THE ANNUAL REPORT 2014 SPORTSPRO DESTINATIONS 2014
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It’s more than just a city. It’s intriguing Abu Dhabi.
SHEIKH ZAYED GRAND MOSQUE
EMIRATES PALACE
EXPLORE OUR WATERS
ARABIAN NIGHTS VILLAGE
FERRARI WORLD ABU DHABI
TripAdvisor has named our iconic mosque ‘one of the world’s most talked about attractions.’ Have you visited yet?
We’re home to some of the world’s most luxurious hotels.
Explore our clear, warm Arabian Gulf waters and discover exciting watersports, marine life and tranquil seas home to schools of beautiful dolphins.
A desert experience like no other awaits at this one-of-a-kind village where the past is recreated for the present.
Feel the 240kph adrenaline rush of the world’s fastest roller coaster.
GOLF IN ABU DHABI
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YAS WATERWORLD
With a diverse golf offering you can play a different course every day of the week.
Learn more about the UAE’s national bird and try your hand at the traditional sport of falconry at this state-of-the-art facility.
All aboard for a tour of our ancient and modern marvels – with commentary in eight languages!
Enjoy the Blue-flagged beaches of our waterfront capital.
Futuristic waterpark with 43 rides and attractions. Splash into fun with the world’s largest tornado waterslide and the 3 metre waves of Bubbles Barrel.
Explore a city built on tradition and inspired by innovation. Where you can lose yourself in age-old hospitality and marvel at the wonder that is Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi. Travellers welcome.
Discover more. www.visitabudhabi.ae
COntEnts BiDDing 8 10 16 20
the briefing how tokyo took 2020 keeping up with the neighbours Welcome to the supercity
hOsting 26 28 32
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the briefing a mosaic of experiences Up in the air: how can Qatar land its sporting strategy? Live on the edge island records Building capital kallen the shots all that glitters is gold Coast a global offering
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sportsPro Destinations: the annual Report 2014 is a supplement to SportsPro (april 2014) SportsPro (issn 1756 5340) is published monthly by sportsPro Media Ltd and distributed in the Usa by Mail Right int., 1637 stelton Road B4, Piscataway, nJ 08854. Periodicals Postage Paid at Piscataway, nJ and additional mailing offices POstMastER: send address changes to SportsPro, sportsPro Media, C/o 1637 stelton Road B4, Piscataway nJ 08854
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the briefing Zayed sports City keeping up appearances installation for the nation the swing doctor singapore’s next step
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the briefing 12 lessons from 2012 supporting Canberra’s next 100 years
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The Destinations Report 2014 | 3
Destinations Report 2014 EDITOR’S LETTER
EDitORiaL David Cushnan Eoin Connolly Michael Long James Emmett Managing DiRECtOR nick Meacham COMMERCiaL Jon abraham
sEtting thE stagE
aRt DiRECtOR Daniel h Brown MaRkEting Yéwandé aruléba PhOtOgRaPhiC agEnCY action images MEDia PaRtnER Press association
this report is published by: sportsPro Media Ltd 5 Prescot street, London E1 8Pa, Uk tel: +44 (0) 207 549 3250 Fax: +44 (0) 207 549 3255 Email: info@sportspromedia.com Web: www.sportspromedia.com (sportsPro Media Ltd is part of the henley Media group Ltd www.henleymediagroup.com) sUBsCRiPtiOns to sportsPro magazine are available at a cost of Uk£149 Us$249 €170 and delivered anywhere in the world at no extra charge. Back issues are available to subscribers for Uk£10 Us$17 €11 and available to non-subscribers for Uk£20 Us$34 €22. subscriptions are available by logging on to www.sportspromedia.com EDitORiaL COPYRight: the contents of this report, both words and statistics, are strictly copyright and the intellectual property of sportsPro Media. Copying or reproduction may only be carried out with written permission of the publishers, which will normally not be withheld on payment of a fee. article reprints: Most articles published in sportsPro Magazine are available as reprints by prior arrangement from the publishers. normal minimum print run for reprints is 400 copies, although larger and smaller runs are possible. Please contact us at: info@sportspromedia.com
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B
idding for, then hosting, a major sports event is a complicated business and an operation which gets more complicated by the year. New challenges – technological, political, financial and environmental – have contrived to make that so. This report, our second annual examination of event bidding, hosting and legacy, is designed as a guide for cities, regions or countries looking to make sport part of their strategy – in other words, nearly all of them – and for rights holders, looking for the perfect host. We’ve brought together leading experts from across the field to discuss the requirements of a host, how to create the ideal events strategy and how to measure the
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success, or otherwise, of an event. This year we’ve added a section on venues and how they must be carefully integrated into any city-wide or national sports strategy. A multitude of hints and tips on best practice follow but two things clearly emerge as vital for any would-be host or event organiser: joined-up thinking across all relevant stakeholders, and having a clearly defined plan in place as early as possible. From Abu Dhabi to Auckland, through Tokyo’s textbook Olympic bid and the many challenges facing Qatar in the build-up to its mega-event in 2022, let the Destinations annual report 2014 be your guide. David Cushnan, Editor
FOR YOUR NEXT COMPETITION THERE IS NO COMPETITION. Find out why on page 74.
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government, tourism and Event Research Expert strategic advice, valuation and impact measurement today form crucial elements of any major event or tourism campaign. Repucom provides this insight and more, drawing on the expertise of some of the major events and tourism industry’s leading experts. Repucom’s Government, Tourism and Events division provides the following services to event owners, rights holders, event companies, tourism bodies, convention bureaus, business events and governments at all levels:
HOLISTIC EVENT EVALUATION AND IMPACT » » » » » »
Economic impact Tourism impact Media & marketing impact Community impact Event attendee satisfaction Sponsorship impact
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Event selection and due diligence Asset valuation Optimal calendar management Framework and system design Risk assesment and contracting Host city value optimization
For further details on how we may be able to assist you, please contact: James Paterson I Director, Government, Tourism & Events jpaterson@repucom.net
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BIDDING
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Destinations report 2014 BIDDING
The SPorTS ConSulTanCy The Briefing: Bidding
T
he future of major event bidding and host procurement process was a major subject of debate across the industry in 2013, as the latest round of Olympic bidding – the most high-profile example of sports event bidding - came to a conclusion. Tokyo ultimately emerged victorious from a lengthy, not to mention costly, battle with Madrid and Istanbul and will host the 2020 Games. By the time it welcomes the world six years from now, the way the largest sporting event on the planet is awarded may well have changed fundamentally. New International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach has given the goahead for a review of the host city selection process, ensuring the debate will continue throughout 2014 until the IOC meets in December to form some conclusions. The Sports Consultancy, led by managing directors Angus Buchanan and Robert Datnow, are about to make what is a natural progression into the world of megaevent bidding, having overseen host city procurement processes for the likes of the Volvo Ocean Race and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and worked closely with many cities since its formation in 2006. With the Olympics tending to set the tone for many international federations, Datnow unsurprisingly begins by reflecting on the 2020 race just concluded. The three finalists all went into September’s vote at the IOC Session in Buenos Aires facing individual challenges, but whilst there have been suggestions that the two-year process has become too drawn out and expensive, Datnow puts it this way: “In the 2020 process, all of those candidate cities could have put on an Olympic Games, 8 | www.sportspromedia.com
“
i think it’s important to be cultivating relationships through a bidding process. and there are some things that quite rightly emerge during the applicant phase, in terms of the composition of the stakeholder group, how the Games are going to be funded in terms of capital infrastructure and operating cost,” he says. “The process is designed to enable that to happen, it’s long enough, but I think it’s equally important to be cultivating relationships through a bidding process.” Two cities, Baku and Doha, did not make it past the first, applicant city phase, with the IOC offering the cities its reasoning once it had made its decision following the submission of files by each bid. “In Baku’s case there were I think several lessons in the IOC evaluation commission report,” Datnow suggests. “They said there were issues with a lack of experience of hosting multi-sport events, security and hotel infrastructure. In some ways those are factors that the IOC knew at the very start of the bidding process and it remains an open question whether or not the IOC or any event owner running a bidding process, has a duty to communicate pass/fail criteria which it knows at the beginning of the process at the outset, or alternatively to encourage bidders to have a go and to learn live in a process, and to submit themselves to the process with all of the cost and the investment of time and political capital that
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involves. I think that’s one of the things that the IOC is considering in the remodelling of the new process.” Carving out long-lasting relationships with cities, successful or not, is essential for any rights-holder, Datnow argues. After all, as he says, “there can only be one winner and the vast majority of all bidders will be successful”. Constructive feedback has become a vital part of the process. “I think it’s incumbent on the rights-holder, to communicate fairly and honestly with all bidders about the requirements; to enable enough time for those stakeholder groups to be formed and for the financial models and evaluations to take place, but to do so responsibly in such a way to encourage those bidders to come back and bid again if they are unsuccessful. “It is important not only to maintain those relationships but also to create stepping stones; to enable Baku to understand what it would need to do in order to bid successfully again, to communicate whether or not a Youth Olympic Games or a Youth winter Olympic Games or a European Games or any of the regional Games is a stepping stone on the way to becoming an Olympic host, or whether in fact it is a prize in itself. All of those things are important for bidding cities to know and for the rights holder to communicate. Certainly with the processes
we run for the Volvo Ocean Race or a WTA Championships, part of our thinking is not only to find the winner, but also to make sure we are cultivating relationships for the future.” Although both Datnow and Buchanan agree that any evolution of the IOC bidding process will inevitably have a ripple effect throughout sport, the latter offers a reminder that other host city bidding models do exist – and thrive. “We’ve found that while there are certain elements that the IOC does which are referable to the bidding processes which we run, we have been consciously working with international federations and private event owners on host city bidding procurement processes which don’t necessarily slavishly follow the IOC model,”
Buchanan starts. “We have reached our own conclusions, working with our clients, in terms of the best way of running that sort of procurement, which needs, because you’re dealing with the public sector, to recognise the way in which the public sector globally – and while there are differences, there are similarities – makes decisions and has requirements for transparency from the outset and to have full clarity in terms of the overall exposure politically and economically that they’ll have. “There is always going to be a limited pool of cities capable of bidding now or in the future,” Buchanan adds. “Preserving those relationships by making sure you’re not causing cities to spend money or invest political capital
unnecessarily from an early stage, before it becomes public, is maybe something that needs to be looked at. Once they meet those criteria and are able to meet your minimum requirements for your event, then you can encourage creativity on top of that.” As the debate over mega-event bidding rumbles on, Datnow concludes: “We see a trend amongst international federations aspiring to achieve three outcomes from bidding: the professionalisation and streamlining of costs of bidding processes; the articulation of return on investment to maximise commercial value; and engaging with the public sector to achieve better mutually beneficial partnerships and cast iron guarantees.”
The Destinations Report 2014 | 9
Destinations Report 2014 BIDDING
Learning from its experiences in the 2016 race, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic bid team chose to put a new stadium on the site of the venue for the 1964 Games at the heart of its pitch to the IOC
10 | www.sportspromedia.com
HOW TOKyO TOOK 2020 By James Emmett Originally published November 2013 edition of SportsPro
A two-year campaign climaxed in September 2013 in Buenos Aires as Tokyo saw off competition from Madrid and Istanbul to land the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games. Behind the Japanese jubilation was an international effort dating back nearly a decade and honed to perfection. This is the definitive account of how the bid was won.
W
hen the IOC delegates filed into the auditorium in the Buenos Aires Hilton on 7th September to cast their votes, the race to host the 2020 Games was supposed to be too close to call. Tokyo had the technical excellence, Istanbul had the most compelling natural narrative, while Madrid had that all-important momentum. In the end, it wasn’t close at all. In the second round of voting – Madrid having been ejected in a first-round tie-break ballot with Istanbul – 60 of the 96 voting IOC members opted for the Japanese capital, with just 36 voting for its Turkish counterpart. “No-one quite predicted, maybe apart from the Tokyo campaign committee, that it would be quite the scale it was in the second ballot,” says Mike Lee, founder of Vero Communications and a bidding expert who found himself, for the first time in a long while, without a horse in the final reckoning of an Olympic hosting campaign. Though the bidding cycles have become regimented and the regulations quite tightly codified, every Olympic campaign is unique, the dynamic shaped by the makeup of its participants as well as a cocktail of wider geo-political, socio-economic and environmental concerns, not to mention the vagaries and personal agendas of the elite band of voting IOC members. Rome’s decision to withdraw on economic grounds, and Doha and Baku’s ejection before the candidate phase, the second and final stage of the IOC’s bidding process,
meant a three-way scrap between Madrid, in its third successive attempt, Tokyo, in its second, and Istanbul, back again after unsuccessful attempts for the 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 Games. The relative lack of candidates compared to previous years will have been a concern to the IOC, especially as outside forces must have tipped both Madrid and Istanbul perilously close to the exit at various stages, but made for an intriguing race nonetheless. Most insiders accept that the apex in the race for the 2016 Games came at the SportAccord Convention in Denver in 2009. It was there that the Rio bid, spearheaded by a slick communications effort put together by Lee, made a huge impact with a presentation to the Olympic movement that made spectacular use of a forceful map graphic. Having been on the ropes, Rockystyle, earlier in the campaign, the Rio effort then began to quaff that bidding elixir, momentum, which eventually saw it home at the vote in Copenhagen four months later. SportAccord 2009 was a distinct turning point the like of which, on balance, was not evident in the 2020 campaign. Instead, the Tokyo bid started strong and gained fractional uplifts in momentum at a handful of key checkpoints along the journey. A less spectacular trajectory than the one taken by Rio in the 2016 race, perhaps, but one that can possibly be explained by the cautious nature of the 2020 campaign as a whole. Bid teams, by and large, were on the back foot for large portions of the two-year
race. “It was a difficult campaign cycle,” explains Lee, who was working with the Doha bid in the applicant phase of the process. “Mainly because all three bidding cities were dealing with significant external factors that were important and relevant, but over which they had very little control – ranging from a doping issue through to protests on the streets, question marks over at least one of the bid city’s economies, and of course, ultimately, even nuclear fallout. It led to probably a more defensive campaign environment than we’ve seen in recent years.” Keep the best and improve the rest Tokyo 2020 did not make the common mistake of simply mimicking the previous successful bid – although there was a nod to the now-famous map trick that swung it for Rio in several of the team’s presentations. Instead, the team looked to build on the strength of its own effort for 2016, keeping the bulk of the plan and adding some sparkle to one or two areas. ‘Keep the best and improve the rest’, a line conceived by Nick Varley and his Seven46 communications team, became something of a refrain for bid chief executive Masato Mizuno in the team’s various presentations. Ostensibly, it applied to Tokyo’s technical plans, but it was a concept whose tentacles spread to all areas of the bid, not least to personnel. Many, but not all, of the international consultants from the previous The Destinations Report 2014 | 11
Destinations Report 2014 BIDDING
The key players
Tsunekazo Takeda The president of the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) since 2001, Takeda was a natural leader for the bid. He presided over the bid committee and was elected as a member of the IOC in the midst of the campaign in July 2012.
Masa Takaya While Tokuaki Suzuki was the bid’s communications director, Masa Takaya was appointed to handle the international side of the job as he had done for the 2016 campaign. A stint at the International Triathlon Union between bids, allied to his tireless industry, served the 2020 effort handsomely.
Nick Varley A communications veteran of the successful London and Rio Olympic campaigns, Briton Varley and his Seven46 agency were tasked with defining the key messaging and narrative for the Tokyo bid, and then with bringing that to life through all the creative executions, including, crucially, the various presentations the bid team would make.
Masato Mizuno Mizuno left his role as chairman of the sportswear giant his grandfather founded to become chief executive of the bid. A well-known and popular figure within the Olympic movement, his natural charisma and outgoing demeanour were assets throughout.
Naoki Inose Having replaced Shintaro Ishihara as the governor of Tokyo in December 2012, Inose also took his political predecessor’s place as the chair of the 2020 bid council. Unlike Ishihara, Inose was fully committed to the Olympic effort and, after forming a close bond with Varley in particular proved one of the most efficacious presenters in the bid team’s arsenal.
Etienne Thobois Frenchman Thobois and his Keneo agency were contracted by the Tokyo team to provide key consultancy on all the technical aspects of the bid, save transport and security. Thobois, chief executive of the Rugby World Cup in France in 2007, had been a technical advisor to the IOC in the previous bidding campaign and was on the evaluation commission visit to Tokyo for the 2016 effort.
Tokuaki Suzuki – a former competitions director of the Asian Football Confederation, Suzuki joined the bid as director of communications in April 2012.
Simon Balderstone – another former IOC advisor and a member of the 2016 evaluation commission, Balderstone, the Australian director of the Ways and Means Consultancy, worked with Thobois on preparing the bid team for technical grillings following presentations.
advisors’ to the bid team. His willingness to front up on the Fukushima issue was crucial.
Svetlana Picou – as she did for the 2016 bid, Paris-based Picou headed up a team of strategic communications and PR executives from Weber Shandwick, the agency hired to provide international public relations support. 12 | www.sportspromedia.com
Shinzo Abe – the Japanese prime minister since December 2012, Abe was one of three senior political ‘supreme
Diane Bernstein – a veteran of the 2016 campaign, as well as operational projects on every summer Games since 2000, Australian Bernstein’s Diane Bernstein Design was brought in to provide venue design expertise for the Olympic village and media centre plans.
Neil Fergus – Fergus and his team at Australian-based Intelligent Risks were tasked with consulting on technical aspects of Tokyo’s security plan for the 2020 Games. Fergus was a senior advisor at Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012.
Mami Sato – Paralympic long jumper Sato stole the show in the final presentation in Buenos Aires with a moving speech about losing a leg to cancer and her fears for her family in the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami, which hit her home town.
Princess Hisako of Takamado – a senior member of the Japanese Imperial Family, Princess Takamado’s speech in the final presentation in Buenos Aires was not the only star turn she put in during the bid campaign.
Panos Protopsaltis – Greek Protopsaltis was head of transport for Athens 2004 and put together the transport plan for Rio’s successful 2016 campaign. As Tokyo 2020’s international transport consultant,
effort were retained – Seven46 effectively replacing Jon Tibbs and his JTA agency in the principal messaging role was probably the key change – while Masa Takaya, the communications factotum who Varley describes candidly as “a total lynchpin and a legend”, was the unsung backbone of the bid as he was for 2016. In fact, although Tokyo’s total bid budget came in at US$83.3 million, it was a more streamlined effort than the previous one. For 2016 there was a bigger budget still, and far more consultants contracted. “Perhaps too many,” says Varley, “with conflicting voices and so on. Their whole bid in 2016 seemed to suffer a little bit from being a bit too big, if that’s possible. The first thing that the bid decided was that they needed to be smaller and more focused.” Varley, whose company was approached by five of the six cities in the initial applicant phase, explains that the guiding principle for the bid was set on the back of the learnings from 2016 in one of the very first meetings he had with the bid team in October 2011. “They were almost surprised that they had lost in 2016 because they thought they had the best bid, and what had let them down was the story, and they didn’t put together a campaign that effectively sold the best bid,” he says. “They were top in the evaluation commission reports, but despite that they were miles behind when it came to votes being counted. The bid committee themselves were very aware that they needed to have a stronger campaign, a better sell – not a better product necessarily, although they did improve the product, but a better sell.”
Technical quality The ‘product’, as Varley puts it, was widely praised by the IOC evaluation commission report put together by Sir Craig Reedie in June. Tokyo’s traditional metropolitan strengths – its economy, its security, and its transport infrastructure – were all highlighted. The US$4.5 billion city government fund already ring-fenced to cover capital expenditure associated with the Games was recognised as ‘significantly reduc[ing] the risks normally inherent in the delivery of Games infrastructure by government.’ Tokyo’s technical concept focused on ‘operational excellence and efficiency’. Like the previous bid, all venues would fall within an 8km radius, with venue clusters fitted into two overlapping thematic zones representing the city’s history and future: the Heritage Zone and the Tokyo Bay Zone. The two standout changes from the 2016 effort were in the positioning of the Olympic village, moved closer to the venues in the Tokyo Bay Zone making for a more compact cluster on the waterfront, and in the decision to build a spectacular new Zaha Hadid-designed Olympic Stadium on the site of the venue for the 1964 Tokyo Games. The majority of venues would sit in the Tokyo Bay Zone, an Olympic Park-style venue cluster on the waterfront – compact, but unfenced and completely in and of the city itself. Etienne Thobois and his team from Parisbased Keneo proved to be an ace up Tokyo’s sleeve on the technical side. Thobois, who had picked through the 2016 plans with a fine-tooth comb on the other side of the fence in his previous role as an IOC advisor,
he was tasked with optimising the world’s most extensive urban railway and road system for the bid. Diamil Faye, Francoise Zweifel, youngSook Lee – Senegalese Faye, founder of the Jappo sports management agency, Swiss Zweifel, former director of the Olympic Museum, and South Korean Lee, an advisor to the successful PyeongChang 2018 bid, rounded out the international advisory team for the 2020 bid. knew exactly what improvements needed to be made before he’d even been contacted by the bid team. “To tell you the truth I always thought in 2016 that Tokyo was probably the best bid,” he explains. “I thought they were really decent people in the right spirit of the Olympic movement. We thought it would be a good thing to work with those guys; we believed in their bid and we saw from day one that there was a great chance of winning. “Technically, in all fairness, it was very easy for us to address the issues because there were not that many. The Olympic stadium was taken back to the 1964 venue, which was actually a very smart move because it took a lot of pressure logistically from that big area. It made a lot more sense. Technically, the operations would be much more fluid when the time comes to deliver the Games. “The usual strengths were there, too, which were the accommodation and the incredible transport network, and a very strong financial environment to back that up.” Tackling the elephant All three bidding cities had serious external factors that needed to be addressed. The faltering Spanish economy – and how it could be negated – always sat front and centre in Madrid’s presentations. The Madrid team also had to deal with the fallout from the trial of Eufemiano Fuentes – the disgraced doctor suggesting, in the midst of Madrid’s campaign, a profound culture of doping across Spanish sport. Istanbul, meanwhile, had to tackle its own doping scandal when 31 Turkish athletes were given The Destinations Report 2014 | 13
Destinations Report 2014 BIDDING
Princess Takamado arrives in Buenos Aires to deliver her speech to the IOC membership
bans during the IAAF World Athletics Championships after an alarming doping programme was uncovered. The timing, just a month before the Buenos Aires Session, was inopportune for the bid team. Having posted consistently strong public support numbers throughout the campaign, the Turks also struggled to steer their messaging safely through the civil unrest that began to hit Istanbul’s streets in late May. Tokyo, of course, had the Fukushima nuclear ‘crisis’ to deal with in the wake of the Tohuku tsunami of March 2011. “Both Madrid and Istanbul took a decision that they had to explain those issues,” recounts Varley. “Whether that was right or wrong I’m not sure, because actually both of them perhaps overdid the tackling head-on thing, and that brings us onto the third issue which is Fukushima. Until the last week of the campaign, that really wasn’t an issue for the Tokyo bid. We were always aware of it, it was always on the radar, but were there questions about it in press conferences? Until the last week, not really. Was it being mentioned by members in international relations meetings, as far as we were aware? No, not really. It only really became an issue for the bid in that very last week of the campaign when it became a live news story. “People at the other bids were maybe pushing it a little bit as well. But the way we dealt with it in the final presentation was to take it head-on, but tackle it very quickly – deal with it in two or three sentences, with 14 | www.sportspromedia.com
the top man, who was fantastic, and whose answer in the Q&A was even better.” Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, made a direct pledge to the Olympic movement in his address to the IOC members in the final presentation. “Let me assure you,” he said. “The situation is under control. It has never done and will never do any damage to Tokyo.” Lee agrees that Abe’s approach was effective, but wasn’t convinced by the bid team’s overall handling of the Fukushima messaging. “I think it was a bit mixed,” he argues. “In Buenos Aires, certainly in terms of the media events, they were definitely taking some hits. I think it was crucial in the end that the prime minister was present and dealt with the issue absolutely directly in front of the members. “They came through relatively unscathed on that in the end, but perhaps it was only properly nailed as an issue right toward the end and it did take the prime minister to do it.” After tragedy, however, comes renewal, and the bid team did a good job of emphasising the potential for rejuvenation after the ravages of the 2011 tsunami. Paralympian Mami Sato was a tour de force in the final presentation, eloquently and passionately making the case for sport as a catalyst for reinvigoration. While IOC regulations specifically prohibit direct criticisms between the bidding teams, most tend to highlight strengths within their own bid that correspond with weaknesses in their rivals’. Tokyo’s consistent positioning as the safe option, while not particularly exciting in the previous campaign, would have seemed a soothing balm compared to the volatility in both Madrid and Istanbul. Besides, London 2012 had proved that a successful Games in an established market can add just as much lustre, if not more, to the Olympic movement as a pioneering move to a ‘new’ city. “I understand that many people are saying that our bid is the safe option in this campaign,” Governor Inose said in the SportAccord presentation in St Petersburg in May. “What I don’t understand is why some people seem to think that this could be a bad thing.” The joke was well received – a fact that amazed the hundreds of Japanese media members that were following the bid
Chief executive Masato Mizuno’s charisma and enthusiasm proved invaluable to the bid team
team around the world – and struck a chord with an IOC membership looking ahead to a troubling trio of Games on the horizon. Sochi, Rio and PyeongChang all have their problems, and for the first time in years a safe pair of hands proved appealing. Learning to brag “Their presentations were better than I remember in 2016,” says Lee, and his voice is not a lone one on the matter. From the off there was a recognition within the bid team that communication, and specifically presentation, let them down in the previous campaign. “From the beginning Nick Varley has been a huge asset for the bid team and he just kept explaining how important it is to be ‘un-Japanese’ in front of the international audiences to our senior leaders,” explains Takaya with a laugh. “Thanks to his huge effort I think our senior leaders were able to fully understand how important it was, which is why they were able to act like they did on the international stages.” In order to counter Istanbul’s strong ‘west meets east’ bridging premise, Varley was keen to position the race as two European cities against one Asian one. Nevertheless, in order to make an impact with a predominantly western audience, the bid team were coached in gestures and presentational behaviour that wouldn’t have come naturally to the Japanese.
