Stadium’s sponsor search fizzles out
THE London Stadium is taking a break from its fruitless five-year search for a naming rights partner in the hope the World Athletics Championships will revive interest.
The second opportunity to be in the global shop window during 10 days of track and field action gives the venue another chance to attract sponsorship. This follows the wasted opportunity of agents IMG failing to find a backer in those crucial six months after the massive success of London 2012 gave the stadium an iconic reputation.
New agents ESP Properties were close to clinching a £6million-a-year deal with Vodafone this year only for it to collapse at the last minute, taking the naming rights saga back to square one.
It is likely that multiple agencies will be asked to find a backer when the hunt resumes in the autumn. Meanwhile, the £6m annually that Vodafone were going to pay is now the current benchmark for London ground naming rights, making Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy’s asking price of £24m-a-year for Tottenham’s new stadium somewhat optimistic. ONE wonders why Prince Andrew bothered making a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Athletics Championships last night when he hot-footed it out of Stratford after seeing just three races from the opening heats of the men’s 100 metres. WEAK IOC president Thomas Bach (right) came up with a remarkable excuse for refusing to follow the IAAF line in banning Russian athletes from competing at the Rio Olympics.
Bach, speaking at the joint IOC/ IAAF pre- championships press conference, claimed that the IAAF had special reason to do so because they had been named in Richard McLaren’s report into Russia’s state-sponsored doping. Yet Bach conveniently didn’t add that McLaren’s inquiry found at least 30 sports in Russia had covered up doping. The Olympic president, who looked very uneasy being on the podium alongside IAAF president Seb Coe, denied that the IOC had been embarrassed by being so clearly shown a lead by one of their own federations.
Bach claimed: ‘Different issues required different appraisals’, yet called the IAAF decision ‘courageous’. And when asked whether Russians would be allowed to compete at the next Winter Olympics in 2018, Bach’s feeble reply was: ‘This is not a personal issue. I cannot speculate.’ THE two biggest global sports bodies are football’s FIFA and athletics’ IAAF, with over 200 countries having representatives. Yet, bizarrely, neither of these Olympic sports have their presidents, Gianni Infantino and Lord Coe, sitting on the IOC. Olympic chief Thomas Bach claimed this was due to recruitment regulations. Coe’s camp say he is relaxed about not being on the IOC, as he wishes to concentrate on reforming the IAAF.