Glasgow and Berlin staged the first edition of the multi-sport European Championships in 2018, with the innovative event considered a success. Mike Rowbottom reports with all eyes now set firmly on Munich.
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he eureka moment for the multievent European Championships - the second edition of which is due to take place in Munich from August 11 to 21 - came to its co-founders, sports marketing experts Paul Bristow and Marc Joerg, shortly after they had revamped the format of the UEFA Champions League. “It was the realisation that it didn’t need to be a new event - the events already existed - it was about bringing them together,” Bristow told insidethegames in 2018, shortly before what proved to be a hugely successful inaugural gathering in Glasgow and Berlin. Joerg and Bristow became directors of European Championships Management, the organisation which founded the new event and now manages and coordinates it, in cooperation with the participating federations, host cities and broadcast partners. “We felt there was a major hole to be filled in Europe by bringing the existing European Championships of a limited number of high-profile sports together under one umbrella,” Bristow added. “The sports marketplace was developing fast with the unrelenting power of football, and sports federations had challenges to find their place. “There’s a huge richness in the sporting world, and everyone wants to be in the
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public eye, but it’s difficult to find airtime for these sports. “It was also the overall media landscape fragmenting with the proliferation of channels and choice for the consumer, in relation to other forms of entertainment. Some sports were struggling to make themselves heard. “At the time we saw a gap in the marketplace with no multi-sport event in Europe. Every other continent had a successful Games which is the pinnacle of the sports. That was the start of the journey, and the main driver for why we started. “It has been shown that there is greater interest - in terms of attendance and television audiences - for multi-sport events rather than separate, individual championships. In a nutshell, we believed that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, when the right combination of sports are brought together.” But how does the spark become a lasting flame? And how is the eureka moment evolving? In 2018, athletics took place in Berlin while Glasgow, with help from Edinburgh and Gleneagles, hosted aquatics, cycling, triathlon, rowing, gymnastics and golf. Four years on, the original vision of a single host city is about to come to pass as Munich welcomes the event 50 years after it was the venue for the 1972 Summer Olympics. The
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Olympiapark will once again play a central role. Munich 1972 will always conjure up a powerful mix of emotions given the dark activities there of the Palestinian Black September militant group, which left 11 Israeli hostages, one police officer and five group members dead. When reflecting on the significance of the 50th anniversary, Marion Schöne, the organiser and managing director of Olympiapark München, was preoccupied with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “First of all, I would like to emphasise that we, as the local Organising Committee of the European Championships Munich 2022, condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine in the strongest possible terms and are watching the events with great concern,” she told insidethegames. “We are glad that the nine European federations participating in the European Championships have followed our clear recommendation to exclude athletes and officials from Russia and Belarus from the competitions. “The extent to which the Ukrainian team will be able to send athletes to Munich is still debatable. There are already initiatives ongoing by the individual federations, offering accommodation and training opportunities to Ukrainian athletes.” Schöne made it clear that the crisis was impacting directly upon Munich 2022 operations.
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