“One of the things we discussed very early on, even during the ‘getting to know you’ interview stage, was the need for them to have a more effective sales pitch, the need for them to have a narrative that connected with sport, connected with the core audience, and effective spokespeople to deliver that, people who could deliver with western-style language skills, passion, emotion, humour even, rather than it being a little bit grey, for want of a better word,” adds Varley. “That was all agreed up front.” The course was set early on, and it was kept to. Language was the first hurdle that had to be jumped for Varley and his team. Senior leadership and other presenting members were drilled on their English from the outset but still, Varley admits, a couple of the speakers “who presented in what you would think was perfect English don’t speak a word of English; they had literally just learned it and recited it.” Bid leader Takeda’s English was notable in its steady improvement from presentation to presentation. Once an English-language foundation was in place, Varley and the six Seven46 executives working on the bid got to work on the acting drills: “telling them, ‘Well, this line you’ve got here is meant to be funny; this line here is meant to be serious; this line here should be delivered really slowly because it’s important.’ All bids do it these days, but you spend weeks before the final presentation in particular drilling and drilling and drilling so that people have done it so many times that on the day it’s just another run-through.” Beyond the basics of language and presentation, one of the biggest challenges for Varley and his team lay in unshackling the modesty that Japanese culture encourages. “They see this sort of bragging as being a bad thing,” he explains. “One of the biggest challenges was trying to get them into that mindset, the western approach that says actually you’re in a pitch here, you have to brag a little bit – without criticising your opponents – but you have to talk up your strengths, and if your strengths cross over with your rivals’ weaknesses then so much the better. “So we had to really explain and convince them that it would be a good thing to talk about these big economic numbers because it’s a strength and we can’t let other cities claim their economies are this big or that
big when ours is in a totally different league. It was a factor that wasn’t used strongly enough in the last campaign. The hosting fund that the governor kept talking about is an astonishing sum of money – cash in the bank, as he says. The strength of corporate Japan; Tokyo just as a city would be one of the world’s top ten economies – these are all facts that we brought up to the fore and now they’re familiar because they’ve been repeated so many times. It’s important not to take these things for granted.” It wasn’t just the economy that was put up for comparison. Much of Tokyo’s lobbying effort focused on emphasising the nation’s impeccable anti-doping record. Much has been made of the support the bid gained from ‘kingmaker’ IOC member Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah, the influential president of the Olympic Council of Asia, but IAAF president Lamine Diack was won round on the doping issue, and his active support was perhaps more important. A unified bid team with genuine star power From the moment Naoki Inose replaced Shintaro Ishihara – a controversial figure who had a tendency to alienate abroad – as the city’s governor, the Tokyo bid was united and completely committed, qualities that are easy to underestimate. Even when Inose, a marathon runner who understood the political capital in sport and who had brought a new vim to the bid in his first international presentation in London in early 2013, went off-message with an unflattering comment about the comparative standards of safety in Istanbul when he believed he was off the record, the bid team stuck together, stuck to the core messaging, and didn’t use the bid to further their own personal agendas. Takeda and Mizuno were exemplary leaders. Mizuno resigned his position as chairman of the eponymous sportswear company, which his grandfather founded in 1906, to become chief executive of the bid. Already a vice president of the JOC, Mizuno is a well-loved figure around the Olympic movement. As a sponsor of the Nagano winter Games in 1998, Mizuno was acclaimed for the recyclable
uniforms it provided for IOC officials. A natural extrovert with a mischievous sense of humour and a near permanent smile, Mizuno is from Osaka, a city whose people are renowned for their commercial acumen. But Mizuno, who likes to joke that when a company gets as far as the third generation of ownership it begins to fail, is no ruthless businessman. A fixture at Olympic Games for decades, he liked to have a photo taken of himself with whoever he met; he would always then make sure to send a copy to his new friend upon his return to Japan. Takeda, meanwhile, is a big hitter in Olympic circles. As Takaya explains, “IOC member, NOC president and bid president – this is like a royal straight flush in a bidding campaign!” Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the Second World War, Takeda-san would be Prince Takeda. The great-grandson of Emperor Meiji, who reigned from 1867 to 1912, Takeda is of noble stock. For oldschool IOC members, aristocracy carries considerable allure. It was Takeda who used his connections to secure the involvement of the Imperial household, which had pointedly stayed out of the 2016 campaign. This time around, the IOC evaluation commission was treated to an audience with the crown prince. At a banquet later that evening, prime minister Abe is said to have delivered a hugely underwhelming speech. In an atmosphere heavy with awkwardness, Princess Hisako of Takamodo then stood up and charmed the room with an astounding speech in perfect English and without the aid of notes. From that point, the bid team was desperate to convince the Imperial household agency to allow her to speak at the final presentation in Buenos Aires. When they consented, she didn’t disappoint. “I am more than pleased that it has fallen to me to personally convey our heartfelt thanks for the IOC’s assistance after the tsunami,” she told the assembled members in the Buenos Aires Hilton in September. “This is the first time a member of the Imperial family has addressed you, and I dare to hope that our paths may cross again.” Extended interviews with all the key figures behind the Tokyo 2020 bid are available online at www.sportspromedia.com The Destinations Report 2014 | 15
Destinations report 2014 BIDDING
KeepIng up wIth the neIghbours by David Cushnan and Ian Mcpherson Originally published September 2013 edition of SportsPro
with its capital city, buenos Aires, awarded the 2018 Youth olympic games in July 2013, Argentina’s newly created national sports strategy is starting to reap results. A country known more for its cultural offerings is beginning to position itself as sport’s next major destination.
I
t may not yet have the global appeal and cachet of other, more established events but the 2018 Youth Olympic Games appear set to be the catalyst for the sporting rise of a sleeping giant. Buenos Aires was considered by some a surprise winner of the vote in early July, in which it saw off the compelling story of formerly crime-ridden Medellín and a technically solid bid from Glasgow, host of the next Commonwealth Games, but those observers
missed Argentina’s growing prominence within the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the fact that of the three bidding cities Buenos Aires is the only one of sufficient size to eventually mount a bid for the main summer Games. That may not have been the primary reason why the Youth Olympic Games was created but in an era when the IOC is understandably concerned about the number of cities with the financial capability to bid for its showpiece event,
Argentina’s newfound interest in all things Olympic can perhaps be seen in a new light. Although the Beijing 2008 torch relay, which passed through Buenos Aires on the way to the Chinese capital, has been suggested as the starting point for Argentina’s Olympic ambitions, a more solid step came a year later when former show jumper Gerardo Werthein, the country’s chef du mission at the Beijing Games, was elected as a member of the IOC. Werthein has since overseen not
Manu ginobili, shooting guard for the nbA’s san Antonio spurs, is one of many examples of Argentina’s tradition of exporting top athletes globally
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A view across buenos Aires from high up in the estadio Alberto J Armando, or La bombonera, the 49,000-capacity home of soccer club boca Juniors
only the successful bid for the Youth Games but the planning and, shortly, the staging of the 125th IOC Session in September. The Buenos Aires event will be one of the most important Olympic gatherings in recent memory, with the elections for the new president of the IOC, the vote for the host city of the 2020 Games, plus the decision on which of squash, baseball/softball or wrestling will make it onto the summer sports programme, all taking place during a frantic week of meetings. Day-to-day responsibility for the smooth running of what has become one of the IOC’s signature events lies with Francisco Irarrazaval, a former rugby player who is now the secretary of sport for Buenos Aires. Irarrazaval was also the chief executive of Buenos Aires’ Youth Olympic Games bid; he has spent much of the past few months on aircraft, pressing the flesh at Olympic functions and industry conferences all over
the world, and being steered carefully through the complex politics of the IOC by Mike Lee’s Vero Communications. “We’ve travelled a lot,” Irarrazaval confirms during a pause between meetings at the SportAccord conference in St Petersburg, “and we’ve tried to show Buenos Aires as a city and tried to explain what Buenos Aires can deliver to the kids that will go there and especially to the youth Olympic movement. This will be the third Games and probably it will be the future of what these Games are about. We think Buenos Aires is a perfect match, being a multicultural, multirace, multi-everything city. We get more than ten million people coming to Buenos Aires each year for different objectives.” While the likes of San Antonio Spurs shooting guard Manu Ginobili and, of course, the great Lionel Messi underscore its status as a sporting nation, Argentina, as Irarrazaval himself notes, is currently known more as a “big factory of sportsmen, in
terms of them going out of the country” than as a host of major events itself. Irarrazaval senses an opportunity there, not least since Buenos Aires has come to be regarded internationally as a capital of culture, rather than a capital of sport. “We are a very culturally recognised city and maybe four or five years ago we said, ‘OK, we get the best shows, culture, theatre, music,’ but we were a bit back on the sports,” he says. “We had the 2010 South American Games there and we said, ‘OK, now we build a strategic plan.’” Since then the city has bid for and won the Youth Olympics for 2018, revitalised the annual marathon through its streets to the point where it is now Latin America’s largest, and staged an increasing number of global rugby matches, not least a recent England tour and games in the newly expanded Rugby Championship. An Argentinian bid to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup is also The Destinations Report 2014 | 17
Destinations report 2014 BIDDING
the training ground
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gustin Pichot likens developing a national sports event strategy to a training session and he would know, having played 71 times for Argentina’s national rugby team and captained his country during its most successful period to date. “You go from one stage and then to the other and then to the next one,” he explains. “And then you can go forward. Once you’ve laid the foundations, then you can dream. Argentina is learning and we are learning step by step with the experience of having all these events. This is the exercise we are doing and that’s why we are supporting Buenos Aires, because we feel strongly about this.” Since ending a playing career which saw him lead Argentina to a memorable third place in the 2007 Rugby World Cup, Pichot has moved seamlessly into sports administration. He now sits on the board of Argentina’s rugby union, duties which have been dovetailed in recent months with his appointment as an ambassador for Buenos Aires’ 2018 Youth Olympic Games bid.
Argentina’s biggest sporting star, Lionel Messi
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In 2012, Argentina joined what was the Tri Nations, the annual rugby union tournament between New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. Pichot believes competing in what is now the Rugby Championship has raised the standard of the national team. Again, he draws parallels with Argentina’s national sports strategy. “Sport today needs the turnover to get better and better, that’s a fact,” he says. “We experienced this with the Rugby Championship. We have four times the turnover we used to have. I’m a board member of the rugby union and what this shows, and it’s not about rugby, is that when you have an event that inspires young generations then the brands and sponsors are there – they want to attack that place and invest. “In Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires, where everything is concentrated, the brands want to go to the core, to communicate with the young consumer, so if you give them the content they will be there. That is why we’re investing. It’s in the works and there has been speculation that the country could host part of the centennial Fifa World Cup in 2030 alongside neighbouring Uruguay, which staged the original tournament in 1930. The natural evolution of a successful Youth Olympic Games, meanwhile, would seem to be a bid for the summer Games proper at some point in the next decade. It is a suggestion from which the affable Irarrazaval does not shy away. “We are building a strategic plan,” he says. “We’ve made lots of investments to upgrade the infrastructure we have so that we could be more attractive and it’s working, but I think the crowning of this will definitely be the organisation of an Olympic Games.” Although at around 40 million its population is barely a quarter that of Brazil, it is clear that the country currently preparing for the summer Olympic Games and next year’s Fifa World Cup offers a glimpse of what could be for Argentina. Irarrazaval believes what is happening over the border will reap benefits for the whole
Agustin pichot is now a sports administrator
not all about the government putting in money, it’s about having the really top [brand] names investing.” of Latin America, his nation included. “Latin America is getting the football World Cup, 2016 is Rio, so this is a new market,” he points out. “We have Messi and the best hockey player in history, Luciana Aymar, and [Juan Martin] Del Potro. That’s because everyone practises sport – there’s nobody who doesn’t practise sport or who doesn’t know about sport. Latin America is a new market and a growing market. Brazil is the sixth economy in the world and this has opened, for the Olympic movement, for Fifa, for everybody, to begin to see Latin America as new markets and I think Buenos Aires will continue that tendency.” With Werthein increasingly prominent in the corridors of Olympic power and a detailed strategy now being executed, no wonder Buenos Aires views the Youth Olympic Games as a starting point in the quest to become sport’s latest major destination. “We’ve been building the steps,” is how Irarrazaval puts it, “and we’re very fit and confident.”
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Destinations report 2014 BIDDING
Welcome to the supercIty By David cushnan For the last three years, through a successfully delivered rugby World cup, Auckland tourism, events and economic Development (AteeD) has been responsible for developing and honing the major events portfolio of New Zealand’s largest city. the results have been more than impressive.
I
t is 2010 and New Zealand is deep into preparations for the biggest sporting event it has ever staged. The nation’s largest city, Auckland, with a population of some 1.5 million people, is in the midst of preparing to host 15 of the tournament’s 48 matches; it is also going through one of the biggest administrative changes in its history. The amalgamation of eight council bodies into one ‘super council’, and the election of a single city mayor in Len Brown will fundamentally change the way the city operates, not least through the creation of an agency dedicated to delivering the city’s major events strategy. Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED) is one of several councilcontrolled organisations formed out of the new administrative structure. “It happened smack bang in the middle of our preparations for Rugby World Cup,”
recalls Rachael Carroll, ATEED’s general manager of destination and marketing. “We had a four and a half year planning process for the Rugby World Cup for 2011 so we had to deal with quite a significant change in all government entities – loss of people, changes in responsibility, realignment of budgets. It was quite a process to go through and to ensure we protected Rugby World Cup through that. Because we had to work together as a region for Rugby World Cup, we’d already established a lot of relationships, processes and ways of working that the transition authority drilled down on to actually inform how they approached the amalgamation of the super city. In that respect you can really see the way that you plan for major events can actually be something you utilise for much broader things.” ATEED brings together the city’s major events planning, the tourism entity,
opposition to public spending on the Volvo ocean race in 2007 has turned to enthusiatic support
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which was previously known as Tourism Auckland, and economic development. “You’re starting to see around the world and certainly in Australia that many of the tourism and events agencies are starting to merge together, given the synergies and alignment,” Carroll says. “I guess we’ve gone one step forward by bringing that economic development piece in there and I think this really works and is a competitive advantage.” Smaller, regional, community events are generally not part of ATEED’s responsibility, which are instead left to the council itself so as to allow total concentration on events such as the 2011 Rugby World Cup and the upcoming 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup, which New Zealand is staging jointly with Australia, and the Fifa under-20 World Cup 2015. “Our overarching remit is to improve New Zealand’s economic prosperity by leading a successful transformation of Auckland’s economy,” Carroll explains. “That’s largely because for New Zealand to be successful, Auckland must be successful. We have the mayor’s vision guiding us. He’s quite clear that he wants Auckland to become the world’s most liveable city. If you want to achieve that you obviously have to have a prosperous economy. We are the sector leader for tourism, we are the leader in major events. We’re really interested in those events which are large-scale, international-facing that deliver our brand to the world, drive visitation and therefore have more of an economic tilt than just perhaps a community, social tilt.”
the amalgamation of Auckland’s council bodies into a ‘super council’ has led to a single events strategy, which has been honed over the past three years
Carroll, who worked in Australia on Melbourne’s 2006 Commonwealth Games, was initially given 100 days to develop Auckland’s major events strategy in 2010, part of the new mayor’s ‘100 projects in 100 days’ policy. “Sometimes a short timeframe, focus and a mandate enables you to get things done really quickly,” she recalls. “It wasn’t paralysis by analysis, we largely knew from research around what had worked in the rest of the world what we needed to achieve around a major events strategy. We took the strategy back to the Auckland council, our governing body, and it resulted in about a six-fold increase in funding. That funding is increasing incrementally year-on-year.” ATEED has the mandate to make decisions on which events to support. Its board is made up of high-profile business people rather than publicly elected officials, which, Carroll says, “enables us to be agile, flexible, responsive and, I believe, to be making the best decisions on the strategy”. She adds: “We went back to Auckland Council and said ‘we think we can grow visitation by x, we think we can generate x amount new GDP year-on-year and you can hold our feet to the fire on those on
“
We have the mayor’s vision guiding us. he’s quite clear that he wants Auckland to become the world’s most liveable city. an annual basis.” ATEED is measured by outcomes such as actual GDP change and year-on-year visitation numbers: pleasingly, Carroll says ATEED says the major events portfolio is now responsible for close to 300,000 visitor nights compared to just 60,000 in 2010. “We’ve been able to demonstrate success at that outcome level and that’s been quite pivotal to how we structure ourselves,” she says. New Zealand, and Auckland, has never seen anything quite like the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Even if the All Blacks had not emerged victorious from the six-week competition, it would have been hard to argue that the tournament had not been a triumph for the host nation. In Auckland’s case, Carroll argues that it was gamechanging: “It came at a time when we had a
”
big investment going into the redevelopment of the city, an amalgamation of local government – and the whole rationale behind that was basically to get a more regional, strategic approach to the way the city develops longer-term. We had quite fragmented council areas, previously. If you spoke to New Zealanders about Auckland, there was quite some disdain. There was not a great love for a lot of what Auckland was doing and to be honest, as a city, its brand was very much about a smallish city, still with some traffic issues and not really a whole lot of vibrancy. I think Rugby World Cup enabled us to provide a whole lot of focus on to fast-tracking the development of the city. We were very ambitious and aggressive, I’d say, around coming out two years before with a clear statement of a legacy plan to say, The Destinations Report 2014 | 21
Destinations report 2014 BIDDING
AteeD’s rachael carroll believes the “capability of the city has been lifted in the last few years”
‘This event we’re going to invest in to a level never invested in before by New Zealand and this is why we’re investing to that level.’ “One of the things most often neglected is what it did for the pride of Aucklanders and the pride of New Zealanders,” she continues. “It was the first time you really saw New Zealanders talk about Auckland as their big city. Beyond that, it’s put us on the world stage in terms of being a credible city for major events - as well as a great place to visit. That’s one thing that sets Auckland apart from other major event destinations - the 22 | www.sportspromedia.com
city itself offers all the trappings of a worldclass city, but it’s combined with a stunning natural environment. A harbour, numerous islands, and adventure activities are all here in Auckland. The combination of these factors is a real draw-card. “RWC brought in a lot of expertise and leveraged and built the expertise that existed here. Like any of these major events, you do get what they call the event-junkies who go from event to event and what that leaves locally is quite a lift in understanding – not just how to execute major events but how to leverage the full gamut of benefits that can come for that. Coming straight after the amalgamation of the city – one single mayor, one single leadership, a successful Rugby World Cup – it really set a platform and was a catalyst for Auckland’s confidence going forward for the future.” As Auckland prepared for the tournament, throughout 2010 and early 2011, the newly formed ATEED also made sure to look beyond the lifting of the William Webb Ellis trophy and ensure the city’s longer-term diary was as full as possible. “You often hear about these cycles of almost-civic depression that occurs after a major event leaves and we were very conscious about hitting the ground running straight off the back of Rugby World Cup,” Carroll says. “We had already secured the rights to things like the Volvo Ocean Race and the ITU World Triathlon Grand Final pre-Rugby World Cup and those occurred in the 2011/12 period, right off the back of it.” The Volvo Ocean Race will return early next year, followed, shortly after, by the cricket and soccer World Cups. ATEED also invested a multi-million dollar sum to assist the return of the V8 Supercars series to the Pukekohe circuit just south of the city in April 2013, which Carroll believes was indicative of Auckland’s growing confidence. “It’s a good example of how the capability of the city has been lifted in the last few years. It has the confidence to take on things that are conceivably risky, although we offset and mitigate that risk through the processes that we have. As well as ramping up our bidding and prospecting capabilities, I’ve been really proud of our feasibility and due diligence capabilities as a council – in any public sector organisation, if you get
things wrong you’re going to know about it. The back-of-house due diligence we put into assessing event opportunities is quite substantial. It’s often what you don’t see but it’s often what makes all the difference.” Carroll explains she has taken much of her lead in Auckland from Melbourne, a city generally agreed to have led the way when it comes to developing and nurturing a major events strategy. “Probably the most significant factor that we learnt from Melbourne and I believe is absolutely implemented here and alive and well is the integration between agencies and the way agencies work together,” she suggests. “Melbourne, first and foremost, has the head of the state government, the head of their council, the head of their major events council, the head of their tourism entity who all work together incredibly well. They’ve got great relationships and that enables them to make decisions very quickly and integrate around these major events. When you think of the challenges of transport, of promotion and marketing, those things have to link together very well to be successful. “The mayor, Len Brown, was very ambitious around the major events strategy. Three days before he started he bounded into my office and said ‘Rachael, I want to be a Melbourne, I want to be an international major events city and I think we can do it’. That was certainly throwing down the gauntlet and quite a challenge, but certainly the mayor saw that events were a way to take us to the world and bring the world to us. That’s something that’s always been core to our strategy.” Confident that parameters such as visitor numbers, the initial priority for the organisation, can be maintained, ATEED is in the process of broadening its ambitions. “We can start to say, ‘Yes, we’re after visitation numbers, but sometimes we might be after building an event that’s true to an Auckland brand and building that over time,’” Carroll explains. “In that event decision we may not be driving visitation in year one, two or three but in year five and six we can. We’re going to become more sophisticated with what we want to achieve out of each event because visitation, GDP are now in place.” Emboldened by the positive results thus
plans for events such as the Itu triathlon World series were made before the 2011 rugby World cup as the city looked to maintain its profile as a major host
far, ATEED has now developed its own, fully-owned event. The Auckland Nines, due to be held for the first time in mid-February, is a two-day knockout tournament, staged at Eden Park, featuring all 16 clubs from Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL). Carroll, speaking a couple of weeks before this year’s debut, reports the event is a sell out. ATEED is investing NZ$9 million over five years, with the tournament locked-in until at least 2018. “That, for us, strategically is a big play into Australia,” Carroll confirms. “Australia is our core visitor market and actually over the last ten years, while numbers have stayed steady, we’ve actually lost market share, until very recently. We needed to become more competitive and reposition Auckland in the minds of Australians and here was a mechanism to do that, to put on an event that really reached into Australia. So far, we think we’re on track to do that.” Due to the way ATEED is structured, and the necessity to report back to the city council on a regular basis, close attention has been paid to the way the economic impact of major events is measured. What Carroll describes as a “very conservative” methodology has been created and honed over three years. Not for Auckland the kind
of inflated figures which can easily be picked apart. “We see many cities saying, ‘We made an investment of a million dollars and we got x million dollars back,’” Carroll says. “We take every bit of contribution from the local economy as the cost of that event, so even the ticket sales to people who live here, local sponsorship all goes into the cost of the event and then we truly realise what money came in from outside Auckland and what the net difference is. It’s brought the numbers right down – some of our events that we were saying were NZ$20 million have come down to US$2 million or NZ$3 million but we can, hand on heart, stand there and say, ‘That two or three million would not be in the economy if not for that event.’ It’s a different approach but the industry globally has copped some flak around multipliers and the public has picked up on that. “I think it’s a consistent role of a government public agency to proactively demonstrate the benefit of events, and in simple language,” she continues, citing the importance of effective public relations and clarity of message. “Articulating the benefits is quite important but we seem to be getting traction.” Carroll remembers the public criticism in 2007 when it was announced that Auckland intended to invest NZ$1.5 million
of public funds in a Volvo Ocean Race stopover. The shift since then – the city’s major newspaper openly praised the NZ$9 million investment in the Auckland Nines last year – has been noticeable. “The views of the public and the media has shifted and Rugby World Cup, that experience, had a part to play in that because people saw what it did for our economy. We’re never going to solve it completely and it’s something we constantly have to turn our attention to, but we’re certainly in a better place than we were previously,” she adds. “At a base level, you’ve got an incredibly safe pair of hands,” Carroll says of Auckland in 2014. “We’ve now got a track record of superb execution and that’s execution that rights-holders want – ticket sales, visibility for commercial partners, all the things that are important to rights-holders. But more than that is that we leverage these events to ensure the city embraces them, so that when an event leaves – did they galvanise a community? Did they fundamentally change and make a city better as a result of it? “We believe that’s our unique selling proposition: if you bring a Rugby World Cup here, it’s not just a Rugby World Cup it’s a phenomenal experience where New Zealanders embrace the event.” The Destinations Report 2014 | 23
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Destinations report 2014 HOSTING
The SPorTS ConSulTanCy The Briefing: hosting
M
ounting a successful bid for a sporting event has become a complex process, but it remains only the start of what can be a long journey of delivery. In addition, as The Sport Consultancy’s Angus Buchanan points out, there is a growing recognition amongst hosts of the benefits staging a major event can bring. “Generally, there’s an increasing awareness,” he says, “whether you’re driving tourism, inward investment, destination or place marketing. There’s been an increase of appetite but initially, as with any market, that tends to be relatively immature and over time is maturing: there are more cities, regions, countries realising the benefits. On top of that, there’s an increasing understanding and sophistication in terms of what you can do with those major events – perhaps, very simplistically, as a draw for inward-bound tourism, to bring non-local visitors into that city or country for that event. Increasingly, we’re finding that cities understand that there are social, environmental, political, infrastructure development objectives which they can achieve through hosting major events – we’ve seen that level of sophistication is increasing. With that, which is where we are able to help cities through our consultancy, is an understanding that you can take a very sophisticated approach to the selection of major events. So if destination and place marketing is your first and foremost objective, you need events which have a broadcast footprint in those major geographic markets you’re trying to attract. “It also ought to appeal to the demographic in that market you’re trying to look at,” Buchanan continues. “There are
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There is a recognition now that there are only a very small handful of countries who are capable of delivering the infrastructure for these sorts of events. other events that may not have, first and foremost, a large media footprint but you can use those events to achieve other goals, which you might consider are much softer. We’ve been conducting an exercise recently for FIBA where we’ve been looking at age group championships and whilst they do deliver a media footprint, you can achieve as much from the softer, social elements of hosting an under-19 world championships because basketball is a rapidly growing sport in most major markets – over 400 million people participating globally – and because it appeals to younger people; it’s also a sport which is capable of being played in increasingly small places, so it fits the urban environment. It’s an extremely useful tool for engagement of a disenfranchised youth.” Although it has clients across the globe, The Sports Consultancy’s offices are in central London. The 2012 Olympics have, naturally enough, been a dominant theme of recent times in the minds of Buchanan and his co-managing director Robert Datnow. Datnow believes that the level of public expectation has been raised in the United Kingdom since the successful summer of
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2012. “I think that legacy is felt in terms of event delivery and what the expectation is on the organising committee or OCOG. In general, it’s a positive progression that the benchmark has gone up in all those ways.” What works for one event, however, does not necessarily guarantee success for another. “There’s a balance to be struck between taking the positive – spectators, TV, fan, sponsor – experiences from London and then examining those and determining which of those experiences is appropriate for a single sport, isolated event,” says Datnow. Buchanan explains that The Sports Consultancy is currently working with a number of clients to examine whether the cost and complexity of hosting have become disproportionate to the benefit. “That’s not something that needs to be looked at not just because we’ve been through a recession, but because the complexity is increasing.” Buchanan adds: “We’re finding that in recent comments even from smaller federations, such as the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), saying that they need to look at the extent to which their events are becoming larger, meaning that hosts are unable to justify
the cost and investment in them. We’re finding that across a number of events we’re working with, that they are needing to rationalise it and look at what it is they are trying to achieve and whether they are now seeking too great an investment from the cities.” European soccer’s governing body, Uefa, is in the midst of organising the most radical change to the hosting format of a major event in many years. Its Euro 2020 tournament will be staged in as many as 13 host cities across the continent instead of in one or two host nations, as has become the norm. Its hand was rather forced, given that there was a lack of single nation bidders and the only real candidate, Turkey, had to withdraw to concentrate on Istanbul’s Olympic bid, and as Buchanan puts it: “There were not very many bidders and you have to ask why that’s the case. I think
there is a recognition now that there are only a very small handful of countries who are capable of delivering the infrastructure for these sorts of events.” Nonetheless, the new dynamic will be carefully scrutinised by the industry and by the would-be host cities. There are, Buchanan says, clear pros and cons. “From Uefa’s perspective, they get to spread the benefit across their constituent membership and have a Europe-wide championship which you could argue would be great for football. You could also say that from a broadcast and sponsorship perspective there are benefits, in terms of a sponsor achieving exposure in multiple markets. There are questions when you have any diffuse, cohosted event about the fan experience, when you consider the logistics and the amount of travel required between games. There are
also issues of scheduling. There’s also the argument, which I think is fair, that if you can host the World Cup in Brazil, which is broadly speaking the same size as Europe, and you look at the distances travelled by fans in both of those countries, then you can think about hosting a European Championship across Europe. “It’s an experiment which Uefa has embarked on, but one of the key aspects of hosting any major event is the ability of any single country to destination and place market and to create a sense of identity around the hosting of that event. Clearly that’s much more difficult when you have an event spread across as many as 13 countries. In terms of the identity of the competition, and the ability of one host to claim that identity and maximise the benefits of their investment, it will be interesting to see how that works.”
