By Tom Degun

May 26 - Baroness Margaret Ford, the chair of the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), has told insidethegames that the future of the Olympic Stadium should be finalised by the end of the year and that the final decision will be based on more than who can generate the most income.



The future of the Olympic Stadium following the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games has been a widely-debated subject with the likes of Essex County Cricket Club and the National Football League (NFL) joining Premier League West Ham United and entertainment giant AEG in expressing an interest in using the Stratford venue post-Games.

Ford revealed that the OPLC are looking to make their final decision on the future of the stadium before the end of the year.

She told insidethegames: "Over the next month, we have to whittle down all of the bids for the Olympic stadium but the great thing is that we have had a wide range of bids from lots of very credible organisations with West Ham and AEG perhaps being the most well publicised by the media.

"When we have reduced those bids down to a manageable number, we can proceed with talking to the organisations that are able to fulfil all the criteria we are looking for.

"We are hoping to get that process done and dusted by the end of the calendar year.

"If we can do it even sooner, then great but we’ll do it in a timescale that gets the right advocate rather than trying to rush it."

Ford also insisted that the OPLC’s decision will not be motivated by who can generate the highest amount of money by taking over the stadium.

She said:"When we put out the prospectus regarding the criteria required to move into the stadium, we made it very clear that we are not simply interested in how much revenue is generated.

"We made it clear that we are interested in how much the new tenants of the stadium will invest into helping the local community and how concerned they will about helping the local environment so there are lots of factors besides money that will help determine our decision of who moves into the stadium."

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