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Team 2012 have a new flexible friend
* Credit card giant Visa is close to agreeing a £10million deal to sponsor the British team preparing for the London Olympics.
The company, which has been a global Olympic sponsor since 2002, will buy the promotional rights of 1,400 British athletes collectively known as “Team 2012” over the next three years.
Visa will be entitled to three days per year in appearances from athletes and the company will be allowed to use its branding at training camps and media and hospitality events during the Games, during which it will be known as the official “presenting partner”.
Visa became a £10m-a-year global Games sponsor in 1986 and has seized on the London Olympics as a chance to build brand awareness in the UK.
The company is aiming for 23 per cent brand awareness from current levels of around eight per cent.
It paid £1m to sponsor last summer's mass street party in the Mall marking the handover from the Beijing Olympics.
Through advances in Oyster-style card technology, it has also pledged to make the London Olympics the first cashless Games. The payWave card will be accepted at all official 2012 outlets — even for payments under £10 — and is planned for use on public transport between all Olympic venues.
Sell-outs are just the ticket for Williamson
* London 2012 head of ticketing
Paul Williamson, formerly of Ticketmaster, is trying to figure out how to guarantee full houses at the stadia chosen to host the Olympic football tournaments.
Demand for tickets to the event — especially the women's tournament — is expected to be slack and organisers are eager to avoid thousands of empty seats at host venues Wembley stadium, Old Trafford, Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, St James' Park, Hampden Park and Villa Park.
Bargains will be on offer for the football, which starts two days before the main Olympics, when tickets go on sale in mid-2011.
Coe's world triple to be commemorated
* Olympics supremo Sebastian Coe will this weekend be honoured by UK Athletics on the 30th anniversary of his stunning triple of world records in just 41 days. At the Aviva Grand Prix in Crystal Palace, Coe will be presented by UKA chief executive Niels de Vos with a wristwatch and photomontage of his 1979 feat of setting world bests in 800m, the mile and 1500m.
Life's not a beach for volleyball planners
* Plans to stage the Olympic beach volleyball tournament at Horse Guards Parade are causing a headache for Games organisers. They are trying to figure out how they will get 15,000 spectators plus officials and athletes onto the historic Whitehall site despite widespread road closures during the Games. Many surrounding roads will be shut to stage the Olympic road cycling, triathlon and racewalking which could interfere with logistics for beach volleyball, a competition which is staged daily throughout the two weeks of the Games. As a further challenge, the 2012 organising committee are still trying to identify a spot for the beach volleyball practice courts. The novel idea during the bid of bringing an inner-city beach to within view of Downing Street may have captured the imagination of then Prime Minister Tony Blair but it could be spiked by his successor.
Millwall get ready for fun and Games
* The Olympics is coming to The Den. The home of Millwall has been chosen by 2012 organisers as the taekwondo and judo training venue for the Games. The club have organised boxing and martial arts classes as part of their community programme in a sports hall next to the ground — and it was shortlisted as a training venue for martial arts two years ago before being picked recently. The world's leading competitors will commute between the club's Bermondsey home and the 2012 competition venue, the ExCel centre in the Royal Docks.
Mills hopes to get clubs Sported' out
* Sir Keith Mills, deputy chairman of the 2012 organising committee, Locog, and director of Spurs is shortly to launch his own foundation aimed at around 10,000 grassroots sports projects. The initiative will be piloted in Cornwall and London and has the working title of “Sported”. It will target small projects and offer funding and business advice using a network of regional managers. “It aims to get to the parts other schemes do not reach” said Sir Keith, who built his fortune on the loyalty marketing programmes Nectar and AirMiles.