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A MOSAIC OF EXPERIENCES By David Cushnan Through a combination of cultural, lifestyle and major international sports events, Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority has helped put the emirate on the map. The task now is to consolidate its major events portfolio.
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bu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority promotes the heritage, culture and traditions of Abu Dhabi internationally. Its activities are designed to support the emirate’s evolution into a ‘world-class sustainable destination which makes a unique contribution to the global cultural landscape while conserving its singular character and ecosystem.’ The organisation manages and markets Abu Dhabi’s tourism sector, through a wide range of activities and major events, aimed at attracting visitors and increasing investment. As it forges new relationships across the world, however, it also focuses on developments at home. A priority is to ensure the preservation of the emirate’s cultural heritage, especially its historic and archaeological sites. As part of its management of the emirate’s tourism sector, however, it is also responsible for overseeing the development of the new, landmark museums in Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island Cultural District, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Zayed National Museum and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi also boasts a major events programme which, from a tourism perspective, has an important role to play in the emirate realising its hotel guest targets. Its original target of 2.8 million guests for 2014 was surpassed in 2013, so a new target of 3.1 million has been set for this year, with a ten per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) ‘for the foreseeable future’. The annual calendar of events includes local heritage festivals, such as the Al Dhafra Camel Festival famous for its camel beauty pageants, to Abu Dhabi Art. In sport, the
Abu Dhabi stages an annual European Tour event, which attracts both international and local visitors
highlights in 2014 will be the sixth Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the return of the Red Bull Air Race and, as ever, January’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship. The portfolio of sports and leisure events has been continually expanded over less than a decade – last year saw the emirate’s longest-running family entertainment event, the Al Ain Aerobatic Show, celebrate its tenth anniversary – while the authority has begun working on an incentive offering to private sector event organisers, to encourage them to bring more leisure and sports events to Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority’s event bureau director Faisal A. Al Sheikh took time out of his busy schedule to explain more about the emirate’s major events strategy:
How do you reflect on 2013 and what were the big events for Abu Dhabi? In terms of golf, of course the European Tour championship is one of the major events that we always kick-off the year with. It has been outstanding, with more than 60,000 spectators. What has been great to see is a lot of attendance from the community. That’s a very good sign. Abu Dhabi has a great tradition as a golf destination. After the ninth edition of the tournament, the six great golf courses that we have, from links, to beach courses to the great National course, have occupancy of 100 per cent over the years. The spark of that was the Abu Dhabi golf championship. As well as sports, we have cultural and lifestyle events. We had the traditional The Destinations Report 2014 | 29
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Abu Dhabi will participate in the 2014/15 Volvo Ocean Race, fielding its own team, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, and hosting a stage of the event in December
festival Qasr Al Hosn, which was another flagship last year for Abu Dhabi – significant outcomes. We highlighted our 250th anniversary. It is becoming an annual event and it will be a flagship event this year; we are bringing the Cavalia horse show as part of it. There is another great event, I think this year is the sixth anniversary, called Gourmet Abu Dhabi, which highlights the diversity of the cuisine that we have. Triathlon Abu Dhabi is of course one of the things that we love deeply, it’s a great outdoor event, more than 2,100 athletes. This year we will do special things for the community, as we look to engage them more and encourage them to take part in that event. There is also the annual aerobatics show, which has its tenth anniversary. We have amazing spectator attendance for that and great feedback – there’s entertainment in the sky and on the ground. We have the Formula One Grand Prix, which has been another success - we’ve introduced new ticket categories, the international market attendance and promotion have matured in terms of engagement from the tourism sector. There are other, smaller events that the emirate does, too. It’s about creating 30 | www.sportspromedia.com
an ecosystem and an attachment from the host destination to the event itself. What we always target is tourism, creating a great experience for visitors and that should also help room night occupancy as well as the length of stay. We have software, in terms of events, and great hardware, from the resorts, to the public venues, to attractions. Everyone is activating to make a great experience for them and for us to meet the expectations of the markets that we target. As you become more experienced, how much more effective does the organisation become in terms of major events and the way you measure the success? There is always a methodology for measuring success. Of course, we would like to have sustainable event projects so you can see international and local partners come onboard and get great media exposure out of what we do and how we engage all the tourism attractions. That gives us a very good proposition. We always try to enhance what we do: if something doesn’t work we always look for a new opportunity and try to engage
the private sector to initiate. We facilitate the platform for the city to be a key host destination city for events. We open the door to the big international event management companies as well as the big sports federations, to come and recognise Abu Dhabi as a good location to host their event. This year we have the Volvo Ocean Race coming; if you go back to 2011 everyone remembers the victory of Azzam [Abu Dhabi Racing’s boat name] in the in-port race. All these kind of things highlight your proposition, your identity and has significance for tourists and people who visit. We created that attractiveness; it’s a destination of distinction at the end of the day – you can get whatever you want from the different experiences we have, whether it’s the beach, deserts, mountains, safari, golf, entertainment on Yas Island. There’s a lot of other things in the pipeline, but it’s been a great nine years for the TCA. It’s a matter of assessing what we do and getting the maximum out of it and getting the maximum outcomes for our partners, from the commercial side to the hospitality sector to everybody directly engaged with the tourism industry, including Etihad Airways and other airlines.
The magnificent Yas Marina circuit has hosted the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix each year since 2009. The event has become a firm Formula One favourite
In terms of how Abu Dhabi is viewed internationally and the strength of its brand, how important is it to have a strong roster of local events and a high local enthusiasm for sport? Of course - we say ‘local passion and global impact’. What we do for the local community is important. We have created big programmes to involve the local community; special days, special programmes. There are lots of things that we do to make sure we are giving back to the community and to communicate that message to the international market. We are very consistent. We don’t just market in a boring away, we have a dynamic approach to marketing. We have a tactical approach. We are a partner to one of the most extreme sailing competitions, the Volvo Ocean Race. We have a team, a syndicate, a local Emirati on the boat, and international skippers and sailors. That’s how we promote the market. The more products you have, the more you can market the destination. How important has the Formula One race been since 2009 in raising Abu Dhabi’s international profile?
After five years, all the indications are that such major events create great results. The market is activated for tourists. It is one of the great events in terms of giving a media value and there is also the economic impact. The circuit, I think, is very unique. We don’t take it only as a Formula One weekend, it’s basically two weeks of activities around the city. Again, the way we promote the event is very tactical. The official partner, Etihad, does special packages, we have hotel partners. We do our best to make the experience as good as it can be for the tourists we target. It’s a great event. We have the great record of creating the circuit in just two years. From the day that we announced in March 2007 to hosting the race in 2009; I think that was a remarkable achievement. The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix has proved that it is one of the races that you should attend, because you will get more than Formula One during that weekend. How does sport fit into the wider Abu Dhabi strategy for growth? Sport is a key, vital factor that you can always use to engage with global audiences,
referring to the interest of people that we want to target, referring to the outcomes you get out of that. We hosted big sports events but there have been other events, cultural events, art events. All these things put the destination’s attractiveness in a premier state and raise interest for people you want to host. It gives you that dynamic and raises the expectation. We offer a mosaic of experiences. What are your key targets for 2014, in terms of events? 2014 is another remarkable year, because we will host the Volvo Ocean Race again in December. People are waiting for that and other events, in terms of sport and lifestyle. We are looking forward to the return of the Red Bull Air Race, which was due to start and kick-off the season from Abu Dhabi in February. That’s exciting, an extreme sport for the public on the Corniche of Abu Dhabi. Spectators will enjoy it. I think if you look at the calendar we have, it’s promising, it’s active and it’s a call-to-action for people that this is the emirate. The Destinations Report 2014 | 31
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Up in the air: how can Qatar land its sporting strategy? By david cushnan and James emmett Originally published July 2013 edition of SportsPro
Qatar is well on the way to becoming an international sports superpower. an investor in a string of global properties and an increasingly prominent host of major events, the tiny state is already preparing to stage the 2022 Fifa world cup, amidst a swell of controversy and no little bewilderment. with the help of experts from a variety of fields, we looked at the five key questions facing Qatar as it prepares for its most important decade.
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how do you intend to build and use ten to 12 world cup stadiums in a country of 1.9 million people? In 2022, Qatar will stage the most compact Fifa World Cup in history. Just 1.9 million people live in a state with a land mass of just over 11,500 square kilometres, with the vast majority located in and around the capital city, Doha, on the east coast. The decision to award Qatar the tournament, following a Fifa Executive Committee vote in December 2010, has generated a significant slice of controversy and no little bewilderment. There may be few real doubts about Qatar’s ability to build the ten to 12 stadiums required by Fifa, but filling them and using them beyond the end of a five-week tournament presents a far greater challenge for local organisers and Qatar’s rulers. Over 2.9 million tickets were sold for the 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa and even then some stadiums were noticeably less than full; although Qatar’s population is expected to grow sharply by 2022, it is inevitable that there will be a heavy reliance on regional and international fans purchasing tickets for World Cup games. An influx of half a million people has been mooted, which will bring additional infrastructural pressures. “Meeting the deadline, which can’t be extended unlike other programmes, would be the most challenging task,” says MR Raghu, a senior vice president of research for Kuwaiti asset management and investment firm Markaz, which has produced a report analysing the implications for Qatar of hosting the World Cup. “One has to be aware that large-scale infrastructure programmes have often been beset with cost overrun and timeline extensions.” Markaz’s report suggests that spending specific to the World Cup, including stadium construction, may add between one and 1.5 per cent to Qatar’s total gross domestic product value each year between 2015 and kickoff in 2022. Up to US$3 billion has been earmarked for the construction of stadiums alone, although three of the 12 venues initially proposed will actually be extensive upgrades of existing buildings. “Most of the projects are expected to move from boardroom stage to implementation stage by 34 | www.sportspromedia.com
Madinat Al-Shamal
BAHRAIN
Al-Khor
Umm Salal
Al-Rayyan
Doha
Al-Wakrah
QATAR
SAUDI ARABIA
2015,” Raghu says. The Markaz report also suggests that the World Cup, with its fixed deadline, could help ‘instil a sense of urgency and provide an additional incentive to attain the National Vision 2030’, the Qatar-wide plan designed to diversify the country’s interests away from oil and into areas such as tourism.
Qatar’s infrastructural challenges extend well beyond a collection of undoubtedly snazzy soccer stadiums. A remarkable 43 per cent, or US$140 billion, of the country’s total budget has reportedly been invested in infrastructure development until 2014. A US$25 billion rail project – some projections have the number closer to US$40 billion – is
Qatar’s 2022 Fifa world cup stadium plan (as per 2010 bid) al-gharafa stadium
Khalifa international stadium Location: al-rayyan Capacity: 44,740 Cost: Us$135 million Matches: group matches
al-Khor stadium
Location: al-rayyan Capacity: 68,030 Cost: Us$71 million Matches: group matches, round of 16, quarter-final, semi-final
al-wakrah stadium Location: al-Khor Capacity: 45,330 Cost: Us$251 million Matches: group matches, round of 16
al-rayyan stadium
Location: al-wakrah Capacity: 45,120 Cost: Us$286 million Matches: group matches, round of 16
doha port stadium Location: al-rayyan Capacity: 44,740 Cost: Us$135 million Matches: group matches
Location: doha Capacity: 44,950 Cost: Us$202 million Matches: group matches, round of 16, quarter-final
education city stadium
lusail iconic stadium
sports city stadium
Location: al-rayyan Capacity: 45,350 Cost: Us$287 million Matches: group matches, round of 16
Location: al-daayen Capacity: 86,250 Cost: Us$662 million Matches: opening match, group matches, round of 16, quarterfinal, semi-final, final
Location: al-Khor Capacity: 45,330 Cost: Us$251 million Matches: group matches, round of 16
al-shamal stadium
Qatar University stadium
Umm salal stadium
Location: al-shamal Capacity: 45,120 Cost: Us$251 million Matches: group matches
Location: doha Capacity: 43,520 Cost: Us$300 million Matches: group matches, round of 16
Location: Umm salal Capacity: 45,120 Cost: Us$251 million Matches: group matches, round of 16, quarter-final
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are to be dismantled and reconstructed elsewhere in the world afterwards. Precisely how that will work has not yet been fully disclosed, but Raghu says: “Various options are being analysed in order to avoid the ‘white elephant’ situation. 12 stadiums, with ten of them within a radius of 25 to 30 kilometres, would be too large for Qatar.” It is the same situation with the much discussed air-cooling systems Qatar outlined, but did not elaborate on, during its bid. “Proposed cooling technology for stadiums is yet to be tested; its reliability is unproven,” Raghu adds matter-of-factly. what can you do to convince the ioc to give you the olympics where two previous bids have failed? doha 2020’s noora al Mannai says the question is “when, not if” the city will host the olympic games
underway, designed to help combat Doha’s dreadful traffic problems, with phase one likely to be completed in 2019. There are plans for a US$5.5 billion seaport while Doha’s new US$11 billion airport, Hamad International, is currently in the midst of a soft opening, with carriers transferring from the existing international airport throughout this year. The plan is for the new facility to become a regional transport hub. Tilman Engel, a German who specialises in developing and implementing marketing and business development strategies for Qatari SMEs, puts it this way: “Unlike many previous hosting nations, where the games have often been the defining purpose of all investments, the World Cup in Qatar is designed to serve as a catalyst to drive and deliver an even more ambitious goal. “Unlike large-scale countries,” he adds, “stretching the effects of run-up and implementation across a large region and affecting relatively few people, every aspect of life, business, social relations and human interaction in Qatar will be affected for at least ten years and counting.” The highly politicised debate over when exactly the World Cup will be staged in 2022 bubbles away – mid-year temperatures appear to make a summer competition untenable, despite the so-far untested Qatari promise of fully air-conditioned venues, while a move to winter would wreak havoc with existing soccer schedules and open 36 | www.sportspromedia.com
up Fifa and Qatar to suggestions that the goalposts of the 2010 bidding process have been moved. Meanwhile, there are also now reports that Qatar has requested permission to build as few as eight stadiums. “It must be very galling for those bidders that lost to Qatar to suddenly see that they promised 12 venues and now they’re saying, ‘OK, we’ll let you only build eight,’” says Michael Payne, the former International Olympic Committee marketing director. “That’s not a change you see all the time in the Olympics – London didn’t want to build an extra venue because of cost, not 30 per cent or more of all your venues. This was a material commitment, presumably in the bidding, to say: ‘If you want the World Cup, you build 12 venues.’” The huge investment in infrastructural development, for the World Cup and beyond, is also likely to have other implications, according to Engel. “The tremendous demands to field an additional workforce of several thousand educated, well-trained and highly motivated staffers, to fulfil all conceivable service, support, management and organisational requirements, which needs to be developed on top of the current workforce, also does have the potential to reshape the role of women, expatriate residents and workers in this society,” he says. Post-tournament, Qatar’s bid included plans for several all-modular stadiums, which
That Qatar wants to host the Olympic Games is not in doubt. It has tried and failed twice now, with Doha first missing out in the race for the 2016 Games and then suffering the ignominy of elimination from the 2020 race at the same applicant candidate phase in May last year. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which scrutinised a report prepared by the Doha 2020 team, concluded that there were enough concerns about Qatar’s climate and its ability to fill venues not to take the bid forward to join Tokyo, Madrid and Istanbul in the final stage. Additional concerns were raised about the negative impact on global television audiences of waiting for cooler conditions in October, a move which it was warned would lead to competition with other year-round sporting events and could create a ‘weekend Games’ in those markets where viewers would have less leisure time than in July or August, when the summer Olympics are traditionally staged. For the record, Qatar had planned to stage the 2020 Games between 2nd and 18th October. “With so many sports venues already in place and budgeted for, we felt that we offered the IOC great certainty and a lowcost Games plan, as well as an exciting legacy vision, especially around developing women’s sport in the Middle East,” said Noora Al Mannai, the Doha 2020 bid chief plucked from Enterprise Qatar, a group set up to champion small and medium-sized Qatari
Fifa’s award of the 2022 world cup to Qatar has bound the country and scandal-hit body together
businesses, as the decision was revealed. “However for Doha,” she pointedly added, “it will always be a question of when, not if.” There is not yet any official word as to whether Doha will bid for the 2024 summer Games, or indeed how it intends to resolve the IOC’s concerns, but the Olympics is clearly the mega-event Qatar covets above all others. Some, however, believe it is simply not feasible. “I think overall it is becoming the poster-child or textbook in how to use sport to rebrand, or even create a brand to begin with, a nation through sport,” Michael Payne says of Qatar. “They have a very clear strategy in terms of going after major events, building a very solid sporting infrastructure in the country and frankly punching way above their weight by having a clear vision and strategy. That has also, I think, got to be set against a bit of a reality check that money can’t buy everything and I think particularly where the Olympics is concerned they’ve obviously run an excellent communications programme on their bidding and lobbying in the past, but have stumbled on the technical issues. I am of the view those technical issues are insurmountable.” Payne continues: “The country is just too small to stage an Olympic Games. There’s no amount of revamping of schedules or anything that will solve that particular problem. You need a country that has a population significantly bigger than the number of tickets that you need to sell – the Olympics need full stadia. You’ve got to
be certain that a country is big enough to sustain and support filling all of these world championships at the same time. When Qatar struggles to fill the venues for one championship that’s an issue.” Qatar’s Olympic ambitions cannot be faulted and it clearly has a compelling narrative as the first Middle Eastern country even to bid for the Games. As Al Mannai, speaking to SportsPro in May last year, put it: “By bringing the Olympic Games it will shape the life of the youth, it will shape the future of the region. If the youth become more engaged in sport it will build an industry, it will build jobs for them; it will give them opportunities to be recognised and become leaders in the future.” what’s the strategy for dealing with the cynics? As much as there is an understanding and appreciation of Qatar’s ambition when it comes to sport within the sports industry, there is also a sense that the country is fighting a losing public relations battle when it comes to explaining its strategy to the wider public. Scepticism and cynicism are rife, particularly with regards to the 2022 World Cup. The perception Qatar is simply hoovering up major events and sports properties with no apparent regard for money has, so far at least, proved impossible to halt. As Tilman Engel suggests: “In today’s
globalised news and social media world, the internationally perceived success of 2022 will also be determined by the way Qatar manages to engage proactively with internal and external stakeholders early on.” He adds: “Much of the international criticism is strongly influenced by a genuine lack of proper information on the overall scope of the World Cup in Qatar and its legacy for the National Vision and beyond. Leaving the field of shaping international public opinion open to just derogatory and semi-informed detractors contributes to create a biased image which will become more difficult to overcome with each day and storyline taking us closer to 2022.” In finding itself wed to Fifa by staging the organisation’s showpiece tournament, Qatar has also become slightly muddled up in the seemingly endless politics and controversies surrounding world soccer’s governing body, a situation which has hardly aided the country’s attempts to install itself as a credible new player on the global stage. Qatar has no shortage of PR companies, consultants and communication specialists upon which to call, but Michael Payne traces the root of much of the criticism of Qatar, particularly from the UK, back to December 2010 in Zurich. “I think you’ve got to view the UK media and reaction in the context of having lost the World Cup – albeit it wasn’t Qatar that beat them, it was Russia,” Payne says. “England ran a very bad campaign but to the public and the media there was an element of ‘they stole it from us’ as there is when you’ve lost a match and disagreed with the referee’s decision. “I think on the broader international stage you’ve probably got a slightly more measured media reaction. That measured reaction continues to be: ‘Here’s clearly a country investing a lot in attracting major events; probably with Dubai it is setting the agenda a little bit for this new region, which has not had a history of hosting many events.’” The near impossibility of communication with senior staff from Qatar’s leading sports organisations, either inside or outside of the country, hardly helps its international positioning and messaging – a situation which may well change as its World Cup preparations really get into gear and the The Destinations Report 2014 | 37
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Breeding success
t
he racing of Arabian horses is popular across Qatar. The thoroughbred game, the highest level of flat racing and breeding, has not yet caught on as much as it has done in neighbouring Dubai, where Sheikh Mohammed has built a breeding and racing empire that dominates the sport the world over. But things might be about to change. In 2010, the Qatar Racing and Equestrian Club [QREC], under the direction of the Emir’s direct descendants, signed the longest deal in horse racing, agreeing to title sponsor France’s most prestigious race, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, until 2022. The Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe is an overtly nation-building property within Qatar’s growing sports sponsorship portfolio. Over the Channel in the UK, however, another strand of the Qatari royal family is practising a different model of sports investment. British Champions Series was created in 2011 by the PR arm of British horse racing. Essentially, it yokes together the 35 best flat races across the British summer into a clearly defined series, and crowns those with a new day of racing, British Champions Day, designed to be the richest in the country and one day the most prestigious in the world. The goal was to create a narrative and an ease of understanding that would appeal to the casual British sports fan. Qatar Investment & Projects Development Holding Company (QIPCO), little-known in the UK but with multiple interests across the Middle East, stepped up as title sponsor for an initial two-year deal worth a small seven-figure sum. Nominally owned by six brothers, all nephews of the Emir, QIPCO’s racing investment is actually led by Sheikh Fahad (top right), the youngest of the three
organising team becomes more public-facing. The money-is-no-object claim, meanwhile, was brought up by Noora Al Mannai during Doha 2020’s ill-fated Olympic bid campaign last year. “Bidding for different 38 | www.sportspromedia.com
adult brothers. Educated in the UK, the young Sheikh got a taste for racing as a teenager in 2009. He was at Newmarket when Makfi – sold for peanuts by Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin racing empire – won the celebrated 2,000 Guineas, at a stroke adding millions to its value at stud. Inspired, Sheikh Fahad persuaded his brothers to buy the stallion, and QIPCO-owned Qatar Bloodstock was born. When the chance came to own a premium chunk of British racing, which comes with myriad high-level hospitality benefits and represents a real reputational foothold in a quest to take on Godolphin and Ireland’s Coolmore operation, it was seized. Adopting a strategy that should allow more consumer-facing brands to join them, QIPCO renewed the deal last year, at a much higher rate, until 2017. competitions makes people or opponents start taking things and using it against you,” she suggested. “This is one of the overused stories used against Qatar. I’m sure everyone knows that the main reason behind it is not
the money; the money is the tool that we can use in order to achieve our objectives – without money we can’t do it, nobody can do it without money.” Within the sports industry, publicly at least, there is an acknowledgement of Qatar’s ambition and positivity about its efforts to ingratiate itself in the global sports structure. Denis Oswald, the president of World Rowing and an IOC presidential candidate, offered one such testament when he said: “I think they have a genuine interest in sport. Of course they are looking to large events, to get the visibility and to probably put their name on the map. But in addition they do a lot for the benefit of sport and are probably not getting much in return.” Oswald was speaking at the Securing Sport conference in March, held in Doha to reflect the Qatari investment in the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) organisation, a body set up to bring together key stakeholders in the fight against sports-related corruption and in the quest for greater safety. Also in attendance was Haroon Lorgat, the former chief executive of the International Cricket Council. “It’s impressive, to say the least,” Lorgat said when asked about Qatar’s sustained investment in sport, “because not so long ago you would not have associated sport with Qatar. If one is not passionate, you’re certainly not going to push this kind of investment into it. I’m impressed by their willingness to promote sport, to protect sport and what they’re investing in sport. “I think 2022 may well surprise a few people.” where do the foreign investments figure in the masterplan? While Qatar has been very successful in attracting events to its own shores – the Asian Games in 2006, Pan Arab Games in 2011, plus annual events including WTA and ATP tennis tournaments, a European Tour golf event and a round of the MotoGP World Championship amongst them – it has also been plotting a course internationally. It is all part of the national brand-building effort and, again with reference to the 2022 World Cup, in some cases a clear attempt to try and ingratiate itself in the global ‘football family’.
At around the same time as Qatar was awarded Fifa’s biggest event in December 2010, it was also agreeing a multi-year, US$220 million agreement through the government-controlled Qatar Sports Investment (QSI) vehicle to sponsor FC Barcelona’s shirts. The deal initially saw the logo of the Qatar Foundation – a not-for-profit government arm dedicated to education, science and community development – sit alongside existing Barcelona partner Unicef. In November last year, however, it was confirmed that Qatar Airways would take Qatar Foundation’s place on the front of the Spanish champions’ shirts from next season in a second phase of the original deal – an announcement which did not play well in the world’s media. In May 2011, Qatar took another step into the soccer world through its Al Jazeera Sports media company. The broadcaster acquired the French rights to Ligue 1 soccer for the next six seasons, paying €192 million (US$276.6 million) in the process. Months later, in December, it added four of the five available Uefa Champions League packages in France, for €61 million annually, to continue the assembly of a formidable portfolio of soccer content in one of Europe’s major markets. Al Jazeera has also entered the highly competitive US marketplace, notably acquiring US national soccer team games in August last year for its rebranded BeIN Sport network. Most notably of all, QSI has moved into soccer club ownership. In June 2011 it bought 70 per cent of Paris Saint-Germain, one of France’s leading clubs, from Colony Capital for US$57.66 million. Ten months later it acquired the remaining 30 per cent for US$39.4 million. Huge investment followed, with star players such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Lucas Moura and, ultimately, David Beckham joining a club infused by an injection of additional funding by a December 2012 investment to the tune of €150 million-plus by the Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA), which was dressed up as a sponsorship deal. French newspaper Le Parisien had the right idea when it suggested the state-owned tourist board’s investment was less a sponsorship deal and more a ‘vast publicity campaign intended to promote the image of Qatar’. Away from soccer, Qatar has invested
doha’s aspire Zone has attracted the attention of top teams worldwide, including Manchester United
the Us$58 million losail international circuit has hosted Motogp’s grand prix of Qatar since 2004
the Khalifa tennis complex hosts both the wta’s Qatar total open and atp’s Qatar exxonMobil open
heavily in horse racing. Qatar Racing and Equestrian Club is in the midst of a five-year agreement with France Galop to sponsor the prestigious annual Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris. There have been smaller investments in rallying, where
Qatar is sponsoring a team in 2013. Qatari brands are also moving into action. Earlier this year, Argentina and FC Barcelona star Lionel Messi became a global brand ambassador of Qatar-based, state-owned telecommunications firm Ooredoo, The Destinations Report 2014 | 39
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The Markaz analysis of the economic implications of the 2022 World Cup for Qatar suggests that the country will still be reliant, to some extent at least, on international companies for support. The report says: ‘GCC firms are actively expected to pursue the diverse opportunities in Qatar. Intra-regional trade would receive a major boost as most of the raw materials involved in the construction of many projects would be sourced from neighbouring companies. Large regional financial institutions would stand to benefit by offering financial services to the large number of projects.’ Markaz’s MR Raghu adds: “The unprecedented nature of the project in Qatar calls for the involvement of foreign players, who may not be familiar with the Gulf business environment. As various infrastructure programmes are being unleashed across GCC, Qatar will be in a competition for resources. Making available the required resources at the right time, right cost and at the right quality would be challenging.”
paris saint-germain president nasser al-Khelaifi
how do you sow the seeds to grow local stars with global appeal?
richard gasquet (right) won 2013’s Qatar open
following its rebrand from Qtel. There have also been grandiose gestures on the international stage which have failed to pay off, however, such as the offer to effectively cover sponsorship, venue construction, media rights and prize money for the IAAF in return for the hosting rights for its 2017 World Athletics Championships. The IAAF instead gave the event to London, opting for the Olympic legacy rather than new-world narrative. It is not just sport where Qatar has made huge international investments, of course. In recent years it has undertaken what a May report by Bloomberg described as a ‘US$60 billion-a-year spree’ around the world, a series of major brand-building investments. The same report suggested Qatar is now likely to rein in its global spending – which currently includes the holding of stakes in companies such as Volkswagen, Tiffany, and Barclays bank, as well as 95 per cent control of London’s latest dramatic new landmark, the Shard, and full control of the city’s famous Harrods department store – as it renews its focus on domestic investment in infrastructure.
