Hearn proposes London Orient name

[Win2Win Racing]

Leyton Orient owner Barry Hearn wants to change the club's name to London Orient if its Olympic Stadium bid is successful.

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[Win2Win]

I bet this makes Vegy happy!!

[MattR]

Vegy Orient would be better.

[Win2Win]

Just call them 'The Onions' as they always make the fans cry

[vegyjones]

Tongue in cheek I'm sure.

Needless to say, at the moment I am hoping that we are unsuccessful in our bid to move to the Olympic Stadium as jooint tenants with West Ham. Feels like the soul is being slowly removed from the club.

All for short term financial gain but what appears to be long term abyss. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't at the moment.

[Win2Win]

Well Hearn will do anything for a guick buck. Some things he does well but he seems to be totally deaf to the fans when it comes to the footy club

[MattR]

I know it's long been said that some West Ham fans go to watch Orient if West Ham are away, but is that actually the case (ever or now?) Does he think moving to the stadium will bring in new fans or does he think it will generate income in some other way?

[Win2Win]

I think they'd have a lot of empty seats

In Liverpool/Everton fans go to both matches as families are usually split and tend to go as a family, although if you turn up in the wrong colours the police send yoiu away

[vegyjones]

We often had premier league fans coming to games in the nineties and probably earlier. I thinbk that has changed a lot since the price of watching football started going up. People haven't been able to afford to go to a different game every week.

With West Ham, I think they are really annoyed with Hearn over the OS issue and you will probably not find any of them at a LO home game these days.

Hearn has wanted to sell up for a while now, but he hasn't got much chance. We're a third division side with a ground owned by Hearn (not the club) and limited room to grow with a block of flats in each corner of our ground. I think he sees the opportunity to move to the OS as a chance to sel our current ground and then cash in on someone who thinks they can make us something bigger than we are with the allure of the OS as our home ground.

He reckons if we can get to Championship level we can get over 10k just off the back of playing at the OS.

The basis for our move to the OS, however, seems to be that we are a championship club. This could be dangerous as nothing is guaranteed in football, and if we start playing at the OS in front of the usual 3-4k supporters, that could damage attendances itself and mean we couldn't afford the rent (which I don't understand how we will anyway).