The sale of their current shit hole generated something like £30-40 million ( I posted the correct figure on the Stadium thread )
They are obligated to be "Debt free" before they take their 25 match day a year lease.
I can only assume the revenue from their soon to be Champions League winning run might well clear the majority of the remaining debt.
It's a very Good job they don't operate on a "kids for a quid" policy to sell their existing stadium out otherwise it's going to be hard to flog those seats 60 meters away from the running track......no debt / no assest / no problem
I would expect the rest of the debt to be cleared by the owners. As the club is worth now a lot more than what they paid for it, they can easily recover any loans/shares they have invested in the club, ifthey sell.
Meanwhile they are currently running at a profit according to the Mail 'infographic' (£15.3m pre-tax last season) so they can presumably start using some of that up to pay off the debt as well. Incidentally the Mail's analysis is inaccurate. West Ham don't need a partial sale to clear their debt, because AFAIK, the owners can clear the debt as I've outlined, just as ENIC have cleared our debt.
Of course the club may sell to help clear the debt, but they don't have to.
The OS is a massive lottery win for the Hammers as a club in terms of money, at the taxpayers' expense of course. Whether it turns out to be good for the fans and the club in general is harder to call.
IF they can use the OS as part of the bait to land a City/Chelsea style owner, then
that will be be a game changer, and indeed they will in all likelihood be challenging for CL places. While they stayed at the Boleyn they were no threat to us, the OS potentially changes that, IMHO.
Indeed effectively the OS has already been a 'game changer' for West ham, in that without the carrot of this taxpayer-funded windfall, it may well be that the current owners wouldn't have bought the club, or have pumped the money into the club they have to keep them (albeit with a relegation in between) in the Prem.
No OS and the Hammers may have gone into administration, and there's certainly a good chance they'd now be in the Championship. I've no interest in athletics or the Olympic games, but I curse the day London got the Olympics as it's helped out West Ham so much, and indirectly maybe also harmed us as well already, given our failed Stratford bid. But that's another debate for another thread I think.