One of the criticisms often levelled at Qatar is that it has little sporting credibility or history to draw on, and it is certainly true to say that its focus on sport, at almost every level, has been a relatively recent one. The 2006 Asian Games, staged in Doha, are generally considered to have been the country’s ‘coming out’ moment on the international – or at least continental – stage. The same year, however, saw the creation of the Qatar Professional Football League Development Committee, a board put together by the Qatar Football Association (QFA) to help professionalise the sport in the country. The body ultimately became the Qatar Stars League, which is now a 12-team annual competition run centrally by the QFA. The attempt to professionalise sport in the country is at least matched, however, by the efforts being made at grassroots level. Neither the QFA nor the Qatar Olympic Committee (QOC) responded to SportsPro’s request for an interview but the QOC secretary general Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani did deliver a speech in May, to mark Qatar’s Sport Excellence Day, in which he outlined Qatar’s grassroots
sports policy. “It is QOC’s top priority to boost community sport and make sport into a lifestyle,” he claimed. National Sport Day, he added, was “top of the list of our most important initiatives”. The annual event, which was staged for the first time in 2012, has been designed to widen the scope of community participation in sport, provide opportunities for all members of Qatari society to take part in activities, promote a sports culture in the country and to establish measureable criteria for social and individual sports participation amongst Qataris. The event is next scheduled for 11th February 2014 and certainly features prominently on billboards around Doha, an indication of the importance attached to it by Qatar’s rulers. “The event has enriched the culture of the community, government and non-government organisations with the values of sport,” Sheikh Saoud insisted. “It has helped in improving human health, mentally, physically and psychologically. “Our second initiative is the Schools Olympic Programme, which is in its sixth
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Qatar Stars League Club
Chairman
Established
Stadium
Sponsors
al arabi sports club
hitmi al-hitmi
1952
grand hamad stadium (13,000)
adidas
al gharafa sports club
sheikh hamad Bin thamer al thani
1979
thani Bin Jassin stadium (22,000)
errea
al Kharaitiyat sports club
sheikh hamad al thani
1996
al Khor stadium (12,000)
oryx, Burrda
al Khor sports club
sheikh Khalifa Bin ahmed al thani
1961
al Khor stadium (13,000)
al sultan Beach resort, adidas
al rayyan sports club
sheikh abdullah bin hamad al thani
1967
ahmed bin ali stadium (22,000)
nas, Macron
al sadd sports club
sheikh Mohamed Bin Khalifa al thani
1969
Jassim Bin hammad stadium (14,000)
Vodafone, Burrda
al sailiyah sports club
abdullah saeed al eida
1995
ahmed bin ali stadium (22,000)
QiB, nike
al wakrah sports club
sheikh Khalifa Bin hassan al thani
1959
saoud Bin abdulrahman stadium (12,000)
alijarah, nike
el Jaish sports club
hamad bin ali alattiyah
2011
suhaim bin hamad stadium (13,000)
napt, nike
Qatar’s first female olympians in london in 2012
lekhwia sports club
sheikh Faisal Bin ahmed al thani
2009
abdullah Bin Khalifa stadium (15,000)
Masraf al rayan, Burdda
Qatar sports club
sheikh hamad Bin saheem al thani
1961
suhaim bin hamad stadium (12,000)
QnB, adidas
Umm salal sports club
sheikh Faisal Bin ahmed al thani
1996
grand hamad stadium (13,000)
nike
The national sports initiatives and the investment in sporting infrastructure such as the Aspire Zone – a remarkable centre of state of the art facilities which has proved attractive enough for many a European soccer club seeking warmer climes during the winter – hint at that longer-term play. “The fact they are playing and have a greater role as a regional hub and have built great facilities, providing they’re all being used, serves sport very, very well globally,” Payne concludes. “You see more and more interest and sport becoming a key part of government strategy and society when, as a region, the Middle East until very recently didn’t care that much about sport – not in the way that, say, Asia or Africa did. Asia, the Koreas of this world, really discovered the sports agenda two or three decades ago and invested in it and the Middle East is now discovering the same potential.” Cultural issues are also a factor. Qatar sent female athletes – swimmer Nada Arkaji, table tennis player Aya Majdi, shooter Bahiya Al-Hamad and sprinter Noor Al-Malki – to the Olympics for the first time only last year. As its seemingly unstoppable rise to the top table of world sport gathers pace, Qatar has much work to do – and in a variety of very different areas.
year now. It is a pioneering programme targeted at the young generation and school students. At the educational institutions, our children study science and other subjects to enrich their minds but now physical activities have also been incorporated with a concept of ‘sound mind in sound body’. “Besides these two major projects, there are several activities and programmes which have been organised to serve all communities across the country, including youth centres and firgan playgrounds. Recently, Al Wakra Firgan playground was officially launched to be the first developed playground. There are 15 projects as of now, apart from four sport and social centres for ladies, as well as multiple sport activities for all age groups. All these programmes, initiatives and activities are being carried out in the light of Qatar 2030 National Vision and based on the sport strategy plan 2011 to 2016.” Michael Payne believes such investment is
essential and has implications even at the top of the sporting food chain, when it comes to globally recognised events like a Fifa World Cup. “You’ve got to invest in the local culture, environment and education with the younger generation to create true fans and participants as much as chasing the big headlinegrabbing events that are for rebranding the nation,” he says. “These events only work if there’s ultimately a strong, passionate local fanbase. You can stage an awful lot of world championships – I think there would be no question about Qatar’s ability to stage any individual world championship – but you’ve got to make sure the experience on the ground is that you’ve got packed stadiums. “The message would be make sure you’re investing so you can get to that position where you have got that credible fanbase, because it’s not credible to say, ‘We’ll fly all the people in,’ and it’s a short-term play if you’re holding all these events and you can’t fill the venues.”
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Live on The edge By eoin Connolly Originally published August 2013 edition of SportsPro
Rallying has always produced dramatic imagery but bringing it to live television has historically seemed a technical challenge too far. now, eurosport thinks it has found a solution for its european Rally Championship. We went behind the scenes at the 2013 Tour of Corsica to watch the concept come together.
T
he circus is on tour in Corsica. On the road between Calvi and Corte, moored up in the dry grass, the big top sits waiting for an evening’s entertainment. A pair of camels are hitched separately to posts around it, gazing listlessly into the middle distance; perhaps at rest, perhaps pondering the unseen banality of showbusiness. But these are not the only incongruous beasts stalking this picturesque Mediterranean island. May has brought with it the European Rally Championship (ERC) for the two-day Tour de Corse, or Tour of Corsica. In the northern harbour town of Calvi on Friday 17th, high-spec rally cars are driven gingerly through the morning traffic en route to the opening stage, each one bucking and sputtering on its short-clutch set-up like a bull led by the nose through a rural market town. It is the 56th running of the all-asphalt Tour of Corsica but the first as part of the FIA European Rally Championship, a series created under a ten-year licence last September by Eurosport Events to replace its own successful but unofficial International Rally Championship (IRC). “We had great TV production, a great relationship with rallies, great relationships with teams, complete control – but we had no sporting credibility,” says Eurosport Events motorsport development director François Ribeiro, speaking towards the end of the rally, of what was the IRC. “When
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you are Skoda and you go to your board and say, ‘OK, I need one, two, three, four, five million to go and win IRC,’ 90 per cent of the board for Skoda were saying, ‘What is the IRC? Please explain it to us.’ And I said to Eurosport, ‘If we become the promoter of a European Rally Championship, you don’t need to explain what the European Rally Championship is.’” The change in championship title is not the only novelty this year. Acting in its capacity as “a promoter, a producer and a broadcaster”, Eurosport is putting together selected live coverage of the event. The pan-European broadcaster began exploring the concept of live rallying “very early” in its development of the IRC, but has only used it a handful of times so far. Now the group wants to make it a regular feature of ERC coverage. “When you control the whole chain,” says Ribeiro, “your aim is to offer the best possible product to your client and Eurosport’s clients are the viewers, the fans themselves.” Eurosport is screening four one-hour stages of the rally live – one apiece on the morning and evening of each day, including the final stage. This is produced at a roadside compound of two outside broadcast trucks – one composing the video feed and the other a data feed – and a number of smaller vans providing supplementary broadcast capabilities. Ten cars in the rally – the ten quickest – have been equipped with fourkilogramme on-board cameras, embedded
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low in the body of their chassis to minimise the effect on weight distribution. Further coverage is provided by a helicopter tracking each car along the stage. Flying in an eight-kilometre circle above that, at 24,000 feet, is a small plane relaying footage from the helicopter back to the broadcast compound, which has been in place since a test feed was run on the Wednesday night. It is late morning there now on the Friday, 15 minutes before the close of Eurosport’s first live broadcast from the rally. Ribeiro observes quietly from the centre of the video truck, but in the front bank of chairs it is Gilbert Roy who is very much the man in command here. Roy is the director of editorial at Eurosport Events and it is he who is running the live broadcast. He keeps an eye on the mosaic of screens in front of him. These carry images from the helicopter following the stage, any three of the ten on-board cameras, graphics, and TV output from the channels broadcasting the race – Eurosport and France 3 Corsica. Another screen shows a map profiling the course, with GPS tracking giving the positions of the cars. From here, Roy relays instructions to the data team, those controlling the helicopter and on-board cameras, and the on-air crew.
Eurosport’s commentators for the event are back at its global production HQ in Paris – where the video and data feeds are also sent for distribution to viewers – but seasoned rally journalist Julian Porter is on hand at the end of the stage to conduct driver interviews. A France 3 Corsica reporter perches alongside Porter to translate for French viewers and, when time allows, conduct longer interviews with compatriot competitors. Back inside the truck, seated to Roy’s left, is the avuncular, bespectacled figure of Jean-Pierre Nicolas. Winner of the Tour de Corse in 1973, the 68-year-old was made general manager of the IRC in May 2012 and became the ERC’s general coordinator when the series rebranded this year. Nicolas is effectively the liaison between Eurosport Events and the ERC teams, and variously demonstrates his affection for the sport and his knowledge of the field – burbling favourably to a French print journalist at the performance of young Renault driver Germain Bonnefis and reacting smartly to unexpected changes in the field. “That’s a [Ford] Fiesta,” he says, alerting Roy to the sight of an interloper. “That’s [Fernando] Casanova.” Roy informs the data and commentary teams to ensure there is no on-air misidentification. The atmosphere in the truck is quiet
and calm, that of professionals relaxing in familiar pressure. As each team races through to complete the stage, they are met by Porter and his team, who have around 30 seconds of airtime to spare on an interview. Midway through one driver’s lengthy monologue, Roy says firmly, “Julian, no more questions.” Then Bonnefis arrives. “Bonnefis is tenth fastest,” says Roy. “1:46.3. You can ask him one or two questions.” Porter, crouched by the driver’s door and talking above the strangled blasts of a dormant rally engine, has plenty to keep him occupied. Roy interjects at one point to tell the Scot to back gently out of the shot. Towards the end of the broadcast, Roy notices that one ERC sponsor has not been getting enough airtime. “Julian, turn your microphone to show Yokohama instead of Michelin,” he says. Porter neatly twirls his three-cornered mic, but he turns it the wrong way and shows an ERC logo instead. “One more,” says Roy. The truck breaks into peals of rich laughter – it is the loudest it has been. Porter spins the microphone again and Yokohama has its moment on screen. After the broadcast ends a few minutes later, Porter and Roy greet each other with warm smiles and knowing jokes about live TV.
eurosport’s on-air team interview ireland’s Craig Breen at the end of stage seven, on which he suffered considerable damage to the rear of his Peugeot
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eurosport’s broadcast helicopter follows the Mitsubishi of Jaroslav orsak through a stage of the 2013 Tour of Corsica and provides live aerial footage
“
When you control the whole chain, your aim is to offer the best possible product to your client and eurosport’s clients are the viewers. There is plenty more that can go wrong in that medium, of course. That night, a few hundred miles across the Mediterranean at the Cannes film festival, a man invades the beachside set of Canal + magazine programme Le Grand Journal with a starter’s pistol. Rally driving has its own dangers. In Corsica, between Corte and Taverna, a small shrine marks the point where Finnish driver Henri Toivonen and his co-driver Sergio Cresto came fatally off the road in the 1986 race. In case of serious accidents, says Ribeiro, there is a “crisis protocol” in place for Eurosport’s TV team, the communications department and the FIA. “The local organiser and the FIA are in charge of the safety,” he explains. “So we have a crisis protocol in case something happens – if we have a big accident or injuries, casualties and so on – but that’s only to be correct, let’s say, for the viewers, or for
the spectators or for anybody who would have been potentially hurt.” Happily, no such incident will befall the 2013 event but there are still technical issues for the Eurosport team to address after the first live broadcast and that is Roy’s major priority. Then comes the production of the highlights. Before welcoming a small group of journalists into the OB video truck, Roy emerges with a short stack of discs of footage. These will be edited into a 26-minute highlights programme through the day, along with a one-minute catch-up bumper for the subsequent live show. Those packages will be produced here on the island, at the TV compound and the media centre in Ajaccio, before being sent on to Paris. The on-board and helicopter cameras remain in operation throughout the day. Meanwhile, the live production team also keep tabs on events in the race, not only because of the obvious editorial prerogative
”
but also to keep track of their equipment. “We don’t have time to switch one camera to another car,” explains Roy, “even if one car retires. It takes three hours to fix the cameras in the car, because it’s not only fixing the camera to the car, it’s also the transmitter and antennas which are on the roof of the car so we need to drill a hole in the roof.” As it happens, there is one unfortunate retirement overnight. The former Formula One star Robert Kubica dominates popular attention from the moment his Citroën pulls into the Place de la Citadelle in Calvi for Thursday’s ceremonial start, teasing reporters and fans away from the main stage like a magnet skirting a pile of paperclips. Kubica is in his first ERC season and has been followed to Corsica by a posse of Polish journalists. His withdrawal with a broken fuel pump, while leading, is an undoubted disappointment. Ribeiro is phlegmatic, though. “Rally is very uncertain, unpredictable, The Destinations Report 2014 | 45
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Between skiing and cycling: the live rally concept
L
ook, if someone has the capacity to do it, it’s Eurosport,” says Eurosport Events motorsport development director François Ribeiro, recalling the conversations that led to Eurosport pioneering live TV rallying coverage. As enticing as that prospect was it presented a unique set of challenges. Rallying takes place over long stretches of open road, moving through even longer sections of countryside and challenging terrain. It is near impossible to follow using roadside cameras, with cars scurrying by to provide, at best, around five or six seconds of usable footage. And in traditional rallying, cars are not running in direct competition with one another. Seeking a solution, Eurosport put “rally experts” and “non-rally sports experts” around the table to draw up some observations. “And we found out that rallying is exactly halfway between cycling and alpine skiing,” Ribeiro says. “It’s exactly halfway.” The live concept built for rallying, then, borrows from the coverage of both, and Eurosport began its development through 2007 and 2008. The ideal stage length is around 25 kilometres – although Eurosport
anything can happen,” he says. “When everything is running well, and when you have good weather, very strong competition, it’s great, it’s fantastic and everything clicks. But yeah, things can go wrong. Robert did not crash but had a technical failure. It can happen.” The retirement has no effect, says Ribeiro, on the editorial approach to the event and it makes little difference to Kubica’s immediate
Bryan Bouffier celebrates his rally win in Ajaccio
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Events director of editorial Gilbert Roy points out that “it’s not the length of the stage but the duration which is important”. For a one-hour block of live television, ten cars, in reverse order in the standings, was deemed the optimum for piquing viewer interest, closely mimicking the traditional coverage of downhill and slalom. Occasional editorial flourishes, like the use of cameras at the start and finish of stages, invite further comparisons with skiing. It then became a matter of technology. The use of an overhead helicopter was taken from road cycling but the on-board cameras required specialisation and miniaturisation before they were effective. After testing in Switzerland through 2008 and early funding discussions with individual rally stakeholders – “countries, promoters, cities, tourism boards and so on” – Eurosport took the plunge. The Monte Carlo Rally in 2010 was the first to be screened live, with 13 hours of coverage across three days. The template for live rally coverage has largely been set since then but the process of making technical improvements is ongoing. Roy suggests that a greater range of frequencies to receive footage from the on-board cameras – at the moment, the plans either. With a gravel test due early the following week in the south of France he remains on the island on Saturday, a helpful presence to team and media around the service park – the pop-up garage area sitting between each day’s various stages. The facility has been moved from Aérodrome de Corte on day one to a spot near the main Napoleon Bonaparte airport, just outside Ajaccio. The TV compound is also moved, in the dead of night, to a new location. Porter and the on-air team wait close by for the drivers at the end of stage seven, watching coverage and data coming in on a laptop at the roadside. There are fewer spectators here than elsewhere – the action being less dramatic as the cars crawl through a Michelin-branded arch – but some gather to capture their favourites on camera at a less shutter-vexing speed.
ten on-board cameras in use share three channels – is next on the agenda. The logistical challenge of identifying a live stage is equally daunting, and takes several months. First, funding must be in place from the local organisers. Then, a route is sought on the course that conforms to Eurosport’s criteria in terms of length, difficulty, accessibility for helicopters, lack of signal obstructions and space for a nearby TV compound. FIA and series competition rules regarding distances from the service park and other such matters must also be considered. Then there is the issue of scheduling. Each one-hour stage must have a corresponding slot in Eurosport’s pancontinental schedule – ruling out periods where major events like the Olympics, Tour de France or French Open tennis are taking place. “So as soon as we have decided which stage we take, at what time, the organiser takes the timings, and then I ask Eurosport not to change anything!” jokes Roy. “Because if they say, ‘Oh no, sorry, we have new rights for a football match,’ we are dead. They know that, so it’s a very close collaboration.” Dressed in Eurosport-branded navy polo shirt and shorts, Porter stretches for the sky as the sun bursts through the clouds. The weather for the rally has been changeable, sometimes dramatically so, which keeps the drivers and the organisers interested. The Tour of Corsica is known to some as the ‘Rally of 1000 Corners’. The roads wind capriciously through mountains and rural brush, and the resulting TV pictures are a major selling point for the local promoters, who bear the additional costs for live broadcast. “The Rally of Corsica is 70 per cent funded with public money, by the local government,” explains Ribeiro. “They pay Tour de Corse to promote themselves and keep the tradition alive. This is also the reason they are paying a lot to have the start of the cycling Tour de France, because they
know that they will offer themselves an international promotional campaign to show Corsica to millions of viewers.” On that front, the organisers have been more fortunate than their counterparts at April’s Rallye Azores, where much to Ribeiro’s regret the archipelago’s “mindblowing” scenery was smothered in heavy rain and fog. They are having better luck, too, than Irishman Craig Breen. One of the early leaders, he arrives at the end of stage seven with considerable damage to the back end of his Peugeot. His misfortune has not escaped the notice of the Eurosport crew at roadside, and Porter directs his cameraman across the road so he can sweep around the back of the car for the viewers’ benefit before the interview starts. Breen’s little accident will require attention later at the service park, where another member of the Eurosport fraternity is loitering in the mid-afternoon. Olivier Fisch is the global commercial director and managing director of Eurosport Events, and has arrived for a few hours of meetings before leaving again in the evening. Sporting dark, thick-framed spectacles and a chic navy trenchcoat, Fisch would be inconspicuous in most settings but here he bobs up in a sea of branded anoraks and overalls. He meets Ribeiro outside Renault’s
eurosport’s Julian Porter (left) and a reporter from France 3 Corsica speak with François delecour
hospitality base. They set off slowly around the park, speaking quietly amidst the fury of engines and power tools and picking their way between the cars – which prowl around freely, stopping for no one and reminding visitors that this is their natural domain. The rally weekend is not only a major test for Eurosport the broadcaster, it is a chance for Eurosport Events the promoter to take the series’ vital signs. “Our job is to make up the calendar,
The upgrade costs of live coverage were funded by local promoters looking to showcase the island
decide the calendar, sign all the agreements with the rallies, try to get as many teams and manufacturers involved,” says Ribeiro. “So for instance, today I stayed at the service park to speak about next year to Skoda, Citroën, Peugeot, Renault, Michelin and so on.” Fisch will have conducted his meetings before the main business of the weekend is over and in the end it is another Frenchman, the 34-year-old Bryan Bouffier, who is the overall victor in the rally. The final stage is broadcast live on Eurosport before a presentation by the local organisers in the pouring rain at Ajaccio’s Place du Diamant, where the time-honoured roar of La Marseillaise brings welcome respite from a looping Crazy Frog cover of Queen’s We Are The Champions. Bouffier and his co-driver stow their trophies in the boot of their Peugeot 207, quite literally, before making off for fresh roads and new challenges. Eurosport is already looking far beyond the next rally, with Ribeiro well into planning for 2014. “I would love to bring half of the championship to live TV next year,” reveals Ribeiro. “I think this year we’ll be able to do three rallies live. I am working now on the Rally of Poland, hopefully to cover it live. I would love next year to do six – half of the championship live. That would be a great target.” The Destinations Report 2014 | 47
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ISLAND RECORDS By Michael Long Originally published August 2013 edition of SportsPro
Organised by the Island Sailing Club (ISC), the largest sailing club on the Isle of Wight and one of the biggest in the UK, the JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race is a much-loved institution and a genuine highlight of the British sailing calendar. For those who can stomach the early start, it is a sporting experience like no other.
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national and local news outlets reminisce about previous editions, speculating on who might be the outright winner this year and whether records, as pre-race forecasts have suggested, will in fact be broken. As luck would have it, the weather conditions outside are near-perfect. A moderate-to-fresh offshore wind and relatively calm waters create the ideal setting for the 50-mile course. Just two hours, 52 minutes and 15 seconds after setting off with the second group, Sir Ben Ainslie’s JP Morgan BAR, an ultra-fast AC45 America’s Cup catamaran, crosses the finishing line back in Cowes, smashing the course multihull record by some 16 minutes. Not far behind is ICAP Leopard, a maxi yacht skippered by Mike Slade, which shaves almost ten minutes off the course monohull record of three hours, 52 minutes and five seconds Slade himself had set in 2008. But the Round the Island Race is not all about who finishes first. The beauty of the race – and what reserves it a special place within the hearts of British yachtsmen and women – is that it is open to all, from decorated Olympians to leisurely weekend sailors, and a handicap system means even the smallest boats, some of which finish late into the day, can win the top prizes, including the most coveted of them all, the Gold Roman Bowl awarded to the best performer. That philosophy of accessibility has
The competing fleet, comprising 1,459 boats of various classes, rounds The Needles as the race unfolds
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been at the heart of the Round the Island Race since its founding in 1931. Today it is affectionately known as ‘Britain’s favourite yacht race’, illustrating a shared fondness that is matched by the open relish with which the ISC’s dedicated troop of volunteers organise it. “I work 12 months of the year on it for the love of it,” smiles David Atkinson, who in the build-up to the race oversees media, communications and sponsorship matters at the ISC before acting as a safety officer on race day. “I get nothing, but that’s the ethos that makes it work.” Atkinson, who has worked on more Round the Island Races than he cares to remember, is part of a steering group set up by the ISC to focus exclusively on organising the race, such is the popularity of a sporting event which now officially ranks as the UK’s fourth-largest in terms of participation. “It had got so big,” recalls the genial Englishman, speaking the day before this year’s race. “Each year we’ve seen an increase in the numbers and then in the early to mid-80s we saw a real explosion, right up until a couple of years ago when we had 1,907 boats. Then, despite the financial crisis, we still held our numbers. We average about 1,600 boats each year.” Such growth has contributed to the huge logistical task of staging the race. As one would expect all manner of local bodies,
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he clock ticks towards 5am on Saturday 1st June. Out on the water, just a few hundred yards off Cowes, 1,459 boats of all shapes and sizes, carrying crews of all ages and abilities, await the boom of the starting cannon, their sails like knives cutting silhouettes against the rich golden flush of the rising sun. Jostling and carving back and forth in anticipation, they are poised for the 76th running of the JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race, a one-day sprint around the Isle of Wight, an island separated from the south coast of England by a strait called The Solent. As 5am nears the first group to start, comprising the largest boats in the fleet, come to the fore. A helicopter hovers above. Press boats circle. The sun, now fully visible above the horizon, bathes The Solent in stunning golds and reds as, with the smoke from the starting cannon lingering in the distance, the boats set off. Back at race control members of the Island Sailing Club (ISC), one of the largest sailing clubs in the UK and the organisers of the annual race, are busy working the phones, coordinating a vast army of 200 volunteers and local authorities who will ensure the race goes as planned. Elsewhere, in the media room, press officers and PR hands are beginning their live blogs of the race, hammering away at keyboards as seasoned cameramen and journalists from
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Jasper Berens, managing director of JP Morgan’s UK funds business, at a pre-race press conference
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from coastguards and emergency services to the port authorities across the water in Southampton and Portsmouth, are consulted and briefed regularly throughout the year, but as participation numbers have swelled, so too has the ISC’s commercial operation. “I think the commercial side – and I include the sponsorship in that – has evolved with the race,” Atkinson explains. “Outwardly, it’s still the same as it was in 1931: you still start from Cowes, you go round the island and you come back to Cowes. But the stuff that goes on in the background, the infrastructure, the costs of that are growing so we need the added funds to do that. And we’re really lucky. I’ve been involved in most of the sponsorship deals that we’ve done through the race, and every time we’ve renegotiated it’s been another step forward.” Employing a conventional tiered sponsorship structure, the ISC has succeeded in putting together a close-knit and venerable portfolio of partners that testifies to the spirit and history of the race. At the top of the pyramid is race title sponsor of nine years JP Morgan Asset Management, the financial services company perching above seven race partners: clothing brand Henri Lloyd, marine electronics specialist Raymarine, Old Pulteney whisky, Red Funnel ferries, yachting school Sailing Logic, watch brand Timex, and insurer Haven Knox-Johnston. “Our sponsors are part of our family, if you like,” Atkinson says. “We encourage them to work amongst themselves, and quite a lot of cross-marketing activity goes on between them. They come to us with ideas and we go to them with ideas. We have this ongoing dialogue 12 months of the year to deliver what they want so that they continue to come back to us. They’ve been with us a long time and there are not many properties in the sponsorship world that can get that longevity.” As the race title sponsor, JP Morgan receives an extensive package of branding rights covering everything from the boats and Henri Lloyd’s official race clothing to Cowes Yacht Haven, the race village and the town centre itself. But the company’s association with the event is far more than a brand awareness exercise. Having run a number of charitable initiatives around the race over the years,
David Atkinson performs media duties for the Island Sailing Club and is safety officer on race day
JP Morgan has helped to raise over UK£500,000 for good causes, a tradition continued this year when the company donated UK£1 to the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust, the race’s official charity partner, for every tweet posted using the event’s official #raceforall hashtag. In total, UK£38,000 was raised this year. Additionally, with the title sponsor’s package including a generous hospitality allocation, JP Morgan is able to host some 200 clients over the course of the race weekend. Many, if not all, of those clients take part in the race itself, and it is that unique experiential component more than anything else that keeps JP Morgan coming back year after year.
