Ambition Bites the Nails of Success

Orient's new owner continues to talk big about a new stadium - but just how realistic are his goals?

David Gandler’s appearance at the Supporters’ Club on Saturday was odd not just for how clandestine it was, but also for the timing. The most startling revelation concerned the proposed capacity of our big, beautiful new stadium, which Gandler gave as 30-35,000 - the highest range we’ve heard so far, and beyond anything suggested in his interview with us last October.

At least one observer described this as “staggering” coming as it did close to the first anniversary of Gandler’s takeover of the Club, which has seen us drop from the verge of the Championship to the verge of League Two. Later that afternoon the team followed this hubris up with one of the most abject performances of the entire season, a dismal surrender to a side that had only just suffered the indignity of relegation itself (nice new stadium though).

As Mr Gandler is a self-professed “data guy” we thought a good way to evaluate the wisdom of his vision for Orient would be to examine the history of all the other professional clubs that moved into a new stadium, to see how that went for them. As the figure offered by Gandler represents a 3-4 x increase from our current capacity, we wondered if there was any precedent for this kind of leap - and how that worked out for the club(s) in question.

Before we dive in, some explanation:

• we only looked at English clubs

• we only considered the period since the late 1980s when stadium moves became fashionable again. Earlier moves are from a radically different era of football, when the data is less reliable, and often unavailable

• we only included those clubs that moved directly from one permanent home to another - excluding the likes of Wimbledon and Brighton, where the process was much messier

• and obviously MK Dons and their empty bowl don’t count anyway, as they never used to exist at all

• this concerns moves, not expansions to an existing stadium - which are by nature more incremental anyway

• we’ve also included Luton, who haven’t completed their move yet - and only Oxford’s move to the Kassam (although their move to Kidlington will see a similarly modest uplift in capacity)

• capacities quoted are those the grounds were licenced to hold at the time they closed. There is some uncertainty around a couple of those that moved first (Millwall, Scunthorpe, Walsall) but we’ve relied on the best sources that we can

(above: aren’t the old names more poetic and romantic than what replaced them?)

What is immediately apparent is that, even at the lower end of his 30-35k range, Gandler is proposing something never before attempted in the modern history of English football. One suspects this news would only encourage him.

So, if no club in the modern era has ever more than tripled its capacity like this, what happened to those that got closest? Darlington is the current record holder in that respect - where career criminal George Reynolds increased the capacity exactly three times over, causing the Club to go into administration within six months and leading to its extinction 8 years later after suffering two further administrations. The Darlington Arena is now used by a fourth-tier Rugby Union side, and occasionally hosts events during the school summer holidays.

Next up we have Wigan Athletic, less notorious but - as any Orient fan who has been there recently will testify - still questionable. The stadium is routinely about three-quarters full when it hosts Rugby League, so no doubt the stadium owners are reasonably happy - but it must be pretty dispiriting watching third tier football there week in week out when the other quarter turn up. Some might point to them spending 8 years in the top flight and winning the FA Cup since moving, but even then the place was typically only 70% full (we don’t know if they were cooking the figures as it often seemed much emptier when they weren’t playing one of the glamour teams), and those days now seem like a very long time ago.

Apart from this pair, only two other clubs more than doubled their capacity when moving: Sunderland and Southampton. These are much happier tales, although both are the only clubs in their respective cities, and timed their moves when the sport and their local economies were booming. Beyond that, the table above shows that all the other moves were much more modest in their ambition - and truly, very few are now bursting at the seams and regretting not doing more.

But this is London! And that makes us special and different, right?

Well, maybe. Whether the 17,000 new local housing starts alluded to by Gandler on Saturday both come to pass and supply many thousands of dedicated new fans, only time will tell. The current state of homebuilding in London does not augur particularly well, nor does the glacial progress of the Leyton Mills Development Framework since it was announced 5 years ago.

The Gandlerplan would increase our capacity in absolute terms by more than 20,000. Only four clubs have added more than 20,000 to their capacity in a single move before: and three of them (Arsenal, Spurs, West Ham) are our close neighbours. Now, that could indicate that North-East London is the absolute epicentre of the game with a vast reservoir of untapped demand, or it could mean that all the excess demand in the area has already been catered for. As usual, the truth is probably somewhere between the two - in any event, next season we will get to see how many supporters of either West Ham or Spurs turn out against the likes of Lincoln City.

Gandler did suggest that the upper tier of our new stadium could potentially be closed when not required (perhaps inspired by the example of Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium - see above). For Orient fans who remain concerned that the Club would play second or third fiddle to some other attraction, Gandler repeated his assurances that Orient would be the main tenant - which, given the expressed appetite for American Football in Europe - does make sense. At the time of writing, no other tangible proposals have been made for use of the stadium outside the recent survey. ¹

Gandler also mentioned that the recent survey indicated widespread support for the move, although we should note that the only question on this was asked well before any details were shared (those on pricing and other uses came later in the survey). One should always be mindful that surveys can only ever be as good as the intentions behind them.

Now, it must be said that stadium moves have been shown to be generally beneficial, but the overwhelming majority have not involved such an extreme increase in capacity. This optimistic analysis suggests there is typically a 74% increase in attendances after 10 years of a move. Even allowing for the dubious way the industry presents attendance figures these days this still only gets us to somewhere shy of 14,000: assuming the vast empty spaces wouldn’t be offputting to supporters.

There is much more to be said about the plans for the new stadium, and many more obstacles to overcome before it becomes a reality. But as Gandler told us last year - he has a track record of never giving up. What we have presented here are the facts - and we shall leave it to you, Dear Reader, to consider the wisdom of what Mr Gandler is proposing.

“I’m a data guy, I’m a technology guy, and the numbers are the numbers. They’re fact, not hope” (David Gandler, speaking to the OrientEar in October 2025)

(above: declared attendances since Nigel Travis rescued us from the dustbin. Can you see where the Club changed the way it reported this data to include tickets sold but not used?)

(answer: it was summer 2022!)

1. these were: Orient’s Womens Team, another WSL team, Rugby, American Football - exhbition or ELF, international field hockey, combat sports (boxing, MMA, wrestling), music concerts, conventions/expos, monster trucks, and “floor events” like food and drink shows. Oh, and Eurovision parties. There were also a long list of indoor events listed - which may or may not take place in a seperate arena.