Olympic Committee urges caution over stadium name

The National Olympic Committee (NOK) has warned stadium owner’s City of Berlin and Bundesliga Hertha BSC Berlin not to rush into any name deal for the city’s Olympic stadium, which is set to stage the FIFA 2006 World Cup final. According to reports in the media Hertha officials have successfully convinced the mayor of Berlin to sell the name-rights in order to pay back a US$45m loan resulting from the refurbishment of the historic ground - but NOK president Dr. Klaus Steinbach believes this might be an unwise measure. "A city with an Olympic stadium should be pleased and we should ask Madrid, New York, Moscow, Paris or London, who had or still have this honour. The moral value of the name Olympic stadium can’t be expressed in terms of money, because it’s an idealistic value, it’s almost priceless," said Steinbach. Built to host 100,000 spectators for the 1936 Olympic Games, €242m was spent to turn the ground into a modern, multi-purpose arena for 74,500 people, which reopened in summer 2004 after over three years of reconstruction.

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