upton Park is currently £620 but there will be £289 seats on offer from the 2016/17 season, the club's first in the 54,000-seater capacity Olympic Stadium.
Allardyce believes filling your home ground is crucial to the ongoing success of Premier League clubs and the Hammers have moved a step closer to ensuring that, with vice-chairman Karren Brady announcing the revised price structure, with the move being offset against increased television revenue.
"The most important thing at a football club is to fill the stadium," he said. "I think filling the stadium is the ultimate for the success of the team. Obviously it's not from a revenue base like it used to be.
"The revenue base for a football club used to be the sustainability of the football club in my years before the Premier League and before Sky made it a worldwide brand.
"It's about creating the atmosphere in a stadium that thrills not only the fans there enjoying the atmosphere, but the players who respond to that.
"To make sure everywhere you go in the Premier League maintains a high level of attendance and selling out your stadium has to be the ultimate goal for any Premier League football club, for me.
"What we've announced has to be the best piece of business, for me, seen in the Premier League for a long, long time.
"Hopefully everybody at West Ham football club, particularly the fans, will come and enjoy, as Karren says, a fantastic facility for less. That will only encourage future young West Ham supporters to be West Ham supporters."
