New Orient stadium will be a 'digital experience'

Leyton Orient majority owner David Gandler wants the League One club to build one of the world’s “most technologically advanced” stadiums in time for their 150th anniversary in 2031.

This multi-purpose home, which will cost “hundreds of millions of pounds”, will sit in an environmentally-friendly campus that should create more than 1,500 new jobs and enable Orient’s current Brisbane Road stadium to be “unlocked” for new housing.

Gandler, who took control in April, was speaking to The Athletic on the day Orient revealed they have signed a memorandum of understanding with the London Borough of Waltham Forest to work together on the new stadium project.

“We want to stay in Waltham Forest, ideally in Leyton,” said Gandler. “That’s the premise of our relationship.

Gandler did not want to say too much on stadium size as he wants to talk to the club’s fans about it first, but he suggested he is thinking about a ground at least twice Brisbane Road’s capacity of 9,000, where the club have been based since 1937.  “We’re going to focus on that middle tier of the market, which I think has got lost,” he said.

Leaving their current home would free up about five acres of real estate in east London, with Waltham Forest keen to build more affordable housing in the area.   None of the proceeds of that redevelopment would flow to Orient, however, which means Gandler and his partners will need to finance their project themselves.

it won’t just be a stadium — it will be one of the most technologically advanced campuses in the UK and potentially elsewhere, too, claims Gandler.  “We’ll be talking to major technology and infrastructure providers that I believe can deliver experiences we have yet to see in that live environment.”

When asked for examples of the types of technology he is talking about, Gandler said it was everything from ordering and payment systems for food and drink, to immersive data feeds and personal audio streams while you watch the action.

American football will be part of the mix, as Gandler has invested in the European League of Football (ELF), the professional league that features names that once competed in NFL Europe, which wound up in 2007.