50-year-old entrepreneur David Gandler wants to turn Leyton Orient into a multi-sports enterprise along the lines of Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid.
Orient have been on an upward trajectory ever since
local-lad-made-good Nigel Travis bought them in 2017. They had just been
relegated to the fifth tier of English football and were reeling from three
years of calamitous mismanagement under Italian businessman Francesco
Becchetti.
There have been two promotions since then, several American
investors have joined the gang, and improvements have been made to Orient’s
cramped but charming Brisbane Road ground. But Orient have continued to lose
money, which is why Travis had been looking for further help when a
mutual acquaintance connected him and Gandler before Christmas.
The National Basketball Association has spotted that Europe
quite likes basketball, but the continent’s best teams are in cities such as
Athens, Belgrade and Lithuania’s Kaunas, as opposed to easier-to-visit and
wealthier places such as London. NBA Europe, the American league’s proposed
colonial expedition, is intended to fix that, which is where Orient may come
in.
Orient have been in talks with their local authority,
the London borough of Waltham Forest, for almost a year about a site for a new,
17,000 to 20,0000-capacity stadium, with room for an arena, too.
One possibility is New Spitalfields Market, a fruit-and-veg
market only a 10-minute walk from Orient’s current home. There have been plans
to move it to a new site further east in Dagenham for years, which would free
up a lot of space in Orient’s backyard.
Unfortunately, it is also within sight of the City of
London, so there may be more lucrative uses for its 31 acres than football,
basketball and whatever else Devlin, Gandler and Travis have in mind.
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