West Ham co-owner David Sullivan has been banned from all contact with his own club’s women’s and youth teams for the past three years following a safeguarding investigation — a restriction that was kept entirely secret while he continued to appear prominently in the director’s box at men’s first-team matches.
The Football Association opened a safeguarding investigation in 2023 after receiving allegations about Sullivan’s conduct. In response, a safeguarding group comprising the club, the FA and the local authority imposed restrictions preventing Sullivan from accessing West Ham’s women’s and youth teams or attending their matches, the BBC has learned. The ban has remained in place to the present day.
The restrictions were never made public. Sullivan, who had held the joint chairman position for 16 years, resigned as co-chair and director of West Ham on Saturday — just ahead of a joint BBC and Times investigation in which multiple women accused the 77-year-old billionaire of abusing his power and preying on young women for sex. He has denied the allegations, describing the investigation as “fundamentally unfair” and its content as “factually incorrect and entirely false, decades-old allegations concerning my personal life.” Sullivan did not respond to a request for comment on the safeguarding ban specifically.
The BBC and Times investigation revealed that eight women, including one involved in the investigation, have gone to police with disclosures about Sullivan’s conduct. None of those cases have resulted in charges. The Metropolitan Police said it takes such allegations “extremely seriously” and that any information provided would be assessed with appropriate enquiries carried out.
The allegations span decades and centre on women who were in their late teens or early twenties at the time, many of them young models seeking work at Sullivan’s Daily and Sunday Sport newspapers — titles he owned during his years building a fortune in the pornography and publishing industries. In his resignation statement, Sullivan said that “after a lifetime spent building businesses in the adult industry in which I have met thousands of women, it is sadly inevitable that a small number of improper conduct claims are being made against me.”
The Independent Football Regulator confirmed it had contacted West Ham over what it described as “extremely serious allegations” and said it was seeking “urgent information” from Sullivan about his suitability to hold his role. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesperson described the women’s accounts as “harrowing.” Former victims minister and Labour MP Alex Davies-Jones said she was “horrified but sadly not surprised” by the allegations and called for a review of how police had handled the disclosures and what action had been taken by the FA and West Ham.
Both West Ham and the FA said they had robust safeguarding measures in place but could not comment on individual cases. Sullivan remains the club’s largest single shareholder following the death of his business partner David Gold in January 2023.