“We can give [our clients] something that is unique from a corporate hospitality perspective, which is sailing around the Isle of Wight,” explains Jasper Berens, the managing director of JP Morgan’s UK funds business who oversees the company’s sponsorships in Britain. “They can say, ‘I have sailed round the Isle of Wight; I have completed it,’ and that feeling when they come off the water is quite unlike anything in the world.” Berens himself has participated in more than a few Round the Island Races and when he speaks it is clear his passion for the contest goes well beyond that of the ordinary sponsor. Though the initial deal between JP Morgan and the ISC was not The Destinations Report 2014 | 51
Destinations Report 2014
Mark Lloyd
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brokered and signed by him personally, he is now a fully paid-up member of the Round the Island fan club, a feeling he says is shared by each and every one of his clients once they return to shore. “We ask our client’s feedback after the event, both informal and formal, and what we get from them is that this is a truly unique event, in that there is nothing else like this that anybody else sponsors,” he says. “It’s not like they’re watching it, which is what a lot of sponsorship tends to be, they’re actually taking part in the race itself. [Getting client feedback] is a very helpful way of us measuring and understanding the value that a sponsorship like this can bring.” The ISC and JP Morgan have developed a strong relationship over the course of their nine-year partnership and their respective representatives are quick to talk up the vital part the other plays. Atkinson describes the cooperation as “a classic example of a partnership”, while Berens is under no illusions as to why the race has flourished under the auspices of the ISC. “What they bring is huge experience and, of course really importantly, a large number of volunteers,” he says. “Without them the Round the Island Race and Island Sailing Club would not be possible. Our sponsorship is another piece in the puzzle but there are lots of pieces that make that up. The Island Sailing Club is really important to it.” 52 | www.sportspromedia.com
Sir Ben Ainslie and his JP Morgan BAR team on their way to a record Round the Island Race time
Ever eager to innovate, in recent years the ISC and JP Morgan have sought to improve the overall experience of the historic race by introducing new technology for the benefit of fans and the media. In 2010, for example, they teamed up to launch a new GPS tracking system which, combined with the ISC’s live online blog and a real-time results platform, enables spectators around the world to follow the progress of the fleet via the race’s official website. “That kind of innovation is incredibly important to us,” says Berens, echoing Atkinson who adds that such advancements, technological or otherwise, now play “a huge role in the race”. Equally important for the marketing efforts of both sponsor and organiser is the involvement of some of sailing’s best known names. Among the entrants in this year’s race were round-the-world sailors Dame Ellen MacArthur and the charismatic Alex Thomson, a star of this year’s Vendée Globe who shared inspiring and often hilarious stories of Southern Ocean storms and Arctic follies as the guest speaker at JP Morgan’s pre-race client dinner. Such star names add to the magnetism of the Round the Island Race, helping to lure thousands of amateur sailors and weekend enthusiasts from around the world and garnering greater media interest, but perhaps neither MacArthur nor Thomson could match the pulling power this year of Sir Ben
Ainslie. His record-breaking performance, coming as it did just a day after he had served as a pallbearer for his good friend Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson, a member of the Swedish America’s Cup team Artemis who had died in a tragic training accident in May, was the most fitting of tributes and spun an extra, poignant thread of narrative for the media to weave into their stories. For JP Morgan, meanwhile, Ainslie’s record-breaking exploits made 2013 a year of additional significance. The company has been the five-time Olympic medallist’s lead sponsor since 2006, the year after it first partnered with the Round the Island Race, and while the Briton’s JP Morgan BAR is now helping to provide the brand with global exposure as an entry in the America’s Cup World Series (ACWS), his insistence upon returning to the Isle of Wight whenever his schedule allows means the Round the Island Race maintains an important place in JP Morgan’s ongoing sailing sponsorship strategy. “We’ve built a very strong friendship with Ben,” Berens explains. “Clearly the guy is now just an incredibly important sporting, national hero, in terms of his gold medals, in terms of the fact he has been knighted. It’s a relationship that we really love, as is this race. Ben has taken part in this race pretty much every single year that we’ve been sponsoring it and that’s where we bring those two things together and it works really well.”
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destinations Report 2014 HOSTING
Building cApitAl By Eoin connolly Originally published May 2013 edition of SportsPro
isolated by partition and wrongfooted by reunification, Berlin’s clubs have rarely been a major force in german soccer. today, with local giants Hertha BSc and eastern upstarts union Berlin seeking a route into the Bundesliga, a new order is emerging in the city.
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t a glance, it looks like boom-time for Berlin soccer. 74,244 people have ventured out on a Monday evening for a league derby between the city’s biggest two clubs, Hertha BSC and Union Berlin, packing the Olympiastadion to its every exquisitely restored rafter. Outside, the old diving pool from the 1936 Games has frozen hard in the February cold but in the stands supporters of both teams mingle contentedly, some having journeyed in together on public transport. At either end, opposing bands of ultras drum and chant without pause. It seems a spectacle worthy of a national sporting occasion. Look again. Hertha BSC and Union Berlin play in German soccer’s second tier, the 2. Bundesliga. As the 2012/13 season began in Europe, the champions of Spain, Netherlands, Turkey and Belgium were based in or near their national capitals. Chelsea became London’s first European champions last May but finished only sixth in the Premier League, behind rivals Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. The most successful teams in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Portugal, Denmark, Austria and the Czech Republic hail from their capitals, while AS Roma and Lazio often challenge for Italian honours and Paris Saint-Germain are poised for oil-fuelled dominance in France. The German example stands apart. In fact, disregard the ten East German titles won in the 1980s by Dynamo Berlin – pet team of Stasi chief Erich Mielke – and it becomes difficult to find any evidence of capital city success at all. Hertha have long been Berlin’s most popular soccer club, but their most recent national titles came in the last years of the Weimar Republic. 54 | www.sportspromedia.com
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there was a time when union fans used to sing about looking forward to meeting Hertha again in a united Berlin.
As a correspondent for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Guardian and Sports Illustrated, Raphael Honigstein is something of an outsider when it comes to soccer in Berlin but his take on its national reputation is succinct. “A bit of an embarrassment,” he says, “a bit of a joke; a bit like the Berlin airport.” Yet as Berliners prepare grudgingly for another year of Tegel and Schoenefeld amid further delays to the Brandenburg project, they may at least detect some change in the local soccer scene. For the first time since reunification, something close to a new order is emerging. Before this year, Hertha and Union had met just three times in league soccer, and only once in the Olympiastadion – with the visitors stealing an unlikely 2-1 win in another sell-out two Februarys earlier. Then, however, the game had a slightly aberrant feel; Union were stabilising in mid-table in the second tier after winning the inaugural 3. Liga, while Hertha had played Europa League soccer the previous season after a strong title challenge in 2008/9. Now the two clubs are moving into each other’s orbit. Union have put years of financial uncertainty behind them to become profitable for the first time and are comfortable in the 2. Bundesliga, kicking
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on from a creditable seventh-place finish in 2011/12. Hertha, saddled by debts which stood at a reported €42 million at the last count, are rebuilding after a second relegation in three years and drifting ominously towards sporting limbo. A spirit of farce haunted ‘The Old Lady’ throughout 2011/12. Three coaches came and went in a year: Markus Babbel left during the winter break after refusing a new contract, Michael Skibbe lasted five games, and 73-yearold Otto Rehhagel arrived after 11 years out of Bundesliga soccer. Then came a fractious promotion/relegation play-off with Fortuna Düsseldorf. Seeking a late goal and salvation away in a second leg held up when their own supporters threw flares on the pitch, Hertha were thwarted first by jubilant home fans staging a pitch invasion and then, apparently, by an early final whistle amidst the chaos. An appeal to have the game replayed was thrown out and the Berliners took their place in the second division. “There’s a German term called Fahrstuhlmannschaft – a Fahrstuhl is a lift; so they’re going up and down, up and down,” says Jacob Sweetman, the founding editor of English-language Berlin soccer quarterly No Dice Magazine. “Hertha aren’t quite that but they’re not far off.”
Berlin’s Olympiastadion was restored in spectacular style for the 2006 Fifa World cup but anchor tenants Hertha BSc have had a mixed record ever since
The derby kicks off with Hertha second in the table and Union a few points back in third. Bright and inventive on the counter, the visitors take a deserved two-goal lead before a header from Adrian Ramos and a staggering late free-kick from Brazilian midfielder Ronny rescue a point for the home side. The result means Union take just one point from the two derbies – having lost their home fixture 2-1 – but the games have held greater significance off the field for Dirk Zingler, the club’s popular president. “For us it was a good chance to show what we have achieved,” he tells SportsPro in March. “Union is about much more than pure results on the pitch and, although we did not win one of the derby games this season, it was a powerful demonstration of the people who are proud of what they call ‘their club’. Union is, in fact, a people’s club.” Based in opposite corners of the city in regal Charlottenburg and leafy Köpenick, Hertha and Union are nothing like traditional rivals. A founder member of the Bundesliga in 1963, Hertha spent much of the pre-unification era in awkward isolation from the rest of West Germany, performing inconsistently and occasionally sparring with the likes of Tennis Borussia Berlin. In the east, Union defined themselves by
their rivalries with the state-backed teams, particularly Dynamo. “There was a time,” says Sweetman, “when Union fans used to sing about looking forward to meeting Hertha again in a united Berlin.” Today, the two clubs are Berlin’s sole representatives in Germany’s three national divisions and their relationship, Zingler confirms, remains warm and professional. However it develops, this will be a new rivalry for a new capital. Every city is a product of its history but Berliners have become active participants in theirs. The wall that was once such an emblem of post-war Europe is a case in point: a public that so gleefully smashed it to bits in 1989 then turned a 1.3km stretch into one of the unified city’s most remarkable, romantic landmarks, the East Side Gallery graffiti exhibit. There is agonised, nuanced debate over what should be done with the other surviving remnants of the barrier, as well as over the destiny of other former GDR landmarks, but they are discussions taking place in a community which is constantly evolving. “The past is obviously relevant but, you know, a lot has changed in Berlin over the past 20 years,” argues Sweetman. “I think a lot of people are actually bored of this east/west argument. I think that’s becoming
less and less relevant as time goes on, to be perfectly honest.” Zingler adds, “Our history is in the very ground on which we stand – both mentally and physically. This is, of course, important to our identity. But we also try to ask ourselves what is the right way, for the club and its followers, to go forward. If it is necessary to question authorities or to insist on our own opinion – we will do so.” In the same way, any future Hertha-Union rivalry – however friendly it might be – will be informed by history but shaped by what lies ahead: antipathy stirred by competition and a differing outlook on matters affecting German soccer and its supporters. Both Honigstein and Sweetman are highly critical of Hertha’s leadership, particularly that of capricious sporting director Michael Preetz, and financially, on-field underperformance has taken a toll. As Hertha’s partners at Sportfive have looked to claw back revenues lost through relegation, matchdays at the Olympiastadion have developed a commercially frenzied air. Every advantage offered by the venue – unique in the 2. Bundesliga for having pitchside LED hoardings – is leveraged to the full. On the video screens, messages appear promoting sponsors like Wall and Air Berlin at the award of a corner kick, or preThe Destinations Report 2014 | 55
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Hertha’s Michael preetz (right) went through three coaches in 2012 before appointing Jos luhukay
Hertha and union have had four league fixtures
determined but seemingly arbitrary intervals – the 40-minute and hour mark among them. Amusingly, the club’s healthcare partner AOK Nordost gets airtime whenever a player receives treatment for an injury. It is a policy borne out of necessity and one which seems uncontroversial among the Hertha faithful, but is indicative of a different culture from the one in the south-east. “You would never get that at Union,” says Sweetman. “They would very strongly fight against that.” Union’s commercial interests have been represented since 2010 by Hamburgbased agency Ufa Sports. The year before the partnership was agreed, Zingler had terminated a sponsorship deal with International Sport Promotion after it emerged that its supervisory chairman, Jürgen Czilinsky, had served in the Stasi. No such quandary has arisen since Ufa became involved with the club and Zingler is pleased with a collaboration which has driven a doubling of sponsorship revenues. “Well it is really important to use our own resources, as well as to recognise our own limitations,” he says. “We decided to cooperate with the sales experts of Ufa Sports because we believed we needed an even better commercial performance. They do appear as a club’s sales team instead of a separate sales unit. And the final decision about any contract is still made by the club. “It’s not a question of not trusting them
with sections of the population, not least as disaffection lingers at how “Berlin’s culture itself is actually being sold off by the government to a certain extent” through the ongoing redevelopment of once-squatted properties in the riverside Mediaspree. In recent months, Zingler has made headlines across Germany with his opposition to changes floated by the German Football Federation (DFB) to safety regulations in stadiums. He is particularly against any move to ban standing at German grounds. “But generally speaking,” he says, “it is our approach to manage our club from a fan perspective as we see ourselves as fans.” This, notes Sweetman, has made Union more visible on the national stage and placed them at the heart of a debate about the rights of supporters. “And this is definitely the way they’re playing it,” he adds. “They want to identify themselves as a fans’ club, as opposed to being a political club.” Across town, Hertha have broken clear at the top of the table since the derby and look almost certain to rejoin the Bundesliga but in some ways, their future is less settled than that of Union. Promotion will bring an influx of revenue from broadcasters in 2013/14 – the combined value of domestic free-to-air and pay-TV rights deals will rise to an annual €628 million next year – but Hertha will be in no realistic position to strengthen their squad this summer and will likely face another battle against the drop. Financial
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but of finding a way to find the best possible chance of presentation for the club and our economic partners. We work together very closely. The sales team is located on the same floor as our press and public relations department. It is indeed a partnership.” Yet Ufa’s efforts might have been fruitless had it not been for moves to renew “the soul of Union”: the club’s home ground, the Stadion An der Alten Försterei. In 2008, two years after an updated Olympiastadion had staged the World Cup final, Union began their own more modest redevelopment programme. Supporters were engaged both physically and financially – 2,500 of them contributing to the first year of building work, and €2.7 million of the total €15 million building costs raised through a fanshare scheme which entitles holders to a stake in decisions such as the sale of naming rights. As well as an increased capacity the ground will feature improved facilities, most notably for VIPs. “The redevelopment was the most important step to give our club a future,” says Zingler. “We found a way, a very special one indeed, and we will have a stadium fit for the Bundesliga as soon the construction work for the main stand is finished in the summer.” Sweetman sees little direct crossover between the city’s vibrant cultural life and those of its soccer teams. However, Union are emerging at a point where their apolitical but anti-authoritarian ethos could chime
the german capital’s top two clubs are not traditional rivals and remain on friendly terms – for now
consolidation will remain the key short-term priority and Honigstein doubts that increased earnings will be enough to rectify long-term structural problems. “I think they need to find a management team on and off the pitch that is just a little bit better than what they’ve had in the past,” he says plainly. With such leadership in place, Honigstein believes Hertha could one day become “one of the genuine blue-chip brands and powerhouses of German football” but in the meantime identity is a sensitive issue. “They want to be a bigger team,” he says. “They want to make use of all that cultural capital that Berlin brings but they’re so badly run that their efforts contrast really badly with the rest of Germany.” As eye-catching as the derby sell-out might have been it perhaps highlighted how much of Hertha’s supporter base, in a city with a fluid professional population, is distinctly casual. “There was a time when they were playing in the Champions League,” remembers Honigstein, “and I know that a few people, friends of mine who really don’t care about Hertha but happened to live in Berlin because it was the place to be, started going to see games – because, you know, it was something to see.” In many ways, Hertha’s tenancy of the Olympiastadion is a blessing and their attendances bear strong comparison with any in a European second tier, averaging over 35,000. At the same time, Honigstein
believes that seeing those supporters rattling around in Germany’s second-largest stadium has created an image problem. “If they had a really nice, compact 40,000-seater stadium it would be a completely different club with a completely different atmosphere,” he suggests. “Their own shortcomings, or the distance between the ambition and the reality, are always hammered home in the Olympic Stadium. And that is a very depressing, sobering situation, if you think about it.” There is further irony that the club’s malaise should persist through a time when so much of German soccer is flourishing. Hertha owed their original Bundesliga place in part to a political imperative to involve a Berlin team. But while many still hope for a stronger showing from the capital’s clubs, the league will be confident enough to press on regardless of their prospects. “I think the Bundesliga can do absolutely fine without Hertha,” says Honigstein. “They would like to see Hertha back, the league, because Hertha has more fans and will bring more value than Hoffenheim or Mainz or Augsburg, but I don’t think that anyone is really terribly concerned that they’re not going to be there. “I think that the league and German football on the whole have done a very good marketing exercise over the last few years. Berlin would be a good piece of the puzzle if they can add that to their arsenal, because
at the moment it’s just a blank spot whereas Berlin on a cultural level is very exciting. It’s seen as young and fresh and hip, etc. So if their football can be part of that, that would be great, but it’s not at the top of the list of concerns in a sporting sense.” Union’s promotion prospects have withered somewhat since the derby but they will be likely contenders next year. In any case, while he holds out hope for a reunion with Hertha in the Bundesliga, Zingler is philosophical about events on the pitch. “Success is important for every club, but it is not our main target,” he says. “The way we have of presenting football, and our club culture means much more to us. We will try to be successful whilst keeping our identity.” If a lifetime of watching soccer in Berlin has taught Zingler anything, it would seem, it is just how much things can change. His aim is that the club is just as prepared for misfortune and relegation as for the big time. “I am first of all a Union fan,” he says. “That’s why I always have to prepare for if things do go wrong, but everyone in the club is working very hard to achieve the very best for Union. I have no ideal or an imagination of the ‘perfect’ Union. We are alive and well and trying to find our own way in the world of modern football. As long as our stadium is a home for everyone who loves football in an intense and – in the best meaning – traditional way, then things are going in a good direction.” The Destinations Report 2014 | 57
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Ville de Nice/ F. Vigouroux, Vinci
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Construction of oGC nice’s 45,000-seater allianz Riviera, one of four new venues to be used for Uefa euro 2016, was completed by september 2013
Kallen The shoTs By Michael long Originally published March 2013 edition of SportsPro
Martin Kallen has overseen every Uefa european Championship since 1996. as Uefa prepares for something altogether different in 2020, the swiss is gearing up for an expanded tournament in the soccer heartland of France in 2016.
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he next three years promise to be comparatively stress-free for Martin Kallen. As operations director for Uefa, European soccer’s governing body, the Swiss is tasked with the successful delivery of the 2016 Uefa European Championship in France, a tournament that is nigh-on guaranteed to escape the level of scrutiny that surrounded its immediate predecessor in Poland and Ukraine. Having hosted the 1938 and 1998 Fifa World Cups and two previous editions of the European Championship – in 1960 and 1984 – France has more experience than most of putting on soccer’s biggest events. Whatever one’s opinion on Uefa’s decision to return the tournament to the homeland of its own president, Michel Platini, nobody is doubting the country’s ability to fulfill its bid commitments, least of all Kallen. “We are in a football-addicted country,” he says, speaking to
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SportsPro late last year. “We are not so much concerned.” The knowledge and expertise shared amongst the French organisers is a particular strong point going into Euro 2016. Platini himself, as well as Jacques Lambert, the president of the Euro 2016 organising committee, previously worked on France’s staging of the ‘98 World Cup and with Kallen, who has overseen the delivery of every Euro since England in 1996, pulling the strings on the current project from Uefa’s headquarters in nearby Nyon, the concerns and controversies that typically dog major event preparations are all but accounted for. “The bar for this Euro will be very, very high because it will be delivered with excellence,” Kallen proclaims, with the insistent positivity of seemingly all senior Uefa spokesmen. “We will do our best and I think the setting in France gives us the possibility to deliver at this very, very high
bar. The Euro has developed each time from edition to edition and now everybody is expecting a very, very good championship, well organised, having a home team that could go very far.” Winners in 1984 and 2000, the French have developed a close love affair with the European Championship. The tournament itself was the brainchild of a Frenchman, Henri Delaunay, who was Uefa’s first general secretary and for whom the winner’s trophy is now named. Yet while France may be a known quantity for the European soccer community, Uefa is entering unchartered territory as its flagship tournament undergoes yet another expansion. Having doubled in size three times between the inaugural four-nation event in 1960 and 1996, the tournament will for the first time feature 24 teams and, as Kallen points out, the increase adds another dimension to preparations.
The stade Vélodrome, France’s biggest club stadium, is being upgraded
Uefa’s Martin Kallen is preparing to deliver his sixth european Championship
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The euro has developed each time from edition to edition and now everybody is expecting a very, very good championship.
“24 teams means 51 matches so the tournament is one week longer, more or less,” he explains. “You need to have more training grounds, more services for the teams. While there might be stadiums which are 30, 40, 50, and over 70,000 capacity, there will be matches that are a little bit less demanded, or less spectators come from those countries. So it is important to have full capacity stadiums, which for 51 matches is a little bit more of a challenge than for 31.” The number one priority for Kallen and the French organisers, then, is to ensure stadiums are filled to capacity through engaging marketing and an efficient ticketing system. “We are only starting on this process but for us we are in a footballaddicted country, where people like to go to these events,” Kallen explains. “We are not so much concerned about fully crowded stadiums but of course we need to be thinking carefully about the marketing and the promotion and the sale of tickets. The past has shown us, like in Poland-Ukraine [2012] or Switzerland-Austria [2008], that the
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demand for tickets was always a lot higher than the capacity. We had 1.5 million tickets in Poland and Ukraine; now we are moving up to 2.5 million. In Poland and Ukraine we had a demand for over 12 million tickets. This is all a little bit speculative but I think that with those past results and with good preparation and promotion and a good ticketing system in place, I think the stadiums will be full.” Uefa’s decision to expand the tournament has attracted criticism from some who say the introduction of weaker teams will dilute the competition. Kallen disagrees, however. He reiterates that Uefa’s decision was made “for sporting reasons…to give more federations the chance to take part” and refutes the idea that expansion is a way of lining Uefa’s own pockets. “On the marketing side, it is not that because we have 24 teams that you can extrapolate the revenues. It is not like that,” he says. “You can do a little bit more revenue but it is not in the same percentage as the increase of teams because all the countries
before already had the TV rights. On sponsorship, also, there is a bar which you can hit but after that it is more difficult to find sponsors which will pay over the bar, or over what is expected. The marketing rights and all this are already at a very high level.” Euro 2016 will be staged in ten stadiums situated across the same number of host cities. According to Kallen, they “are developing well”. “We have already two stadiums finished, they are Lille in the north of France and the Stade de France in Paris.” he reveals. “The two stadiums are already in use, one since ‘98 and the other since the summer. If the construction in Nice goes well, that will be open next summer. Also in Lyon, while they’ve had some issues in the past on different permits, they have started now the construction with the earth work. At the moment, we are OK and we are confident everything will finish in the summer of 2015 at the latest.” As preparations gather pace in 2013, the next task for Kallen and his team will be to prepare the stadiums for tournament usage before a multitude of other aspects must be taken care of. “The next big milestone,” he says, “is looking at the development and operation of the stadiums, to start with conditional overlay for the European Championship, which is still quite big with the installations, media services, TV installations, hospitality, sponsor installations, which are normally over the capacity of the existing stadium and are specific because it The Destinations Report 2014 | 59
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euro 2012: “the time to go east”
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ith the dust having settled on Poland and Ukraine’s major soccer event bow, Martin Kallen believes the 2012 edition of Uefa’s flagship international tournament was just about as well organised as it could have been, given the operational obstacles and infrastructural inadequacies Uefa and the two host countries had to face up to. According to him, 2012 “was the time to go east” for Uefa and in spite of any criticism, last year’s event was, from an organisational point of view, “the benchmark” when compared to his experience of delivering the four previous editions. “It may be a bit of a surprise for you,” he says. The Swiss does, however, accept that the readiness of Poland and Ukraine’s infrastructure was not ideal, with public transport “not at the level” he had hoped for and stadium construction a standout concern. “For us it’s clear that if the stadiums would have been finished earlier that would have been for sure a plus because they were, as you know, quite late in delivering,” he explains. “This is always a big risk, when you have not enough
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time to train, to use and have experience of it, from one side the infrastructure and secondly of course also from the operational side. Our target is always that stadiums are ready two years ahead of the event and we were in many stadiums less than one year. But then, of course, we would always like to begin work as early as is possible.” The organisers of Euro 2012 were dealt a potentially difficult hand with the tournament taking place as it did in an Olympic year. There was a danger that preparations for London 2012 would overshadow the soccer tournament but Kallen believes “there is not really an issue” with staging a Euro – as was also the case in 2004 – so close to a European Games. “People who like football are sometimes different to Olympic lovers and the two events go well together,” he says. “The only point we could see this time [was that] London is a great market for corporate hospitality sales, for tickets with hospitality and experiences in stadiums with skyboxes or business seat holders. So we had a little bit less people coming from the London market, which was clear because they were focused on the Olympics.”
is a mega-event. This is a process which will be launched [in 2013] and then this process needs to be finalised around 2015 for preparing the implementation. “After the 2014 World Cup in Brazil,” Kallen continues, “teams will be looking forward to coming to France to see where they can have their base camp. Then it is very important to be ready in order to offer the teams the best possible conditions throughout France, so that they have a good palette of base camps to choose from and hotels where they’d like to stay. “Then we will be starting volunteer recruitment – which is also important – in 2015, starting different corporate hospitality sales and ticket sales in 2014 and ’15, getting TV rights sales delivered and all finished around 2015, and all the sponsorship as well, so we can in the last nine months fully concentrate on the implementation of the tournament. So there are different milestones. We are doing this with firstly a very detailed roadmap and then after the roadmap with a detailed project plan where we have around 60 projects.” In order to implement the Euro 2016 marketing programme Uefa has been working since October with CAA Eleven, the start-up agency created exclusively to sell commercial rights to the governing body’s major events. As well as selling the TV rights to Euro 2016 matches, including to the qualifiers which begin in September 2014, CAA Eleven will handle the event’s global and national sponsorship packages. “We are looking for around six national sponsors,” Kallen says. “I’m sure that our new agency will deliver this plan but further information is expected in the coming months. We have already now five main global sponsors on board and this looks quite promising.” As for television, Kallen explains how the growth of the tournament has shifted focus to markets further afield ahead of the coming rights cycle. “If you look at the European Championship’s growth on television and countries, Euro went from a long time from a continental championship to a global championship,” he says. “We could also see this time in Poland and Ukraine that this was even very much increased. The main countries where we have
Ville de Nice/ F. Vigouroux, Vinci
olympique de Marseille continued to play matches at the stade Vélodrome during renovation work
Double trouble
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artin Kallen has overseen preparations for every Uefa European Championship since Euro 96 in England and therefore supervised Uefa’s first venture into the concept of joint hosting. It has, he says, been a challenge. “Firstly, it’s clear that if you have a single bid it’s always easier,” he says. “For Euro 2016 in France, from the starting point, there’s one country, one legislation, one law, etc. This is always easier from an organisational point of view.” Holland and Belgium’s Euro 2000 was the first European Championship to be staged in two countries. Following a subsequent first-time visit to Portugal in 2004, Uefa then opted to select successive joint bids, with Austria and Switzerland awarded the 2008 tournament before Poland and Ukraine were charged with the staging of last year’s edition. “We’ve now had double organisation three times,” Kallen says. “I think it is manageable but it is a little bit more work because there are two different countries with two different philosophies and laws in place. But it’s also in the philosophy
of Uefa to give as many federations the chance to organise a European Championship and sometimes two federations in two neighbouring countries can do that well. It has shown in the past that we could overcome this additional burden.” Kallen admits that there is always a certain degree of competition between any two host countries but he believes any rivalry is born out of national pride as opposed to any underlying hostility between neighbours. “I think between Poland and Ukraine there was not a huge competition,” he says. “Always there is a small competition, like with Switzerland and Austria, and Holland and Belgium, but each of the countries looked to do their best in their country and also they were very pleased if the other country delivered because they are all in the same boat. It’s one European Championship in two countries and they want to ensure it goes well in both countries because it would have an influence [on the whole event] if one would not deliver at more or less the same level.”
