London Olympic Stadium to be Opened No Earlier than August 2015 says LLDC Chief

Dennis Hone, the newly announced permanent chief executive of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), has revealed the Olympic stadium will not be reopened until August 2015.

He confirmed that a 2014 reopening is “completely out, it would be August 2015” at the earliest.

There are currently four bids to take over the venue, with West Ham United one of them, but Hone rejected reports that an American Football organisation was among them.

Hone, said: “We have no formal bids outside of the competition or otherwise by American Football to go in to the stadium. We are running a competition and we have four bidders. There are no bids outside that.”

Hone told the London Assembly’s budget and performance committee that the amount of work needed to fine tune the bids would make August 2015 or even August 2016 the most likely reopening date.

Whichever bid wins, the venue could have multiple uses and the stadium will host the World Athletics Championships in 2017.

A venue with a capacity of around 50,000 seats might be needed for those championships.

No date has been set for when a new tenant will be announced, with no decision expected before December.