Report: West Ham facing legal battle with London Stadium landlords

West Ham is facing a £100-million-plus legal battle with its landlords at London Stadium regarding the prospect of increasing seating capacity to 60,000, and will dispute the matter at the High Court in November, reports Ben Rumsby of the Daily Telegraph.

West Ham and the publicly funded London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) were involved in talks on Monday in response to a fan invasion incident which occurred on Saturday, but the two parties were also disputing seating and revenue issues.

The club moved into London Stadium in 2016, having signed a 99-year lease for £2.5 million per year, but believed it would have a capacity of 60,000 when it moved into the stadium. The LLDC claimed that figure was actually 53,500 and a compromise was reached that added 3,500 more seats. But LLDC wants compensation if capacity is increased any further.

Rumsby notes the additional revenue from that increased capacity could be worth millions of pounds in ticket sales, and as such, the club has lodged a lawsuit against LLDC, which features a "loss-of-earnings" claim that, multiplied over the course of West Ham's lease, could run into the hundreds of millions - which LLDC claims the taxpayer is entitled to a portion of as well.

Rumsby reports a source revealed both parties have already spent £2 million in legal fees.

The two parties were also in discussions about measures that could be put in place to prevent a repeat of the scenes on Saturday that saw multiple fan invasions and coins tossed toward West Ham's owners - behaviour that London mayor Sadiq Khan called "disgraceful."

West Ham is also reportedly concerned about the atmosphere within London Stadium, having failed to come to an agreement regarding pitch colours and signage.