The exhibition’s organisers needed to sell off the buildings quickly.
With the profits from his tobacco kiosks and demolition experience from his previous job, Elvin soon set himself up to win contracts to dispose of some of the buildings.
“Elvin takes advantage of an economic reality,” cultural historian Dr Katy Layton-Jones said. “They have to flog some of this stuff off, to recoup some of the losses that they’ve made. And he’s quite wily in recognising that.”
The stadium itself might have gone at this stage, demolished and forgotten.
“It fell into the hands of [financial] speculators,” Inglis explained. “And even they really struggled to make sense of it, until Arthur Elvin came along with a vision.”
Elvin borrowed the £122,500 needed to purchase the stadium – which would be worth more than £6m in 2025 terms – from a financier named Jimmy White, who agreed to take repayments in instalments.
But White was heavily in debt and killed himself, and his creditors demanded full payment from Elvin of the entire sum.
So Elvin performed what Inglis describes as “a wonderful switch”.
Later claiming in an interview that it was “often easier to borrow £10,000 than £50”, Elvin persuaded a group of city investors to put up the money to create a company, with him in charge, to buy the stadium from him – not only paying off his debt, but also making himself a tidy profit in the process.
Elvin was managing director of the company, and after taking charge in August 1927 would run Wembley for the next 30 years.
