Olympics-London 2012 badminton venue set to be relocated
By Avril Ormsby
LONDON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - London 2012 Olympic organisers look set to move the badminton venue from Greenwich after a cost-cutting review, it emerged on Wednesday.
London 2012 Organising Committee (Locog) chief executive Paul Deighton told the London Assembly the planned new temporary 6,000-seat venue, which was to have hosted badminton and rhythmic gymnastics, could be "shifted" following a viability review by accountants KPMG.
"The draft conclusion of the KPMG report is that there ought to be an economic opportunity to shift that to save money, so over the next few months we will be progressing that. So that will be a cost saving that will emerge from that," Deighton said.
Organisers look set to keep the basketball venue within the Olympic Park.
Deighton added it "did not make economic sense" to move the one remaining temporary venue from the park to a permanent site elsewhere.
Other sites under review are equestrianism at Greenwich Park and shooting at Woolwich. No details were given on these.
The draft conclusions are due to be presented to the Olympic board later on Wednesday, and published at the end of the year.
Fencing and volleyball have already been moved to existing permanent sites.
The government is under pressure to keep costs down after the Olympic budget spiralled from an initial estimate of 2.4 billion pounds ($3.62 billion) to 9.3 billion.
It has looked at ways of reducing costs including switching venues and scaling down others.
Last week, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell was forced to play down comments she was reported to have made to leisure industry bosses that had the government known it was heading for recession, Britain would not have bid to host the Games.
Locog Chairman Seb Coe acknowledged the economic climate had changed during the past year, but said domestic sponsorship, worth 650 million pounds, had not been affected.
"Because we began our tier 1 negotiations early, we have already secured the majority of our domestic sponsorship," he said.
"Despite the turbulent economic situation, we continue to see strong interest from potential sponsors."
He added that Locog will continue to budget and plan on its ability to raise its total privately-financed budget of 2 billion pounds.
(Editing by Martyn herman and Ken Ferris)