The allianz Riviera opened in september 2013
seen a huge increase are the United States, Canada and on the Asian side. I think in 2016 it will further develop because people like to see the European Championship and they like to see football. The main goal will be, for sure, the areas outside Europe.” Looking beyond 2016, Kallen is understandably coy on Uefa’s plans for the Euro, given that, at the time of this interview, Platini’s controversial idea to stage the 2020 tournament in several cities across Europe has yet to be ratified by the Uefa Executive Committee. Kallen does, however, state that any candidates wishing to host matches in 2020 will “always be out of [Uefa’s] 53 member associations”, essentially snubbing any possibility of games being played outside of Europe – for example in Qatar, which, it has been suggested, might think of lining up an audacious bid to stage a 2020 match as a precursor to the country’s Fifa World Cup two years later. “I think Uefa is open to all these federations as long as they can fulfil the bidding requirements because they are important to keep or develop further the brand and the competition,” Kallen says of Uefa’s European members. “The bidding process is there to choose a candidate which can fulfil the requirements so that the risk of the fulfilment is not too high for Uefa.” The Destinations Report 2014 | 61
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ALL THAT GLITTERS IS GOLD COAST By David Cushnan Originally published November 2013 edition of SportsPro
The Gold Coast has known for two years that in 2018 it will follow Glasgow as the host of the Commonwealth Games. Mark Peters, the chief executive of the local organising committee, is all hands to the pump on putting together the biggest event to hit the city, whilst at the same time trying to keep a lid, for the moment at least, on the enthusiasm of its residents.
Australia’s sixth-largest city, Gold Coast will be the third in the country to host the Commonwealth Games when it welcomes the event’s 2018 edition
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espite the best efforts of the Sri Lankan city of Hambantota right up until voting day on 11th November 2011, the two-horse race to stage the 2018 Commonwealth Games was, as expected, claimed by the Gold Coast. Australia’s sixth-largest city received 43 of the 70 votes cast by Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) members, underlining its position as favourite throughout the campaign and earning it the right to follow Glasgow and become the 11th different city to host the Games since 1978 – and the third from Australia, after Brisbane and Melbourne. In the 18 months since the predictably 62 | www.sportspromedia.com
wild celebrations in St Kitts, the Gold Coast has begun laying the groundwork, literally and in administrative terms, for its Games. “It’s been a case of going back through our security planning, our transport planning, confirming the venue management agreements and the venues,” explains Mark Peters, the former head of the Australian Sports Commission who was chief executive of the Gold Coast 2018 bid and is now playing the same role for the organising committee, the snappily titled Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games Organising Corporation. “In the first 12 months it’s educating a lot of new people on the scene, setting
the company up,” he continues. “One of the challenges is you’re setting up a major company that will employ 1,000 people to end a few months after the Games, so you’ve got to be very careful with your IT systems and how you accommodate so many people, when the majority come on in the last 18 months. Those are the initial challenges every organising committee has to face.” The Gold Coast 2018 team currently comprises just 25 full-time employees, a number which will rise to between 40 and 45 by the time Glasgow stages its Games next year. “That’s one thing you have to be very careful about, bringing too many staff on too early,” Peters notes. “That’s when you
The Games will be seen as a major promotional opportunity for Gold Coast, with corporate Australia expected to make an important contribution
burn a lot of money, so you’ve got to be a little patient in driving things, but not slow.” While Glasgow is ramping up its publicfacing efforts, launching its ticketing plans and looking ahead to the Queen’s baton relay, patience is the watchword for Peters and Gold Coast 2018. “We’re not out there publicly a lot because we’re respecting Glasgow – and they’ll do a fantastic job,” he says. “You can spin off the things they’re doing and say, ‘This is what we’ll do,’ but one of the really tough things is people are excited and they want to hear every day about how the Games are going to be great, so it’s that fine line of not trying to discourage that enthusiasm. We can’t keep people at a peak enthusiasm for five years so we’ll do what we call ‘peaking and troughing’.” Peters cites the fast-tracking of the Gold Coast City Aquatics Centre, the public complex which will host the swimming events at the Games, as a case in point. The original plan was for the venue, which opened in the 1960s, to be brought up to Commonwealth Games standard by 2017. Instead, work will be completed to allow it to stage next year’s Pan Pacific Swimming Championships. April’s launch of the positively received official Games emblem, meanwhile, was another notable front-of-house project Peters has been able to showcase to an expectant public. “We’ve been able to talk about that, that’s a peak,” he says. “Then we’ll have the baton relay in a few months’ time. We’re able to feed off some of the really positive stories out of Glasgow and that’s a good thing for people to read and
say, ‘They will run a terrific Games; these are the positive things athletes are saying.’” Aside from Peters, a triumvirate of general managers makes up the current Gold Coast 2018 management team: Ian Whitehead, for venues and operations; Helen Moore, handling finance and business services; and Andrew Woodward, the marketing and communications chief. Another essential position already filled is that of a project manager with responsibility for liaising directly with Glasgow, with the CGF giving new importance to knowledge transfer between host cities following the concerns around preparations for the last Games in Delhi. “The Commonwealth Games Federation, to their credit, have set up that knowledge management transfer and if you do it right it’s actually a positive in what you’re doing,” Peters points out. “Our project manager has been to Glasgow, sat down with her counterpart there. We’re setting the same systems up, looking at the same software. Glasgow have been terrific at sharing information, because they’ve gone through a lot of challenges as well. “They had to start virtually from scratch in a lot of ways, so they are populating it. By the time we’re finished it will be totally populated.” While the Gold Coast is busy gleaning information from over 10,000 miles away, it is also gaining knowledge much closer to home. Melbourne staged what, by common consent, are regarded as the most successful Commonwealth Games to date in 2006. Indeed, given the particular struggles encountered across the board in
India three years ago, the Melbourne Games remain the CGF’s most recent success story. “Melbourne gives us strong contacts,” Peters confirms. “We’ve got strong contacts with Melbourne 2006 people, who are around the world and also in Australia running Games. Melbourne gave us a lot of good information, Glasgow has built on that with a lot more in-time relevancy. We’re totally open for the next bidding cities to talk to us and whoever wins it will have an open book and certainly a lot of terrific information on the CGF’s knowledge transfer site.” Flexibility must be at the heart of any major event planning and in Gold Coast 2018’s case a change of government in Queensland, just a few months after it was awarded the Games, brought new stakeholders to the table and saw old ones leave the stage. Given the time between a city being awarded a major multi-sport event and the event itself, changes of government are by no means uncommon – the UK moved from a Labour government to a Conservative-led coalition midway through its preparations for London 2012 without the Olympic project derailing – but democracy brought one significant personnel change to Gold Coast 2018. Mark Stockwell, a former Olympic swimmer, had been chairman of the bid team and the frontman for much of its lobbying and promotion during the battle with Hambantota. Stockwell worked closely during that period with Anna Bligh, then the premier of Queensland, but when Bligh was defeated in state elections by the Liberal National Party’s Campbell Newman one of the new The Destinations Report 2014 | 63
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Mark Peters, the former bid chief who now heads the local organising committee for the 2018 Games, says the city will “come of age” in five years’ time
government’s first moves was to reconstitute the Games board. There was no room for Stockwell, with the government seeking a “fresh start” in the form of Nigel Chamier, a Brisbane businessman, as chairman. If that might be described as an initial bump in the road, Peters reports that the transition to a new government has been relatively smooth since then. “We had a change of government and we also had
a change of local authority,” he says, “so we’ve done a lot of work with them so they understood the nature of the Games. They’ve come out really supportive – the minister, the premier and the mayor. That was a major milestone for us, because it’s always a worry when you have a change of government in the background.” Commercially, Gold Coast 2018 does not have access to any Games-related rights until
the end of 2014. Continuity has been sought, however, in the form of Sports Marketing and Management, the same agency which handled commercial rights for Melbourne 2006 and has worked on assembling Glasgow’s sponsor portfolio. The agency formally started work with the Gold Coast in July. “They’re putting together the marketing plan and they are in the middle of the learning experience with Glasgow,” Peters
The next 12 months in the 2018 masterplan
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hile Commonwealth eyes will be trained on Glasgow as it hosts the Games, work will continue over the next 12 months on the Gold Coast. One of the chief tasks was to define the final sports programme for the Games. “It’s the sub-disciplines, rather than the sports, that we’ll finalise, like women’s boxing, women’s sevens,” explains Mark Peters. “That’s all about the quality of athletes across the Commonwealth. Again, we don’t want to put some disciplines in where Australia will win all the medals because that’s not
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what this is about – we want to win all the medals, by the way, although England are talking very strongly about knocking us off in Glasgow so our Games might be the ‘revenge Games’ or something, which is a nice angle.” There will also be progress on the selection and design of the athlete’s village. “We’ve gone out to tender on that and have had a really good response, in terms of expressions of interest,” Peters reveals, “so there will be some big news early in the new year about that and the design and how we move.”
Gold Coast representatives will also descend on Glasgow in 2014 as part of the Games’ observer programme. “It’s hands-on learning and then it’s ours,” Peters confirms, a touch of relish in his voice. “Then we’ll start to talk a lot about what we’re doing. The next year is still planning, setting up the village structures and the company to drive that, finishing off all the transport plans which is re-checking a lot of what we’ve done, the sponsorship programme will be put together. It’s heaps of stuff and a lot of it behind the scenes.”
The Commonwealth movement: Mark Peters’ view
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often ask people to reflect back on the Olympic movement,” says Mark Peters, when asked for his assessment of the current health of the Commonwealth Games brand. “There were times when a few cities didn’t quite deliver at the end of the day and there was doom and gloom and it was ‘where is the Olympic movement going?’ They’ve done a brilliant job of bringing it back and people being absolutely enthusiastic. “When you look back over the Commonwealth Games there’s only one Games that really questioned the brand and sadly now there are people in jail for things around the Games that were nothing to do with the athletes and the sport.” Peters is referring to Delhi 2010, Games that took place – just about – without incident but the preparations for which left the Commonwealth Games Federation frustrated with and at times openly critical of local organisers. As a brandbuilding exercise for India, it was less than successful. “That allowed the media to
says, “but every country and every region is different. Glasgow has done extremely well in their commercial programme.” Commercial foundations are already being laid in preparation for 2015, when Gold Coast will assume the rights. “We’re really confident about our programme,” Peters insists. “We’re having discussions and people are aware of us. A lot of Australian companies work in Commonwealth countries and we’ve made preliminary contact with them so it’s been a good learning experience, which has confirmed a lot of things. And we’re really happy with what Glasgow’s doing and the way they’re approaching things.” If a glance back through history is any guide, corporate Australia will galvanise around the Games. In 2006 Melbourne was able to attract eight partners, including Qantas, Telstra, Tabcorp, Toyota, National Australia Bank and BHP Billiton, and 15 secondary sponsors. Glasgow 2014, meanwhile, has thus far secured five partners – Longines, SSE, Virgin Media, BP and
drive things pretty negatively whereas a lot of the surveys of the athletes actually thought those Games weren’t too bad,” Peters continues. “The legacy wasn’t there, though, and there were a whole load of other issues. “Glasgow came along and will do a great job, we will do a super job and whoever comes behind us, based on the knowledge, will do a good job. We think the brand is really healthy but we, and the CGF, need to keep working. “The Commonwealth itself in Australia is making a resurgence – the young royals at the moment are really lifting the image. There’s a lot of excitement. The great thing about the Commonwealth Games is it’s known as the friendly Games for a reason, because we actually work back in those countries around development and appreciating the multiculturalism of the Games and the nations that compete. We’re really happy with where the brand is and we will deliver something pretty special that the athletes will want to come to as well. Emirates – and nine more companies in its supporters’ category. Recreating the much-admired atmosphere of Melbourne 2006 or the Sydney Olympic Games of 2000 is something that cannot be calculated on a spreadsheet, as Peters well knows. He maintains, though, that the public will be fundamental to the success of the Gold Coast’s Games. “It was interesting that Glasgow recently put out its volunteer programme and got 50,000odd and they need 15,000,” he notes. “We did a preliminary survey three months ago, in Sydney, Melbourne and the Gold Coast, Queensland, and the number of people that say they want to volunteer is actually a bit of a worry for us, to deal with the quantity of them and processing – we could be topping 100,000 people. “We’re having a look at how we actually handle that and that was the great thing about Sydney and Melbourne – I was lucky to be there. It was the people. That was the great comment back from London, too,
Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games Organising Corporation chief Mark Peters
“But we’re not naïve to think that things will come naturally, we need to keep working within the Commonwealth, within the CGF, and with the next host cities and bidders as well, to keep the relevancy for the international federations.” and it wasn’t just about the sport, it was the atmosphere too – the festivals, all that sort of thing. We’ve got the government and the council working with us really strongly on that whole aspect of it – how is this just a great experience for people? “Will we create the magic of Sydney? We’ll create the magic of the Gold Coast and people will have an incredible time.” In a wider sense, too, Peters believes Gold Coast 2018 represents an increasingly rare opportunity for Australia to display its wares on the world stage. “There’s massive countries out there bidding for events now so this Commonwealth Games for Australia will be the biggest event for at least a decade,” he says. “We’re just being outbid by countries all over the world now for different types of events. So this is pretty special for Australians. “The Gold Coast will never be the same after this,” Peters adds. “It’s a great city now but it will really come of age, so seeing the legacies that will come out for the Gold Coast is really a buzz for me – because it’s real.” The Destinations Report 2014 | 65
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A globAl offering by David Cushnan repucom has built its brand on hard data and the insights that explain it. As rights-holders and hosts increasingly use data to measure the success of events, it is no surprise that the sports marketing research experts have expanded into the field. James Paterson, who heads up repucom’s burgeoning government, Tourism and events division, explains more. What was the background to setting up the division? I came across in June 2012 to set up the Government, Tourism and Events division for Repucom. Prior to that I was head of strategy, insights and legal for Event New South Wales, which has now morphed into Destination New South Wales – effectively Sydney’s events and tourism arm. I was in that role for five years prior to joining Repucom. The reason that Repucom had identified this as being a key area is that there
wasn’t anyone in the marketplace that could provide a one-stop shop around the holistic evaluation of major events and being able to provide clients on a global basis with what the impact of their event portfolio are and how best to maximise their outcomes. How has it developed? The response from the marketplace has been very good. We’re now working with most of the tourism and events corporations across Australia and New Zealand, in terms of
assisting them with a strategic framework around their major event selection processes and due diligence systems, as well as assisting them with having a consistent evaluation framework that enables them not just to measure the economic impact of that event but measure the holistic impact. That’s from both a media and marketing perspective: the ability for a major event to promote that host city or destination to the world, or its key tourism markets; the impact of major events on local communities – effectively, being able to measure things like increasing
only sport can provide the kind of city-wide vibrancy and atmosphere seen when fans flocked to Australia during last year’s british & irish lions rugby tour
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levels of civic pride, enjoyment and vibrancy and how those major events make those host cities better places to live and work; tourism impact, in terms of how these major events can influence and drive key brand messaging around that destination and effectively start to measure the people attending those festivals, their impression of the host city or destination – the key drivers of satisfaction for them – and how they went about their decision-making process so that the tourism and events companies can understand how strong their marketing and promotional and advertising initiatives have been. The other key thing we look at, for rights-holders and the event companies, is also attendee satisfaction – everything from parking to toilets to venue facilities and the quality of the people who have attended – and sponsorship impact, taking it beyond just prompted and unprompted awareness to changes in perceptions around the brand supporting that major event and propensity to consider or purchase that product as a result of their involvement in that event. Those key pillars are really what we look at when we consider the evaluation of an event: economic, tourism, sponsorship, event attendee, global media and marketing. How advantageous is it to be able to tap into the existing expertise elsewhere in the Repucom network? The beauty of the division we’ve set up is that we are able to tap into our existing services and systems, particularly around global media research and our consumer media platforms and being able to utilise that existing data to be able to tap that into our event evaluation processes. You’re working with a lot of organisations across Australia and New Zealand: what are the plans in terms of spreading the footprint further? We’re rolling the division out on a global basis and part of that process has been to obviously utilise our 20-plus offices globally and the client base that exists within those, to be able to say that we’ve got a new offering here in the government, tourism
James Paterson arrived at repucom to lead its new division from event new South Wales in June 2012
and events space. That’s already cutting through. We’ve, for instance, just secured some work with the Hawaiian Tourism Authority around the National Football League (NFL) Pro Bowl, which happened in January. We’re working with them, and they are existing clients of Repucom around tracking the media coverage of that event on a global basis, to understand the wider holistic benefits: the economic impact, the tourism impact and the impact on the local community of Oahu and Honolulu. Clearly every government and tourism body is different and every event has its own characteristics, but, across the board, what kind of level of
sophistication do you find when it comes to the benefits and challenges hosting a sports event might bring? There’s certainly some very sophisticated and proactive host destinations around the world that are cleverly using major events as a driver of those impacts that we’ve spoken about. There seems to be some pretty common traits amongst the most highly successful host cities and one of those is certainly that major events can provide far more than just economic impact, so they actively pursue strategies to ensure that all the available benefits are clearly understood and maximised. They often tend to have a clear written strategy as to the genre of The Destinations Report 2014 | 67
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repucom’s government, Tourism and events division started working with the Hawaiian Tourism Authority, already a repucom client, on the nfl Pro bowl
events they wish to attract and why, and that’s a very important factor. If you’re going to run major events in your destination there’s clearly got to be a diversity of events so it goes beyond just sporting events. Importantly, any measurement system that’s put in place needs to be able to cover off and use the same methodology no matter whether it’s a sporting event or a community or a cultural event, or even a business event, otherwise you cannot assess the impact of your entire event portfolio and understand which events are working well and which aren’t. The smart host cities have a clear articulation of the priority and the potential benefits that are most important to them. They are very clear on which events meet their criteria and which don’t. They’ll use an objective and strategic framework, in order to ensure they can make fullyinformed decisions around their major event investments. One of the biggest areas is that they need to have formalised systems and 68 | www.sportspromedia.com
clearly articulated due diligence processes to ensure that they’re investing only in events that are the right fit for that particular host destination. They need to have a clear articulation of what events are the best brand fit for their particular environment. What sets apart the good cities from the great ones when it comes to major events policy? You’ll find the very good host cities have a dedicated calendar of events that’s clearly articulated to not only its local residents but also promoted widely into their key tourism markets. They’ll have comprehensive and best practice major event evaluation systems that enable that entire event portfolio to be measured and directly comparable. They’ll have systems around very robust risk assessment and risk mitigation processes in place so they clearly understand any potential risk of acquiring or supporting an event, and
how those can be mitigated. They’ll also use their contractual systems – I’m a lawyer by profession, so this is one of my key areas – to ensure that all the key elements are covered off, to ensure each event’s outcomes can be maximised; for instance, if an event owner says there’s going to be 20,000 international visitors coming into that venue, you use that contractual basis to be able to put that in as a dedicated KPI – whether you view it as a carrot or a stick, that the systems are in that contractual agreement to ensure those things are delivered. The other key thing is they’ve got the buy-in of all their key stakeholders, particularly across government; without that, if you don’t have city-wide support from the police, transport etc. it can make it very problematic. It’s about ensuring that the wider levels of government understand the wider benefits of these events and how they can benefit and how it can put that destination on the global stage. The other key thing is really ensuring that
they make their host destination attractive to rights-holders and event owners, to ensure that the process of engaging with them is supportive, that it’s easy to navigate and will ultimately lead to a successful event. Your event owner isn’t going to bring it unless it’s going to be profitable and commercially successful. The interesting thing that we’re finding at the moment is that it’s really absolutely key for cities to engage with local residents, to understand what they want in terms of the event genres they’d like to see and give them the confidence that their taxpayer or ratepayer dollars will be well spent. That whole process around all those systems can provide that. In terms of the public buy-in, to what extent is the kind of data you’re producing useful in a government making the case to its public about why a sports event is a good thing? If that host destination is following objective and transparent process then they can put that out to their local resident and say ‘look, we’re confident this event can deliver x, y and z, based on what we’re seeing’. It’s very rare that an investment by a host city will be in the public domain but I think if they’ve got those systems and processes in place, then it’s far easier to put forward a proposition to those local residents if there’s a history of delivery in terms of what that event was meant to achieve. Given what we’ve seen most visibly in Brazil over the last year, do you think the kind of referendum process Munich, to cite one example, went through as part of its decision whether or not to bid for the 2022 winter Olympics might be a model for the future for cities – a referendum before bidding in order to get a mandate from the public? Where it actually goes to a vote of the people, that’s been pretty rare. For megaevents, where the costs are very large, then you may see more of that, where the people are asked about their appetite for investing large amounts of taxpayer dollars to be able to support an event. As long
as there’s clear articulation of both costs and benefits, then an informed decision can be made but I think that’s only really at the mega-event level. For more major events I think the key thing is to secure a mandate from your local residents that they have an appetite for the use of public money to be used to secure these events. In every market where we’ve undertaken that research it’s been positive; we haven’t done it once where there’s been a reticence from local residents or a state or a territory – that they’re not supportive of their government investing in those events, because they do understand that they do deliver benefits to them. It’s a pretty boring place if you’re not having those major events rolling in. The reality is if you simply wanted to drive economic impact, a host city or destination would focus on bringing in business events and conventions. There’s a far higher yield. Generally, everyone attending is on the corporate card so therefore their expenditure per day is far higher, but from business events and conventions and conferences you’re not really creating a vibrancy around a city – things like the recent Lions Tour to Australia saw whole towns basically painted red and gold as the 25,000-plus Lions supporters descended on cities all round Australia. Even if you’re not attending the event that created real vibrancy. It’s creating an atmosphere and at the same time they’re spending large amounts of dollars in pubs, clubs, restaurants, etc. 2014 is a big year of major events. In terms of the job you’re doing, what are you looking for and learning as you watch how those events are staged? In terms of the broad scale of the work Repucom does on a global basis, we’re generally working on those events at some level. The things we’re concentrating on are the ability to understand why or why not, in terms of the success of those events – why were they successful or why weren’t they successful? – and how they’ve utilised the assets they have in order to maximise the outcomes for those host destinations. It’ll be very interesting to see how Sochi positions itself throughout the broadcast coverage,
of effectively presenting Russia in a new light. That’s what these major events can do from a brand positioning perspective. They can put new cities and new destinations on the global stage and they need to make sure, because they’ve only got a very limited opportunity, they get that key message across. They need to be utilising the very best systems and processes and innovations in order to get that key brand positioning across. Sometimes it can go the other way. I think we saw that with the Commonwealth Games in India. It’s not always a positive result for a host destination and you need to be very careful around how a host city presents itself to the world in that regard. In terms of your division of Repucom, what’s the plan over the medium to long-term, in this era of so-called emerging cities and nations cottoning on to the idea that major sports events are a good way to brand-build and attract business and tourism? It’s an extremely exciting time. There’s a fantastic number of opportunities out there to be working with host cities and host destinations, to be able to assist them in maximising outcomes they can drive through hosting major events, whether that’s large-scale sporting events or others. The other key sector we’ve also been assisting is our rights-holder clients. Wherever they have a moveable event, they have an asset that is potentially attractive to host cities and host destinations. Sometimes those rights-holders don’t quite understand the true value of those event assets to those potential host destinations. We’ve been undertaking a lot of event evaluation services for rights-holder clients and also helping them through the maze of how to engage with governments and host cities. The benefits and language that they speak is very different to a normal commercial sales process, so it’s very important to be speaking the languages of host cities and honing in on the key drivers and benefits that they’re going to be interested in. That’s the other part of the business and it ties in beautifully given that we work with the vast majority of the biggest sports rightsholders around the globe. The Destinations Report 2014 | 69
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The SPorTS ConSulTanCy The Briefing: Venues “
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he idea of a single-use stadia, with some exceptions, is a thing of the past,” notes The Sport Consultancy’s Angus Buchanan. They have to be multi-use, multi-purpose to be economically viable. Football stadia in most European markets will sustain themselves just on football, although even they are now looking at the calendar for additional content.” Multi-purpose, modern arenas such as London’s O2 Arena, which has hosted
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The idea of a single-use stadia, with some exceptions, is a thing of the past. basketball, gymnastics, ice hockey and tennis amongst many others, and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, which has quickly established itself not only as a
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premier sports venue but a major concert arena since it opened in 2012, have become vital tools in a city’s wider major events acquisition strategy. The Sports
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e had a very successful 2013,” reports Robert Datnow, managing director of The Sports Consultancy. “We ran two quite wellpublicised procurement processes – the WTA process, which culminated in Singapore being awarded the WTA Championships for five years from 2014 and the double Volvo Ocean Race procurement. They soaked up a huge amount of resource on our side; they were successful, in that they achieved both rights-holders’ objectives in tight time periods. From our perspective they reinforced the specialism we have grown over the last eight years, the combination of our marketing, consulting, strategic, legal skills, in forming relationships between major events and major host cities. We will continue to develop that growing specialism. There is a growing need for professionally-managed processes, which derive maximum value from host cities and which secure longterm partnerships on robust terms.” The agency’s other managing director Angus Buchanan adds: “We feel we’ve been banging this particular drum for quite a while and the fact the Olympic Games, the pinnacle of major events, with its own process is looking at reform substantiates what we’ve been saying. The fact we did Singapore has also led to a fair upsurge in interest in what we’ve been doing for other major international federations and event owners.” Now the company, which was formed in 2006, finds itself at what Datnow calls “an exciting juncture” and is poised to
expand into three new areas. The first is sponsorship procurement. “It’s where we started as a business in late 2006, early 2007,” Buchanan explains. “We recognised at the time that the global economy was slowing, so we applied the same skills – a consultative sales approach – to finding solutions for clients who are investing in major sports events. We applied disciplines to host city procurement for major rightsholder clients, so now feels like the right time to return to sponsorship. We’re making a major investment in that this year.” The second move is into the megaevent bidding sphere, where The Sports Consultancy will join the small, but established collection of consultancy firms which specialise in guiding cities through bids. “We’ve done quite a bit of bidding work in single sports, through golf, athletics and basketball,” Datnow says. “We have wanted to break into the multi-sport bidding arena, which is often perceived, quite rightly, as a bit of a closed shop because there are a small number of bidding agencies that act. We see that as an exciting area to be involved in but also strategic for us. In order for us to be attractive to our rights-holders and international federation clients and helping them secure cities, we need to be wellconnected with cities and we need to know their aspirations, what they’re building and their strategies.” The Sports Consultancy recently worked on Dubai’s successful bid for the 2020 World Expo, a mega-event in its own right. As its relationship with cities like Dubai have deepened over the years, it was a natural progression for the company
Consultancy has worked closely with the operators of Singapore Sports Hub during the host city procurement process for the WTA’s end-of-season tournament. The new multi-purpose facility is scheduled to open in April and saw off competition from the Chinese city of Tianjin and Monterrey in Mexico to win the five-year contract.
