The sale of naming rights for the venues on the Olympic Park is set to be one of the biggest income generators after London 2012 with a number of major companies said to be interested in associating themselves with venues that will host the world's best athletes this summer.

Premiership football clubs have shown how lucrative the process can be with Manchester City having signed a £400 million ($632 million/€480 million), 10-year deal with Etihad Airways last year to have their stadium renamed the Etihad Stadium, while Arsenal did the same back in 2004 with a £100 million ($158 million/€120 million), 15-year deal with Emirates Airline for their then new stadium to be called the Emirates Stadium.

But Tudor, who has previously worked as senior director and general manager of Wembley Arena, said that the OPLC will not be solely looking to generate as much income as possible from the naming rights.

"While we obviously want to secure a large amount of money from selling the naming rights, it will not just be about the money for us," Tudor told the London Assembly here.

"We have a set of core values which are based around creating a highly active park and premier centre for the enjoyment of sports, culture and recreation.

"After the Games, we want to create a space that will offer a full variety of international, regional, community programmes and cultural events that celebrate the Olympic legacy.

"So any sponsor looking to secure naming rights for the venues on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park must share our core values and be a good partner in helping make them a reality.

"We closed the expressions of interest phase of the process last week and unsurprisingly, we had a huge amount of interest from sponsors looking to get involved.

"We will now start to go through that list and provide more information for the interested parties before we begin to narrow down the process and shortlist potential sponsors.

"But money is definitely not the only focus here."


Only two Olympic Park venues remain without a tenant after London 2012: the Main Media Centre (MMC) (pictured) and the Olympic Stadium.

The MCC, which consists of the Main Press Centre (MPC) and International Broadcast Centre (IBC), has shortlisted three bids with the winning bid to be announced this summer.

Meanwhile, the Olympic Stadium has had 16 expressions of interest with the shortlisted candidates to be announced later this year.

Despite the Olympic Stadium not having an anchor tenant, the OPLC have already taken expressions of interest in naming rights for the venue.

"The thing with the stadium is that it is a multi-use venue so that is why we are already talking about naming rights," Tudor said.

"It will obviously be hosting athletics, pop concerts and we have bids for other sports to be there so any sponsor would actually have naming rights for a multi-use stadium rather than for an individual sport."

West Ham United are one of the 16 bidders for the Olympic Stadium and remain favourite to land the venue having already been awarded it once but being forced to relinquish it over legal issues.

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