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Plans for a new global league of athletics meetings could help secure the future of the sport at London's stadium for the 2012 Olympics.

The so-called Diamond League, which includes central contracts for the world's top athletes, progressed on saturday as Sebastian Coe and his fellow vice-presidents of the IAAF entered discussions with Lamine Diack, president of the governing body, in Monaco.

IAAF representatives are due to meet the league promoters to work out the details of the proposed 12-meeting format, a global version of the Golden League. An announcement is expected this week.

The Diamond League is thought to include two meetings in Great Britain, most likely to be in London and Birmingham, which could rejuvenate legacy plans for London's 2012 stadium. Up until 2012 the London venue would be the Crystal Palace athletics track, but post-2012 Diamond League organisers would likely push for a more modern arena, which could have the effect of securing an athletics legacy for the east London stadium.

The issue of the post-Games usage of the 86,000-seater stadium, for which the current estimated cost has risen to £547m, has proved very thorny. Over the past three years a number of football and rugby clubs have expressed an interest – from West Ham United to Saracens – but this has waned and the London Olympic organising committee, Locog, has been forced to admit that it has been unable to secure a deal. Up until now a dedicated athletics track has never been a viable option as it cannot generate the same revenue as a top-flight football or rugby union club.

However, the London mayor Boris Johnson's most recent proposals for the site would complement Diamond League plans. Johnson wants to create a secondary school and a national skills academy for sport in the undercroft of the stadium, which would form an integral part of an "urban park", with 16,000 new homes and several other schools, all built around world-class international athletics facilities.

In the Diamond League calendar the London venue would host a two-day event, as Crystal Palace did last year. The revenue generated would be a drop in the ocean towards meeting the estimated annual cost of maintaining the stadium post-2012, currently thought to be around £800,000, but with the concept of high-profile stars such as Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell being contracted to go head-to-head at a minimum of six dates a year – one of which is likely to be London – the fixture would be expected to draw big crowds.

Coe, chairman of Locog, is fully behind proposals to create a viable future for athletics. He accepts the scale of the challenges facing the sport – an ageing demographic of interest, falling TV viewing figures and the global success of other sports such as football and tennis – but said yesterday: "If we don't change we die, that's the reality of it."

To secure an athletics future for the stadium for the Olympics he helped to win for London would surely be a first step towards exactly the kind of legacy he is after.

(Source: Guardian.co.uk)