It was the home of West Ham United from 1904 to 2016, and was briefly used by Charlton Athletic in the early 1990s during their years of financial difficulty.
[2] From the 2016–17 season, West Ham United have played their home matches at the London Stadium in nearby Stratford.
The first stage of the redevelopment came in 1993, when the South Bank was replaced by a 9,000 seat, two-tier stand named in honour of former captain Bobby Moore, who had died earlier that year.
Indeed, on 7 November 2007, Mayor of London Ken Livingstone announced a new site had been identified for West Ham's new stadium.
[5] However, in 2009, club CEO Scott Duxbury announced West Ham had obtained planning permission to expand the East Stand; this would have brought the stadium's capacity over 40,000.
[7] On 23 March 2010, the club announced it was working on a joint bid with Newham London Borough Council to move into the Olympic Stadium.
[10] Three days after Live Nation's endorsement UK Athletics confirmed its formal support for West Ham United and Newham Council in their joint bid to take over the Olympic Stadium in legacy mode.
[11] In November 2010, West Ham commenced a search for potential developers for "informal discussions" about what would happen to the ground if it did take over the Olympic Stadium after the 2012 Games.
[16] In February 2014, West Ham announced the sale of the Boleyn Ground to the development company the Galliard Group, to be effected once the move to the Olympic Stadium was complete.
[18] The match was preceded by violence on Green Street when the coach carrying the players and staff of Manchester United was pelted with missiles resulting in broken windows.
[19] In the 2,398th match played at the ground,[20] with both sides looking to qualify for European football in the 2016–17 season, in front of a crowd of 34,907, West Ham took the lead in the tenth minute through Diafra Sakho, only for Manchester United to make the score 1–2 with two goals from Anthony Martial.
[22] The following day, the club condemned the violence aimed at the Manchester United coach, vowing to ban for life any person convicted.
The following day, the Metropolitan Police issued pictures of four men they hoped to identify in connection with the coach attack.
[27] On 14 March 2016, the dismantling of the ground began with the removal of the John Lyall gates for transfer and reinstallation at the Olympic Stadium.
[28] By July, the seats had been removed from the ground and it was handed over to developers for demolition and redevelopment;[29] the formal transfer of ownership of the site to Barratt London was completed a month later.
The record attendance at the ground was 42,322, against Tottenham in an old Division One match on 17 October 1970, when the North and South Banks were terraced, as was the old "Chicken Run" at the front of the East Stand.
The record attendance after Upton Park became an all-seater was 35,550, on 21 September 2002 for a Premier League match against Manchester City.
West Ham initially gave around 2,500–3,000 tickets to away supporters, going from the furthest side to the left of the bottom tier right up to behind the goal.
[36] The stand at one point had the words "DAGENHAM MOTORS" written into the bottom tier through the seats,[37] but was only changed during the 2006–07 season, despite the club splitting from their sponsorship with the car company back in 1997.
The terrace also had two scoreboards at both corners joining with the Centenary and Bobby Moore Stands, displaying the score and time of the game in process.
The stand was officially opened by HM The Queen, where Her Majesty was introduced to the manager and captain at the time, Glenn Roeder and Joe Cole.
The match finished 2–1 to Argentina and saw the return of former West Ham striker Carlos Tevez to the Boleyn Ground.
An ex-soldier, played by Dave Bautista, is forced into action to defend the packed stadium when armed Russian terrorists take control of it.