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London 2012 Olympic organisers look set to move the badminton venue from Greenwich but have decided against changing the bases for basketball and equestrian events.

London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG) chief executive Paul Deighton told the London Assembly the planned new temporary 6,000-seat venue, which was to have hosted badminton and rhythmic gymnastics, could be "shifted" following a viability review by accountants KPMG.

"The draft conclusion of the KPMG report is that there ought to be an economic opportunity to shift that to save money, so over the next few months we will be progressing that. So that will be a cost saving that will emerge from that," Deighton said.

The Olympic Board then issued a statement saying that the 12,000-seat temporary venue for basketball, which would also host the handball semi-finals and final, would remain on the Olympic Park and the equestrian events, including modern pentathlon, would remain at Greenwich Park.

"The KPMG review showed that there are no significant savings to be made from moving the venue off the park to an existing permanent facility," the statement said.

"This is due to the resultant costs of venue hire, operating costs and the loss of ticket revenue due to a reduction in capacity - not building a temporary venue would significantly reduce the number of spectators that would be able to watch the event.

No details were given of any proposed change of the shooting venue at Woolwich.

Fencing and volleyball have already been moved to existing permanent sites as the government is under pressure to keep costs down after the Olympic budget spiralled from an initial estimate of £2.4 billion to £9.3bn.

It has looked at ways of reducing costs including switching venues and scaling down others.

The previous week, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell was forced to play down comments she was reported to have made to leisure industry bosses that had the government known it was heading for recession, Britain would not have bid to host the Games.

LOCOG Chairman Seb Coe acknowledged the economic climate had changed during the past year, but said domestic sponsorship, worth 650 million pounds, had not been affected.

"Because we began our tier one negotiations early, we have already secured the majority of our domestic sponsorship," he said.

"Despite the turbulent economic situation, we continue to see strong interest from potential sponsors."

He added that LOCOG will continue to budget and plan on its ability to raise its total privately-financed budget of £2bn.

Reuters