Buchanan describes the venue as “iconic”, adding: “We’ve done a lot of work in and around it. They also recognised the value of place and destination marketing with the stadia – and a stadium can look like any other stadia unless you’ve done what they’ve done in Singapore, which is to make sure the stadium is oriented towards the city, so the back end of the stadium is open to
to move in tandem with their clients’ ambitions. “It’s clearly going to need to be something we are able to offer. Whether that’s on our own or with another agency is something we’ll consider through the year but now feels like the right time, particularly because we feel the debate continuing and somewhat converging on what we’ve been saying for some time now, in terms of the style and nature of the mega-event bidding process. It’s a natural progression and we want to bring the same level of best practice and analysis.” Area three of expansion will be the creation and delivery of The Sports Consultancy-owned events. “The route to getting there was that for many years we’ve worked with international federation clients – and we will continue that specialism – but the same skill-set applies to creating relationships for our own events. We’re excited in both the sporting and non-sporting area to be doing exactly that, growing and investing in acquiring our own rights. There are four events we’re actively pursuing at the moment; it’s an area that will grow pretty rapidly. One of the consequences of that for The Sports Consultancy is we are growing at a faster rate than we have ever grown before; we’ve had a pretty steady average 40 per cent growth rate over the first seven years. In our current business plan our growth rate is set to accelerate beyond that and we are recruiting fairly actively.” The company has just recruited an executive director, a third consultant and a graduate. It has also added finance director Dermot Heffernan, taking its total head-count to 20. the city skyline. You will get the distinctive and iconic visual iconography when events are hosted there. They are recognising the ability of sport to project beyond just simple Melbourne-like destination branding and bringing the city into the stadium, which I think is a really smart move.” For more on the Singapore Sports Hub, turn to page 98. The Destinations Report 2014 | 73
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IN THE SPOTLIGHT: ZAYED SPORTS CITY By David Cushnan Zayed Sports City is not only one of the Middle East’s most established sporting venues, it is now an awardwinning example of how to stage a wide variety of sports and events. This, in their own words, is how they built a multi-purpose venue into a local hub which is also increasingly serving the global community.
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hen Zayed Sports City was built over three decades ago, it was meant to fulfil the vision of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and reflect the country’s passion for sport. He intended the site to provide a platform to develop the country’s promising sporting talent and since then we have been working hard to honour this wish by remaining the premier sport and entertainment venue in the region. We have a sprawling site here and are very proud to offer so much to residents in Abu Dhabi and beyond.
Zayed Sports City boasts facilities for over 20 sports and is home to several clubs and federations
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Among our 1.2 million square metre campus are over 28 sports, anchored by football, rugby, tennis, bowling, ice skating, and specialist fitness programmes. The facilities are open 365 days a year and in 2013, we had 1.2 million visitors for sporting and entertainment events. People came from all over the world, some using the facilities and others participating in one of the more than 143 events that took place on the property. Our facilities are vast, just like our offerings. Zayed Sports City is home to the 43,000-seat national stadium with 14 adjacent multipurpose grass pitches, a 5,000-seat ATP-
standard tennis stadium with eight additional courts, a 40-lane bowling centre, an Olympicsize ice rink, three basketball, and netball courts, four beach tennis and volleyball courts, as well as two paddle tennis courts, and the famous Haddins Gym, with The Room Abu Dhabi and Emirates Aikido Centre as our most recent additions. There are 27 organised sporting clubs, academies and federations that call Zayed Sports City home. They represent nearly every sport. Manchester City School of Football, Abu Dhabi Harlequins Rugby, and Sharks Rugby Academy are on the pitches, as
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raining for international teams increased significantly in 2013 and we had to ramp up pitch maintenance to match the teams’ expectations. “We set aside pitches for renovations in preparation for them arriving, perhaps a month out. This allows for pristine pitches when they arrive, without fail. For winter training camps we have an overseed and introduce a cool season rye grass into the pitch, which is typically Bermuda or paspalum. It gives it a European-style feel, which is what most of the teams are
is Abu Dhabi Softball League. The Storms and the Theebs ice hockey teams utilise the ice rink along with Abu Dhabi Figure Skating Team, while PSS Tennis Academy and Abu Dhabi Netball League use the International Tennis Centre’s courts. The UAE National Bowling Team practices on our lanes and offices for the UAE Football Association, the Pro League Committee, the UAE Boxing Federation, and the Abu Dhabi Ice Sports Club reside onsite. What kind of year was 2013 for Zayed Sports City? What were the highlights? Zayed Sports City had very successful year in 2013. We had a number of internationally renowned football teams come to train in our facility, hosted a large number of events, developed several new events ourselves, launched new sports and sporting centres, and continued to deliver on our mission. International football training in January was a high point on the pitches. We hosted national teams – Ivory Coast, Ghana, Egypt – and club teams – Metalist, Norwich City – and we received some fantastic compliments about the facilities and the Abu Dhabi experience from players and coaches. The success on the pitches has already paid off. For January 2014 Royal Concord, a great client to Zayed Sports City, helped bring in teams such as Anderlecht FC, Vitesse Arnhem, Wolfsburg, Hamburg, Norway, Moldova, and Sweden, to name a
accustomed to, particularly those in the northern hemisphere. “When we prepare the pitch we’re thinking of two things, the hardness of the surface and the speed of the pitch. We reduce the mowing height to make the speed of the ball roll much quicker, something they are more accustomed to. We also syringe-water the pitches right before teams go on, which we would never do for amateur groups. We cut, mark and roll every other day and divot every day. These fields are getting the best maintenance they possibly can in preparation for each team’s few, and other teams such as Iceland, FC Metalist and Newcastle are amongst others who have chosen to train here. With a new booking from FC Dallas, we are truly attracting teams from all over the world. We hosted 143 events this past year and those that Zayed Sports City welcomed for the first time were definite highlights. As part of football training the Matchworld Cup took place. We held our first ITF tennis tournament and Ace It!, which was the first open ladies tournament in the UAE. The Abu Dhabi Wilson Tennis Cup was an event that we developed and we hosted Monster Jam’s first visit to the Middle East in May. Abu Dhabi Alive, the first exhibition on the site, was in November as was the inaugural Abu Dhabi World Bowling Tour.
arrival every single day. The pitch staff know how big of a deal this is and they’re all very willing to be flexible when the teams come. We run shifts starting early and others that cover the evening games. We have them here when we need them and I can see a great sense of pride that the guys have when the teams arrive. “We have strong competition in this part of the world and want to put Zayed Sports City on the international elite training map. We’re a little further away from other sites and so we work harder every day to do better in order for there to be value.” There were many other highlights outside of events. Zahra Lari, the famous Emirati figure skater who trains with us, was the first UAE national figure skater to win a gold medal at an international competition. She did this at the 24th Criterium Cup in Budapest in April. The ice rink also was home to another great Desert Open Figure Skating Championship, which even drew a team from Kazakhstan, and The Ice Factor, Abu Dhabi Figure Skating Team’s annual show was great fun for everyone. As part of a strengthened collaboration with the UAE Ice Skating Federation, we supported their successful effort to become a member of the International Skating Union. Bowling continues to host fantastic tournaments for local and interntional companies. One was the Sheikha Fatima
The ground staff at Zayed Sports City work to prepare high-quality grass pitches with a European feel
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General manager Barry Bremner on why ZSC won “
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ayed Sports City has always been well known within the UAE. What the award has helped do is give additional credibility throughout the GCC and internationally. This award is recognition for what was happening and it was well deserved – it’s taken two years to lay the foundation for the current services. “In our submission we demonstrated
Bint Mubarak bowling tournament. It was a great corporate event for women and the centre was closed so that they could bowl in privacy. The tennis centre was busy with the Inter-Gulf Netball Championship and Mubadala World Tennis Championship, while the pitches were kept in use with the Etihad Airways Junior Rugby Tournament and ICLDC Play for Life football tournament. We also added beach tennis, beach volleyball, and softball, plus The Room Abu Dhabi and Emirates Aikido
how much growth we’ve shown over two years. In 2010, a new management took over the venue and that was an impetus of change. We showed the results after two years of hard work in terms of investment, new facilities, new programmes and focus on customer services. In 2012, we hosted over 100 events and welcomed 750,000 visitors to participate in events. Centre both opened on site in September. This added five new sports to the facility. Of the most pride is when we won the Sports Industry Award in March for Best Sport and Recreation Venue in the Middle East. How have you measured the success of those events and what lessons have been learnt going into 2014? A great event is one that is pleasing for the guest, client, and venue. This means
The increase was nearly 70 per cent since 2010. We went from seven sports to 20, held world class events like WWE Raw and the Harlem Globetrotters, and received US$15 million in regional print and online editorial. Our Facebook fanbase grew by 189 per cent and we are continuing to deliver great experiences to our guests every day.” that we need to look at success from three perspectives. For each of these views we have different ways to take feedback and make an evaluation – this is where we learn what worked well and what can be done better in the future. We look to take guest surveys following each of our major events. This has been in place since 2011 and we use standard questions on a five point Likert scale so that we can make comparisons. The questions that we find most telling of the
The 43,000-seater national stadium at Zayed Sports City has hosted major soccer events like the Fifa Club World Cup and is also home to a range of other sports
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guest experience all fare well. These include questions about their overall experience, their interactions with staff and how likely guests are to return. Staff friendliness and courtesy rated 4.48, which we think is fantastic. From the client perspective, a successful event can mean many things. We try to make it easy for them to deliver their objectives by using our expertise and relationships. There are a lot of ways that we support our clients, from commercial rights to marketing to operations. One great success was with WWE, who visited in October. For the event we brokered some commercial rights deals to increase their revenue and saved them a lot of money by taking a more hands-on role in management of certain elements, such as ticketing and transportation. Following events we send out surveys in addition to debriefs. Every single one of our clients would use Zayed Sports City again and would recommend us. It’s very meaningful that they are happy with what the site offers. Rebooking is very telling too, because it means the achievement is mutual. Success from our perspective starts with a happy client and happy guests. We also look at our financials, of course, but we really want to gauge our efficiency. We look for the best suppliers, to build relationships and to refine our procedures. The event department did well with such a heavy schedule and there are no hard lessons learned from 2013. We did find ways to improve our operation once we stepped back and examined how events went. This year we are going to standardise things a bit more. We
are working on price lists and policies that can be easily communicated, for example. Can you explain a little about the award ZSC won and why you believe you won it? The Sports Industry Awards (SPIA) honour top industry leaders for their contribution to the development of sport in the region. SPIA will become the leading awards and networking event on the sporting calendar. The event is organised by Sport 360°. They have official auditors and so any submission must be strong. We had a lot of progress and were able to quantify with compelling statistics and stories. Customer service, community engagement and facilities are all factors in the award. Our customer service programme is strong, probably stronger than any other facility in the region, and we have a number of ways to receive and respond to feedback. We take surveys regularly, have feedback boxes on site, offer methods for instant recognition of staff members, by colleagues and guests, and operate an internal recognition programme which includes a monthly celebration. Our facilities are being upgraded and added to, with more tennis courts than ever and new billiards and table tennis rooms added in 2012. We also added more pitches and have earned a reputation for having the best pitches in the Middle East. Teams from the Premier League and Bundesliga, and national teams from all over the world are hearing about us and moving their training here, a testament to the quality facilities we provide.
From an engagement standpoint, the facility offered over 20 sports at awards time – up 400 per cent from 2010, which is when current management, Abu Dhabi Entertainment Company, came on board. This, the creation of programmes, the implementation of commercial rights and the development of partnerships that would help the facilities be used by a wide demographic, all contribute to the community. And being engaged with the community helps us meet our mission, which is ultimately to promote healthy lifestyles in the UAE. What are the main events on the calendar for 2014? The major international event in 2014 will be the World Bowling Championship for men that will be held towards the end of the year. The event will return, after 15 years, to Khalifa International Bowling Centre, which was purpose-built for the 1999 event. We’ll also have some great regional and local events such as the Asian Challenge Cup, an ice hockey tournament, in March. Our international football camp schedule is still packed and the Etihad Junior Rugby Tournament will continue to grow. The Abu Dhabi Wilson Tennis Cup presented by Healthpoint has accepted 20 per cent more registrations than last year, and we’ll continue to host events to celebrate milestones for the residents. From a brand-building perspective, the regional events and a new eye on corporate family days will be very important to us.
Maria Gedeon, director of marketing:
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romoting the facility is about building and maintaining relationships with our day-to-day end users and customers as well as event and sports promoters, especially those that are based locally. A lot of them are annual or permanent clients of Zayed Sports City and we’ve worked hard on nurturing and strengthening those relationships over the years. “We are very active in reaching out to
federations, sports councils and sports bodies. This helps bring in international elite training camps, events, academies and other sporting opportunities to this unparalleled venue. “On an international front, every year we have gone to the International Live Music Conference to promote the site and we sponsored their 25th anniversary last year. We also place some advertising in major industry websites as well as international
sports and events publications. “Moving forward, we are shifting our marketing efforts and funds into nontraditional and digital marketing. Our strategy has adapted over the years and a major part of our decisions now are guided by the major rebranding project that we did recently. We did research for 18 months and it led to a new logo, identification of our values and a clearer direction to where we are going and how to get there.”
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international? Do you have targets in mind for international visitors’ revenue in 2014?
A ‘Sport for All’ philosophy informs Zayed Sports City’s strategy and encourages community participation
Can you explain how your promotional strategy works, both locally and on an international level? Zayed Sports City underwent a major rebranding exercise in 2012 and went from nearly no marketing at all to a marketing machine. Our strategy uses technology across multiple channels, applying advanced analytics to determine media spends, identify gaps, and track our customers’ value. Research is also key and the findings generally help determine the marketing mix and the channels that we intend to use for our consumer or business to business campaigns. A significant amount of our budget has been shifted to non-traditional and digital marketing because it’s trackable, easily amendable, and adaptable to customers’ needs. A lot of effort is being put into digital and social media, and developing a loyal and engaged fanbase has proven challenging but successful. Maintaining this momentum is key for us moving forward. We have built a database of over 35,000 customers and reached over 73,000 Facebook fans in about three years, with very little budget spent on advertising. Traditional marketing such as print, radio and TV are still heavily used around events or programmes that require a mass media reach. PR is one of our strongest communication tools. We have fantastic relationships with the 78 | www.sportspromedia.com
local nedia and are always nurturing them. We have a creative approach to PR and believe that we have stories people want to hear. With minimal financial investment in 2013 we generated over US$12.47 million in local and regional print and online coverage. Third party marketing is also key to us as our partners, clients, and event promoters heavily market their events hosted by us and so we benefit from all the publicity that exists around them. On a consumer front Zayed Sports City is very much a venue used by people living around the UAE, which is why a lot of the efforts are local. Internationally, our focus revolves around event promoters, federations, sports agencies, and MICE groups, as well as international sporting teams. We are reaching out to them in a traditional manner through PR, advertisements in industry publications, conferences, trade shows, and direct mail. Personal relationships are important as well as our relationship with the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Cultural Authority, Abu Dhabi Sports Council and other local bodies who attract international business to Abu Dhabi. We work very hard to develop these relationships. What proportion of your business is local and what proportion is
On a day-to-day basis, and when it comes to the use of our facilities, our customer base comes almost entirely from the UAE. When it comes to major events, this changes heavily. Our international football training includes popular players that attract people from outside of the UAE. WWE drew fans from the region and the World Bowling Tour had people coming from Europe and Asia to compete. When an event is marketed properly to the region, it tends to be successful – a case in point is our own event, KidsFest. Daily revenues rely heavily on local customers. In our baseline survey we learned that almost 70 per cent of our visitors come at least once a week for recreation, training, leagues, and clubs. Without the local community we would not have a purpose. What are the main revenue streams for Zayed Sports City? Daily operations make up a big part of revenue that we generate, but events and commercial rights are becoming increasingly important since they yield a higher profit margin. In 2013 focus was placed on event sponsorship and branding partnerships rather than more passive partnerships such as longterm on-site branding. A highlight of the commercial rights piece was serving as the middle man for a naming rights deal between WWE and Figaro’s Pizza – it represented the first time WWE had placed another organisation in their event title. How important are community events, and engaging the local population in sport, to Zayed Sports City? In order to deliver on our mission we must have a strong involvement with community events. We have a philosophy called ‘Sport for All’, and that is key to our business decisions. We have screened two tennis courts so that Muslim women can play in privacy and be encouraged to participate in sports. The Room Abu Dhabi has group fitness sessions that are very attractive options for women.
The complex has been the scene of entertainment events like monster truck rallies and the UAE’s only WWE shows, while it also houses an Olympic-sized ice rink
Our ice rink also has a ladies day every Thursday. We own several ramps that are used to make bowling accessible to people with limited dexterity, for example, and special needs groups prefer our facility for activities. There is no fee to come onto the site and use the skate park, cycle, rollerblade or go for a run on closed roads. And our activity fees start at only AED11, so it is affordable to anyone. Every venue is open 365 days a year and there are only five hours a day where you can’t stop by. To accommodate schedules we stay open late during Ramadan so that there is ample time to play – if it weren’t for this flexibility the community would not be so willing to come and we would not be achieving our mission to the degree we want. How does Zayed Sports City fit into Abu Dhabi’s wider sporting strategy? Abu Dhabi is looking to solidify its place on the tourism map and world class sport is a big part of their stratgey. It’s the reason why the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was established, for example. A venue like Zayed Sports City is clearly going to have opportunities to support this goal. We work closely with the local sport council and national federations to host major events here. Football, tennis, wrestling, basketball, bowling, rugby – each time we host an event that attracts people from outside the UAE we’re contributing to this strategy. What would your message be to a federation/rights holder looking to stage a major event at Zayed Sports City?
There are many venues in Abu Dhabi but Zayed Sports City has the most versatile facilities and the experience to cater for a range of activities. We have areas for small meetings all the way to festival space that would easily fit 75,000 people. People from outside the region probably wouldn’t know this, but parking is a huge asset in the city, and there are 7,000 on-site parking spaces here. We can say these things about the site but the actions of others speak volumes as well. The World Bowling Federation and Asian Ice Hockey Federation selected us as the site for their championships in 2014. We had more than 10 international football teams on our pitches this January; six of the top ten tennis stars come out each year for a match; we host International Tennis Federation matches; Manchester City has established an academy here, and likewise the Sharks and Harlequins have done the same for rugby; the UAE national team bowls here and the UAE Ice Hockey Federation is headquartered at Zayed Sports City. We have partnerships with Pepsi, Hertz, the Abu Dhabi Sports Council and more. WWE is not considering any other venue for their UAE shows. There are so many top organisations that have made a home here that we know we are doing something right. We do it right because we work together, rather than just opening the door and handing over the keys, which is all too common in the region. We pride ourselves on our ability to support the success of our clients in every way possible.
How hard do you have to work to attract international teams, or are they approaching you? We have a fantastic reputation when it comes to pitch quality, so it hasn’t been difficult to attract international teams, particularly in football. It’s mostly based on word of mouth and relationships. A couple of years ago we had an unexpected inquiry from a DMC representing a major soccer team. They came, said great things, and we realised it was a perfect fit for us. Since then, most of the clubs’ representatives have come to us and we have made partnerships with companies that bring the teams to us. Aside from the great efforts of the staff to schedule and prepare for their visits, attracting this much success hasn’t been too difficult. What are the key commercial targets for the year ahead? Do you intend to develop new revenue streams and, if so, how? Our focus is on up-selling current streams, particularly commercial rights and event revenues. We are constantly looking at diversifying our programmes as well as increasing quality and therefore revenues. We are taking existing programmes and growing them, finding ways to use the facilities during off-peak times, and looking to streamline processes to give a bigger financial impact. Partners are coming on board and we’re open to new ventures with them. We are really excited for 2014, which will be another great year for Zayed Sports City. The Destinations Report 2014 | 79
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KEEping up appEarancEs By Michael Long Originally published September 2013 edition of SportsPro
Widely regarded as a highlight of the tennis calendar, the Bnp paribas Open in indian Wells receives high praise for its superb facilities, its cloudless skies and its innovative approach to prize money and technology. indian Wells Tennis garden chief raymond Moore intends to keep it that way.
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ach year in March the tennis world descends on the desert town of Indian Wells in California’s Coachella Valley for a two-week tournament that has earned a reputation as one of the most popular events on the sport’s calendar. While much of the United States is still shaking off the last throes of winter the BNP Paribas Open, a top-category event on both the ATP and WTA Tours, offers all the fun and excitement of a vacation for the nearly 400,000 media and spectators who arrive each spring through the gates of the Indian Wells Tennis Garden to bask in the desert sun, top up their suntans and soak up the on-court entertainment. For the players, too, Indian Wells is an unmissable event. It offers superb facilities, including Hawk-Eye’s ball-tracking system on every match court – something none of the Grand Slams can claim. With the prize fund of US$11 million including a seven-figure payout for its men’s and women’s singles champions – uniquely among non-Grand Slam tournaments – it proves a hit with the world’s leading players year after year, each of them vocal in their praise of an event now dubbed tennis’s unofficial ‘fifth Grand Slam’. “We feel humbled, honoured to be included in the conversation, but for us that’s all it is – it’s conversation,” says Raymond Moore, the chief executive of the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. “We don’t pretend to be the fifth slam.” 80 | www.sportspromedia.com
While South African Moore, 66, may not be drawn into that particular discussion, that Indian Wells is spoken of in such high regard is testament to the meticulousness of those who help to stage the event each year. Leaving no stone unturned, Moore and his team do everything they can to ensure the fans, the media and, of course, the players are looked after in the best possible way. “We look at how we can improve anything for them – workout areas, increased prize money, we look at every single department that relates to the players,” says Moore, a former competitor himself who won eight doubles titles on the ATP tour during the 1970s and early 1980s. “We then do the same with the media and then the same with the fans. How can we improve the experience? Because sport today isn’t just about going out and watching the athletes perform, it’s the experiences. Is the food good? Is there interesting shopping? Are the parking facilities convenient and close by? You’re a fan driving to the matches: what happens to you? Do you get in traffic jams? Is it easy to park? Then you get out of your car: how far is it? Do you have to walk a long way to the courts? Are there shuttle buses? “During the tournament we hire another 3,000 people to help run the event but the 40 full-time staff here, most of them have been with us for 15 years or more; very experienced people, experienced in the tennis industry. We sit down and listen to them and say, ‘What is
the experience? Can we improve the ushers? Can we improve the video boards? Do we need more video boards? Do we need a broader menu in the food court?’ We look at every single facet to improve the experience.” The Indian Wells Tennis Garden, situated in the heart of the town of barely 5,000 people, has hosted the BNP Paribas Open since it opened in March 2000 boasting a 16,100-seat centre court, still the second-largest tennis stadium in the world after the US Open’s Arthur Ashe Stadium. Moore himself was integral in the creation of the site, setting up PM Sports Management alongside thentournament chairman and owner Charlie Pasarell and funding the US$77 million facility in collaboration with IMG. Moving to its impressive new setting gave the Open a solid foundation on which to steadily expand year on year into its current
The indian Wells Tennis gardens dominates a tiny desert town of just 5,000 people and has become a popular stop on the aTp and WTa tours since 2000
status as the most-attended tennis tournament in the world outside of the four slams, but not until late 2009 when Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder and chief executive of Oracle Corporation, purchased the site and the tournament through his company Tennis Ventures LLC, did the tournament receive the financial boost it needed to exceed even itself. Shortly after Ellison’s acquisition Pasarell stood down from his position at the event, but the three-man team of Ellison, Moore – who was installed as chief executive last year – and tournament director Steve Simon have since continued and refined the Puerto Rican’s founding vision. They are pushing ahead with his plan to make the Indian Wells Tennis Garden – as the facility’s website now loftily proclaims – ‘the standard by which all tennis facilities past, present, and future, will be judged.’
“We want to strengthen our brand, the Indian Wells Tennis Garden BNP Paribas Open brand,” says Moore, speaking in early May. “We want the players and the fans and the press to look forward and say ‘Wow, we’re going out to Indian Wells.’ To a large extent we’ve achieved that but again, we’re not going to be complacent and sit back and say, ‘Oh well, we’ve done it and it’s just going to happen forever.’ It’s under constant review and we have to keep raising the benchmark because it’s a competitive environment out there, not only in our sport but in all other sports. You’ve got all kinds of people that are struggling for attention and people can just flip the channel, go watch another sport; we don’t want them to do that and the only way to do that is for us to really pay attention to our brand and strengthen it and enhance the experience.”
