British Airways May Be Official Airline of London Olympics

British Airways is expected to be announced as the official airline of the 2012 Olympics in London as it ends sponsorship of popular attraction the London Eye.

Marketing website brandrepublic.com says that BA will pay around £50 million to be a ‘tier-one’ domestic sponsor for the London Olympics. Other UK household names that have already been confirmed as tier-one sponsors for the Games are Adidas, EDF Energy and Lloyds TSB.

Further tier-one sponsors are expected to be found in a number of business sectors including automotive, oil and gas and telecommunications. As well as domestic sponsors, London 2012 already has worldwide sponsor partners including Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Visa, Panasonic and Samsung.

British Airways is expected to launch a new advertising campaign next month featuring the brand new Heathrow Terminal 5 which opens in March. The ad campaign will also feature the London 2012 logo it is reported.

BA has sponsored the landmark popular London tourist attraction the London Eye for eight years but appears to now be focusing on being recognised as the main carrier for the London Olympics. As well as the prestige associated with the title, BA is also likely to secure thousands of bookings from people flying to London for the Games.

British Airways could be hit by a strike by pilots who are members of the British Airline Pilots Association. The dispute between BA and the pilots is over the airline’s insistence that its new subsidiary airline OpenSkies should have a separate pilot workforce.

Olympics Appoints Sustainability Commissioner

The Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 has appointed Dr Claire Holman, director of environment and sustainability for Peter Brett Associates, as a core commissioner.

Dr Holman will support the Commission Chair in providing expert advice and feedback to the Olympic Board on the sustainability of the Games programme, identify good practice and areas for improvement, and assess risks.

She has a particular interest in the use of health impact assessment for regeneration and waste management projects, and leads a team of scientists, engineers, environmentalists and public health specialists working on regeneration, waste management and land development projects.

British Shooters Unhappy with Venue for 2012 London Olympics

Britain’s shooters are unhappy with the venue for their events at the 2012 London Olympics, saying it will leave no legacy for the sport.

British Shooting chairman Philip Boakes said the 7,500-seat temporary venue at the Royal Artillery Barracks in southeast London would cost more than 25 million pounds (US$48.6 million; euro33.5 million) and will be demolished after the games.

“We will have nothing left for shooting after the end of the Olympics and that is the reason we are so unhappy,” Boakes said Monday.

British Shooting wants a gun club in Dartford, a 45-minute drive away from the Olympic Park in London’s East End, to be revamped to become a permanent range for all shooting disciplines.

“We don’t have a world-class venue in the U.K.,” Boakes said. “We haven’t held an international competition for 30 years because of that fact.”

SMEs Get London 2012 ‘Dating Agency’

The London 2012 Business Network was launched at Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium to an audience of more than 600 business people.

“It will contain all kinds of contracts, including IT,” a spokesperson for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) told GC News on Friday.

“The idea is that, if our contractors have some kind of IT requirement, then they will advertise it through the website. So it could be small-scale IT maintenance, software or hardware, or any aspect of IT supply,” said the spokesperson.

The network is divided into three sections: firstly, there is a section for information on upcoming opportunities; secondly, a section for business events; and, thirdly, a “CompeteFor” service, which the ODA describes as a “business dating agency” that will match companies to thousands of opportunities for supplying London 2012 contractors.

London Olympics Organizers Offer 6 Billion Pounds in Contracts

The organizers of London’s 2012 Olympic Games plan to start hiring companies for 6 billion pounds ($11.8 billion) worth of contracts as they prepare for construction to begin later this year.

The vast majority of business opportunities remain to be let, and this year represents a huge opportunity for U.K. businesses,” said John Armitt, chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority, in an e-mailed statement today.

The games have a budget of 9.3 billion pounds, and will be Europe’s largest public construction project. The organizers started clearing the 500-acre (200-hectare) Olympic Park site last year.

The delivery authority and the games’ organizing committee invited businesses to Manchester today to publicize Olympic opportunities. More than 500 contractors have won business worth 1 billion pounds so far, the authority said.

Businesses the length and breadth of the country will win contracts, and we hope gain a huge amount of experience of what it takes to stage and host big sporting events,” said Sebastian Coe, chairman of the organizing committee.