London Olympic Stadium Part Of World Cup 2018 Bid
The possibility of London’s Olympic Stadium playing host to 2018 World Cup matches took a important step forward this Thursday after it has emerged that the venue is one of four being suggested by the ‘London United’ bid team.
The 16 cities which are bidding for participation in the huge event have been disclosing their plans to ‘England 2018′ officials during the week and, along with Wembley, the Emirates and the new stadium in Tottenham, the London team believes the new Olympic stadium could boost the overall quality of the bid.
The Olympic Park located in Stratford is set to becoming the biggest urban park to have been built in Europe in 150 years and will offer a giant focal point for football fans to congregate and watch matches on huge television screens. .
The key question at this point appears to be the Olympic Stadium’s initial 80,000-seat capacity. Plans to have the capacity reduced immediately after the 2012 Olympics may have to be postponed until the World Cup in 2018.
Simon Greenberg, chairman of London United said:”The Olympic Stadium is being put forward as a potential match venue for 2018/2022″
He added that the Olympic Stadium and Olympic Park would clearly boost the bid in a whole variety of ways, such as the legacy aspect and also being one of the most modern stadiums on the planet.
Minister for the Olympics and London Tessa Jowell appeared concerned with the potential financial aspects, with the firstl estimates showing that it would cost more than £100 million to alternate from the legacy plan of simply reducing it to a 25,000-capacity athletics venue.
Managed by Lord Triesman, chairman of the Football Association, the England 2018 bid team is set to make a final decision on the preferred venues in December, following the last round of presentations from the competing cities. England 2018 will assemble between 12 and 18 match venues which will make up their final bid to Fifa, one year before the deciding vote.