The Here East innovation hub is based at the former Olympic broadcast centre
(Picture: Here East innovation hub)Almost exactly a decade from the start of the London Olympics, the legacy of the Games lives on as new data reveals the impact a tech centre built at the Olympic Park contributes to the UK economy.
Based at the former Olympic broadcast centre, tech and innovation hub Here East added £700 million to the UK’s economic output in 2021, figures from Oxford Economics shows, while the campus supported more than 10,000 UK jobs, sustaining over £300 million in wages.
The hub has become a leading collaborative space since opening its doors in 2016, with dozens of firms occupying its vast 1.2 million sq ft site including video game firm Sports Interactive, broadcaster BT Sport and leading university UCL.
Here East CEO and founder Gavin Poole successfully won the bid to redevelop the Olympic site after launching an application in partnership with a data centre company in 2012.
He told the Standard: “We’ve now created an environment that over 5,400 people refer to as their place to work or study — there’s been a marked difference to people’s lives.
“These are new jobs to the British economy which didn’t exist before, in a campus which historically host nations have struggled to make something out of — that for me is a strong legacy.”
One of the residents, VR training platform Moonhub, moved to Here East in 2018 and has since expanded from a team of three to a team of 14, raising over $3 million in funding including from investors they met on a different floor of the hub.
“The environment we were in tied in a big way to how we performed as a business,” Moonhub founder Dami Hastrub.
“It’s helped us to feel inspired and helped us work out what traps and pitfalls to avoid as a business.”