As part of that overarching ambition, Indian Wells authorities gave the green light ahead of this year’s event in March on a major expansion and renovation of the 54-acre Indian Wells Tennis Garden. Plans include the construction of a state of the art 8,000-seat arena known as Stadium 2, a 19,000 square foot shade structure, expanded entrances, new parking facilities and practice courts, and a wide-scale landscaping project. Several top players attended a groundbreaking ceremony in the days prior to the tournament, and construction work, which began immediately after Rafael Nadal claimed victory in this year’s men’s singles final, has since gathered pace as organisers strive to have the site fully functional in time for next year’s event. “Everything is going full speed ahead,” reports Moore, who, having been involved with the event since 1985, The Destinations Report 2014 | 81
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is bringing considerable experience to the project alongside Jody Watkins from Watkins Landmark Construction, the foreman who oversaw construction of the main stadium project 14 years ago and whose back-ofthe-hand knowledge of the site is proving invaluable today. “He knows where all the skeletons are buried,” Moore laughs. “He knows where everything is, all the utilities, all the electrical outlets, so we’re lucky in that we have that kind of experience available to us.” Located to the east of the main arena Stadium 2, the centrepiece of the renovation project, has been specifically designed with the spectator in mind. Unobstructed sightlines from every seat and four ground-level video screens will ensure the best possible viewing experience, while three restaurants overlooking the court will enable fans to dine and watch tennis simultaneously. But the attention to detail doesn’t stop there: “Here at Indian Wells we sink our courts so we go down 27 feet for the main court floor,” Moore adds. “It lends to a better atmosphere and it also makes the whole site look better, because what you don’t have at Indian Wells is any of those ugly fences that you see around every single tennis court in the world.” With the construction site abuzz daily with contractors and heavy machinery, Stadium 2 is emerging at pace from the desert sand. Moore himself keeps a watchful eye over the process, chairing a meeting each Tuesday to discuss the progress of all aspects of the work being done with the many parties involved and periodically flicking to a live video of the site streamed via webcam direct to his office elsewhere on the grounds. “I can see who’s taking a nap and who isn’t,” he jokes. “It’s interesting.” Outside the stadium, hundreds of palm trees will be planted to provide shade and transform the garden into a veritable desert oasis. But as much as the improvements are being made for aesthetic and experiential purposes, there is also the practical necessity of increasing the site’s parking capacity to enable organisers to meet the existing spectator demand for tickets. “One of the reasons that we needed to increase our capacity is that we could have sold more seats but it was a function of parking,” Moore explains. “Here in the city of Indian Wells they don’t allow cars to park 82 | www.sportspromedia.com
a digital rendering of a new entrance to the indian Wells complex after its us$100 million revamp
The new stadium 2 is a key part of the redevelopment project which will greatly increase capacity
a shaded structureflex dining area: facilities for indian Wells spectators are set for major upgrades
indian Wells chief executive raymond Moore
on the streets and as a safety measure the fire marshal and chief of police shut us down when they think we’ve reached capacity in the parking lots. So we end up with inventory available to be sold, people that want to buy it, but we’re not allowed to sell it. The way to cure that was to produce more parking and then more seating capacity, and with those two elements we proposed to increase our attendance. So we did 382,000 people this year and our goal is within five years to get to 500,000 people and hopefully we can achieve that.” Moore anticipates the entire project to cost anything up to US$100 million, not including the land that was purchased for the expansion beforehand. Those funds will be stumped up by Ellison himself, though Moore is quick to add that there is by no means “a deep well” from which he “can just go and dip into all the time”. “I sit down with Mr Ellison and I show him our plans,” he continues. “He then gives thumbs up or thumbs down. If he gives thumbs up, then we know he likes the concept, he likes the new stadium, he likes the architecture, he likes the landscaping, he likes the parking and the flow of the parking – now how much will it cost? We produce a budget for him and then he says to me, ‘Raymond, how will you pay for this?’ I then give him a detailed proposal on how we, over the next ten years, can amortise these payments and pay it back through the profits of the tennis tournament. So that’s how it works.”
Ellison’s fortune is undoubtedly the ace up Indian Wells’ sleeve but it is the American’s love of tennis, not his money, that is providing the source of inspiration for the renovation project. Attributing “100 per cent” of the Tennis Garden’s expansion to Ellison himself, Moore speaks highly of the man who is an ever-present in the stands come tournament time. “He probably knows more about tennis than any other person on this planet that is not actually a professional tennis player,” Moore says. “I’d stack his knowledge and grasp of the game up against anyone, including myself. He is a real fan, follows the sport, knows the players, understands technique and understands the business element; obviously, he’s one of the richest men in the world. He didn’t get there through luck; he’s a self-made man. He didn’t inherit his money; he made it.” Ultimately, Moore continues, it all comes back to the product: the players who he says have collectively – and indeed publicly – shown “overwhelming support and enthusiasm” for the project. “They are totally in support of what we’re doing here,” he says. “They know what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make the sport more popular. We are sharing in the wealth with them by increasing the prize money, etc, and so we’ve had terrific support from the players.” Indian Wells’ much-publicised attempts to increase its prize money have run more or less parallel to the early stages of the renovation project. However, the former effort has not gone quite as smoothly as the latter. Last autumn a proposal put forward by Moore and his team to increase overall prize money for the 2013 edition by US$1.6 million – US$800,000 each to the men’s and women’s draws – was vetoed by the ATP’s Board of Directors on the grounds that the increase did not conform with ATP distribution guidelines. Suffice to say Moore was not impressed. “We were absolutely staggered!” he exclaims. “We could not believe that they could make such a silly decision. I mean, we didn’t just do it willy-nilly, as a knee-jerk reaction. We analysed it, we went to the players to whom the money is going, and we submitted a breakdown of the anticipated prize money increase, and we got unanimous support from the players, unanimous
support from the WTA, their entire board. And then for the ATP, the tournament directors to vote it down: we were staggered, couldn’t believe it. Here we are offering free money and the people to whom its going, the recipients, embraced it, endorsed it, approved it, and then you have politicians saying, ‘We’re not going to accept it.’ We were totally amazed.” With Indian Wells organisers reportedly threatening to cut prize money if a decision was not made before this year’s event in March, the ATP was forced to act and an 11th hour about-turn finally came in February. Prize money for the men’s draw was subsequently increased to a record US$5,030,402 this year and, while the issue appeared far more unsavoury than it perhaps might have been, Moore believes at least some good has come of it. “A positive that has come out of that is that the ATP is now in the throes of drafting a new rule,” he explains. “The rule is there is a minimum requirement for the category of event you are, and if the tournament of their own free will wants to increase the prize money, there will be a rule now that is going to govern that and a formula. I think the result, even though the process wasn’t really very pleasant, is positive.” Looking ahead, the signs are that Indian Wells’ investment, whether in its venue or prize money, will pay off in the long run. As long as the sun shines hordes of fans, the majority of them holidaymakers from outside the Coachella Valley, will continue to pile into the resort each year, contributing in excess of US$300 million to the local economy. As long as the tennis and hospitality impress members of the media will continue to write their glowing reviews and sponsors will keep investing. And as long as the players remain unanimously onside the tournament’s status as the leader among non-Grand Slams will be safe for the foreseeable future, never mind that other events around the world, namely the top-level tournaments in Miami, Shanghai and Madrid, are mounting their own challenges to that title. “We’re very ambitious,” declares Moore. “We will continue to move the needle in our direction and raise the bar in trying to push ourselves to be the best tennis tournament outside of the four Grand Slams.” The Destinations Report 2014 | 83
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The Grand Slam master plans Wimbledon – all England club
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reserving its much-loved character whilst keeping pace with other, more modern venues is a challenge the All England Club has risen to masterfully over the years, enabling the Wimbledon championships to maintain a unique identity within tennis and the wider sporting world. The club’s stated aim for its new ‘Wimbledon Master Plan’, which sets out the vision for the future of the historic venue, is to ensure SW19 remains ‘the premier tennis tournament in the world and on grass’. The focal point of the planned renovations, which will take place gradually over the next ten to 20 years, is the addition of a new retractable roof on Court One, the site’s secondlargest show court. Slated for completion in 2019, it will employ the same airconditioning system used on Centre
Court since its roof was installed in 2009 and enable over 26,500 spectators in total to enjoy uninterrupted play. Meanwhile hospitality will be improved and more, bigger seats will be added to the 11,430-capacity arena. Improvements elsewhere in the grounds will see player facilities remodelled, three new championship courts added, public walkways around outer courts widened,
entrances enlarged, and the old Aorangi Pavilion, located near the practice courts, knocked down. In addition, new public concessions will be created beneath several courts to free up space elsewhere, more unreserved seating will be made available in No. 2 and No. 3 Courts to create a better atmosphere, and new clay courts will be repositioned adjacent to the site’s handful of indoor courts.
a roof for the arena is not part of the current plan. The first project to be undertaken will be the rebuilding of the practice court area, which will boast a new, two-level elevated viewing platform for up to 1,000 fans. Meanwhile, the two car parks closest to the facility will be replaced with multistorey car parks. The final phase of the project will involve replacing the Louis Armstrong Stadium. A
new 15,000-seat stadium will be built on the same site, while infrastructure will be put in place to enable the possibility of adding a roof at a later date. Additional improvements will attempt to ease pedestrian congestion and improve the safety and comfort of spectators. Under the proposal fan capacity will increase by 10,000 each day during the event, which already welcomes more than 700,000 visitors each year.
us Open – Billie Jean King national Tennis center
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n a bid to keep up with venue developments elsewhere in the US, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) has proposed a US$500 million plan to expand and renovate the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, home of the US Open. Slated improvements, which are set to begin in the autumn of 2013 and take six to eight years to complete, include cosmetic improvements to the centrepiece Arthur Ashe Stadium, the complete rebuilding of the Louis Armstrong Stadium – the Grand Slam event’s second show court – and the building of a new 8,000-seat Grandstand Stadium in the south-west corner of the 42-acre site. The USTA has been looking at ways of installing a roof on the 25,000-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium for a number of years to combat rain delays for top matches but
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French Open – stade roland garros
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he French Tennis Federation’s (FFT) redevelopment of Roland Garros, site of the French Open, has been a politically complex affair dogged by public opposition. While Parisian authorities approved the FFT’s €275 million scheme in 2011, a tribunal held at the end of February 2013 ruled against proposals to expand the site into neighbouring botanical gardens, where plans call for a new 5,000-seat court to be built. On the main site a retractable roof, deployable in ten minutes, is due to be installed on Roland Garros’s, centerpiece Court Philippe Chatrier by 2016. The stadium will be fitted with new seating and have newly designated areas for all tournament participants, from players and the media to spectators and event partners. Adjacent to the stadium a building to house the tournament management team
will be constructed, complete with new public relations and welcome areas, administrative offices and equipment areas pertaining to both sporting and logistical aspects of the event’s operation, including umpires, ball kids, racquet stringers and maintenance rooms.
Elsewhere a giant screen will be installed on the east side of Philippe Chatrier to allow fans to watch matches from a grassy space called Place des Mousquetaires, and the Fonds des Princes outer-court area will be reconfigured to include a new 2,000seat court and several others.
incorporating eight new indoor courts and 13 outdoor courts for elite training and public use, will also be created. Other plans include the addition of
more open spaces and shade, rainwater harvesting and treatment facilities, additional parking and better access to public transport and the city.
australian Open – Melbourne park
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ver eager to modernise, Melbourne Park, home of the Australian Open, continues to lead the way among the Grand Slams, with its latest AUS$366 million project, which began on site in April 2010 and is scheduled for completion by 2015, providing something of an example to its three cousins. A key part of the new project will see a major upgrade to fully enclose the Margaret Court Arena, including the installation of a retractable roof, the park’s third court covering which is slated to be ready by 2016, and additional seating to increase crowd capacity to 7,500. Meanwhile the south-west end of the external concourse surrounding Rod Laver Arena, the site’s centre court, will be extended, while a new Eastern Plaza,
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InsTallaTIon for The naTIon By David Cushnan Originally published July 2013 edition of SportsPro
The organisers of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow have come up with an innovative solution to their athletics venue conundrum.
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he city of Glasgow has its fair share of world class soccer stadiums. There’s Ibrox, still the imposing home of Rangers despite the club’s dramatic recent fall, with its capacity of just over 51,000. Further west, Celtic Park, the 60,335-seater venue that is home to champions Celtic, looms large, while south of both lies Hampden Park, Scotland’s bowl-like national stadium. All three venues will play their part when Glasgow hosts
next year’s Commonwealth Games but, while Celtic Park will host the opening ceremony and Ibrox stages the rugby sevens tournament, it is Hampden that promises to be the focal point of Scotland’s largest-ever sporting pageant as the host of the track and field competition. In order for that to happen, however, a complex and possibly unique transformation must first take place. Hampden, which has hosted international games as well as
domestic and European cup finals and was once the largest stadium in the world, will, for one year only, be transformed into an international athletics venue. The project will cost between UK£12 and UK£14 million and is being overseen by Suzanne McCormack, Glasgow 2014’s venue development overlay manager. McCormack is fresh from working on London’s Olympic velodrome but has returned to her native Scotland to tackle a project she suspects will
scotland’s national soccer stadium hampden Park will be a temporary athletics venue for the duration of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games
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an artist’s impression of how the stadium will look during the Games, with the playing surface raised and seats cleared to make way for a running track
ultimately result in “the proudest moment of my entire life”. “Certainly from Glasgow 2014’s point of view it’s the one project that we really deliver entirely as an organising committee,” McCormack says, speaking midway through May during a frenetic period of planning before construction begins in November. “What we’re doing, we don’t actually believe has been done before so it’s certainly complex from that point of view. We have expertise from right across the board on it, so it’s not without the right knowledge behind it.” Turning Hampden, which has a current capacity of 52,063, into an IAAF-standard athletics venue capable of hosting the Commonwealth Games was part of the plan from the moment Glasgow decided to bid for the 2014 event. McCormack didn’t
join the organising committee north of the border until May 2011 so was not part of the decision-making process during the bid, but says: “It’s a core requirement for a Commonwealth Games to have a stadium with a minimum capacity of 40,000. The bid team at the time obviously looked at the facilities they’d got in Glasgow and there is no athletics facility with that capacity. We didn’t need a new football stadium or athletics stadium, so we’re trying to do something that fits within the budget – an international athletics facility but on a Commonwealth Games scale. “Hampden itself is an oval stadium but it just isn’t quite big enough – there were feasibility studies done then and since then there have been numerous feasibility studies on it; now we’re right down the track of building it.”
Glasgow 2014 therefore hatched a plan which will see the surface of the stadium raised by 1.9 metres, with the track, which will be installed during the process, sitting on a complex, scaffolding-like decking. Games-time capacity will be 44,000, a reduction on the soccer-specification numbers but well within Commonwealth Games rules. The organising committee will effectively hire the venue for a year, starting from November, and then hand it back, with a few revisions but essentially as it was, to the stadium’s owner, Scottish fourth-tier team Queen’s Park FC. Queen’s Park also own Lesser Hampden, a smaller pitch on the site which will also be commandeered by Glasgow 2014 and replaced by a warm-up track and other essential facilities for the Games. The Destinations Report 2014 | 87
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“From the first day I’ve been here and a long time before that there’s been various groups set up to engage with them – communications groups, steering groups,” McCormack says, underlining the close working relationships which have formed out of the collective Glasgow desire to make the most of the Games. “I’m over at Hampden pretty much every other day, so it’s complex but there’s good communication. We work in Glasgow, there are statutory authorities that we need to deal with. I look at it from the venue point of view but we’re delivering a Games as well, so we have to make sure all the venues get over the line – this is key, it’s a core sport, but it’s not the only one so there’s a bigger picture where all the partners come together.” Glasgow 2014 has already appointed specialists including architects Holmes Miller, Waterman for engineering, cost consultants Gardiner & Theobold and project managers Mace to work on the project, while a contractor was set to be announced in June. Although there is no underestimating the technical intricacy of the project, McCormack insists there is a quiet confidence around it borne out of very careful planning. “I come from an engineering and architectural background so to me it’s nuts and bolts – I think it’s fine and so do all of my consultants,” she says, “but that’s not to be flippant about it, it’s just that we understand the technicalities of it. We’ve done all the dynamic tests on it, we’ve done numerous surveys on the stadium itself to see if it’s big enough or engineering surveys to check what the structure is.” One complication facing Glasgow 2014 is that Hampden has been renovated several times since it opened as a 100,000-plus capacity venue in 1903. At its peak the stadium could hold 150,000. There were major upgrades in 1981 and 1992, the latter converting the stadium into an all-seater venue as per new British legislation. A further lottery-funded upgrade in 1997 resulted in the current capacity of 52,063 and allowed for the staging of Uefa’s showpiece game in 2002, a Champions League final lit up by a famous volleyed goal from Real Madrid’s Zinedine Zidane. “The stadium has been built over many years in phases,” explains McCormack, “so 88 | www.sportspromedia.com
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What we’re doing, we don’t actually believe has been done before so it’s certainly complex from that point of view. different parts of the stadium take different loadings. We’ve checked all that to make sure that point-loads and live-loads on any particular area can be maintained within the limits we need. We’ve set a very strict parameter which means we get the dynamic response required for the athletes, so they don’t feel vibration, but there’s also numerous other engineering aspects as well to make sure there’s no movement laterally across the stadium and also that we’re not affecting the stadium detrimentally as well. “At the end of the day we need to convert it back into a football stadium and nobody will ever know there was an athletics track in there, other than the bits we’re doing around and about it for legacy – but if you take the track on its own, the deck will go up over a number of weeks and then we’ll be laying the track on top of it.” McCormack says Glasgow 2014 “toyed” with the idea of leaving the existing grass pitch in place and building the decking – in layman’s terms, a more complex, stable form of scaffolding – on top, but ultimately decided to remove it. “We’ll take away all the material and replace that with a new pitch in November 2014,” she explains. “We will basically then build, off the sub-soil zone, the surrounding track area and the lower eight tiers of the seating deck, which obviously incrementally get higher. Each leg of the structure is a different length but we are making sure they are adjustable. Scaffolding has things called ‘scafftags’ on them, which you check on a daily basis to make sure there’s no movement on them and that they’re safe. It’s an enhanced version of that to make sure everything is exactly where we intend it to be from the day it goes in to the day of the closing ceremony – and then obviously it will come out after that.” Aside from the track installation new, larger scoreboards will be erected at either end
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of the stadium – “athletics has a different requirement from football for results,” McCormack notes, “as you don’t just have Scotland 5-0 England, you have all the race results” – while floodlights will be fine-tuned for track and field events. Beyond the bowl of the stadium itself, work will take place across the Hampden and Lesser Hampden sites, although McCormack says there will be no encroachment on the surrounding residential areas. “Hampden’s been there for over 100 years and it is slapbang in the middle of a residential area but the site itself is actually quite well designed,” she says. “The campus itself is actually fairly large. There’s an existing football pitch which has some existing office accommodation so we need to change that. We extend the football pitch at Lesser Hampden to put in a 400m warm-up track and that takes in a bit of the site ground. By doing that we take down some temporary accommodation that’s been there for years and we’ll replace that with a permanent boundary wall, which is going to be far more aesthetically pleasing. The portacabins will come away, Queen’s Park get housed in a new pavilion building which is definitely an improvement to the whole area. “Beyond that when we get into overlay mode we’ve got 900 athletes as opposed to a home and away football team so we do have temporary overlay required to accommodate them – team tents, first call and final call areas.” While Hampden won’t officially pass into Glasgow 2014’s hands until November, part of the construction works has already been carried out. International Stadia Group was hired to undertake a UK£2.8 million upgrade of the north stand, the oldest part of the venue and one which didn’t suit the needs of an international athletics venue. That initial project was completed at the end of May. Queen’s Park have already
hampden Park was first opened in 1903 and has undergone several upgrades in its eventful lifetime
The stadium in its soccer configuration: its capacity will be cut from 52,063 to 44,000 for athletics
The temporary track at hampden will be built on on a bespoke system of scaffolding-like decking
cleared their existing offices to allow work on the warm-up track to begin. “We’re bringing the contractor on from June even though they won’t start until November,” says McCormack of the main bowl element of the project. “That’s to make sure all the materials are ordered and everything’s sitting there ready to go – we’ve built major bits of the structure already so that when we’re in there over the winter months we can deliver it on time and we’ve left ourselves a couple of months contingency at the end of it.” 16th May 2014 has been pegged as the completion date, with the first day of Games athletics scheduled for 27th July. “Obviously we’ll have other overlay to bump in around that but we’re just making sure that we’ve got time up our sleeve,” McCormack explains. “It’s just really, really careful planning that’s required and a lot of planning has gone into it over the last couple of years by a lot of people.” Operational and technical testing will follow, with a smallscale athletics meeting likely to be staged in June 2014. A familiarisation programme for the staff and volunteers who will operate the stadium will also be rolled out to ensure that, like McCormack, they are able to “walk round it blindfolded”. Once the Games are over next summer, however, the venue must be returned to its owners and converted back into a football stadium. That process has been built into the plan from day one: for every drawing of how the upgrades will look, there is a reinstatement drawing which sits alongside. “It’s an area where we’ve worked very closely with our stakeholders,” McCormack says. “We’re hiring a venue for a year but at the end of the day they don’t need an athletics track, they need their venue back exactly as we got it. At every progress meeting we’re making sure we’re providing them with their stadium back in a fully functional manner, in exactly the same way that we pick it up. There’s a full set of engineering drawings of how it’s all going to go back together again. “The Olympic velodrome was an amazing experience to be involved in,” she adds, “but I’ve got to say this one, because it’s unique and has not been done before, I think trumps it. And we’re hoping what we’re doing here is something that can be looked at elsewhere in the world as well.” The Destinations Report 2014 | 89
Destinations Report 2014 VENUES
Dr Ken Chu succeeded his late father, David, as the chairman of China’s colossal Mission Hills golf and leisure empire in 2012
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THe swIng DoCToR By David Cushnan Originally published May 2013 edition of SportsPro
David Chu was the visionary developer who planted the seed of golf in mainland China. That has blossomed into three vast golfing resorts and it is Chu’s son Ken who is now tasked with pruning them for further growth.
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n 1992, Hong Kong investor Dr David Chu broke ground on a new project on the Chinese mainland, some 30 minutes from the border of the then-British territory. It was, all things considered, something of a gamble but Chu believed sincerely that the creation of a major golf resort on wasteground near the city of Shenzhen was a risk worth taking – an all-new resort, for an all-new sport in the country. He was right. The first shots were struck just two years later. Mission Hills was born and the face of Chinese golf was changed forever. Fast forward 20 years and Mission Hills has become the leading brand in Chinese golf, an internationally recognised symbol of golf in China and a thriving, pacy business, with three vast resorts, multiple revenue streams and extravagant expansion plans. The numbers are telling: across three south China resorts, in the cities of Shenzhen and Dongguan and, since 2010, on the island of Hainan, Mission Hills has built 22 golf courses since 1992. Two more will have been added by the end of this year. Factor in an array of surrounding facilities – hotels, conference venues, food and beverage outlets – in each location and it quickly becomes clear that the Mission Hills empire stretches well beyond golf, but the sport remains the DNA of the business, just as it was when Chu put the first spade in the ground and took his gamble. “His position was to promote international goodwill through golf,” explains Dr Ken Chu, son of the man who came to be known as the ‘father of golf ’ in China and among the global golf community. When David Chu succumbed to cancer in August 2011, aged 61, the mantle passed to his sons,
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now it is up to me to help popularise the game of golf in China. I need to grow the business. I don’t want to sustain the business. Ken and Tenniel. While Tenniel remains vice chairman of Mission Hills and an increasingly influential face in the global golf industry, 38-year-old Ken, once the head of Mission Hills’ property development arm, has formally stepped into his father’s shoes as chairman and chief executive of the company. The next generation of Chus have taken on both the business and their father’s mission to develop the sport throughout China and beyond. “My father created this integrated leisure complex, featuring golf, world class travel and leisure facilities – what we call ‘golf and more’,” Ken Chu says now. “It’s more than a golf club. Mission Hills was a pioneer in introducing hotels, a lot of F&B outlets and conference facilities attached to the Mission Hills complex. Therefore it drew in a lot more customers and tourists. My father had a very courageous vision and was very forward thinking. He completed a world record in a very short time, only ten years: Mission Hills became the largest golf facility in the world.” More numbers: the 12 courses split across the Shenzhen and Dongguan sites, plus the additional facilities, and the newer Haikou resort on Hainan Island cover around 40
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square kilometres in total, roughly the size of the English university town of Oxford. Mission Hills currently employs 14,000 people, including over 4,000 caddies, with those figures poised to rise. The facilities require a fleet of some 2,000 golf carts to cope with an average of 1,500 rounds per day and peaks of 3,000 – 70 per cent from China, with 30 per cent and rising from further afield. On peak days Mission Hills is less a golf resort, more a complex logistical jigsaw, with Chu suggesting that getting 3,000 golf bags from hotel to tee, each at precisely the right moment, requires the same coordination and management as a baggage operation at a major airport. The figures and the scale are undeniably impressive, but Chu insists it is not simply grandstanding. “We did not build this facility for ego,” he says. “We built this facility because China has the largest population in the world.” As the son of the father, in more sense than one, Chu lacks nothing in ambition. The man who is, in his own words, “carrying Mission Hills forward” is a veritable bundle of energy. Conversation is swift, but always considered, and he describes his management style without hesitation as The Destinations Report 2014 | 91
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Mission Hills: its five-point action plan to develop Chinese golfing talent
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here are flickering green shoots of promise amongst the youngsters who have grown up playing at Mission Hills. 23-year-old Hu Mu, who now practises in the US, and 14-year-old Guan Tianlang, who in 2012 won the AsiaPacific Amateur Championship, a result which saw him earn a place at the 2013 Masters at Augusta, are both graduates of the Mission Hills training system. As Ken Chu explains, Mission Hills has a five-point plan to develop more young Chinese golfers. 1. Recognisable faces “In the early years, we brought in a lot of international tournaments. In Asia we only got to see tournaments from the European Tour and the US Tour, so the faces became very recognisable. Bringing in these golf celebrities to help promote the game, to arouse the general interest, was the first thing we did.” 2. A collection of designers “We created a collection of international designers, all legends and well-renowned golf professionals. We worked with them on golf course design but we also
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created a lot of junior training series and tournaments with them, including Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Nick Faldo, Annika Sorenstam.” 3. Competitive action “Every year Mission Hills hosts over 20 junior tournaments. The way I see junior training is you need to give them more than just training at the academy, driving range and on the golf course. They need tournament experience.” 4. Free access “We have three golf courses designated as free access for 16-year-olds and below, free any time of the day, any week – just so people can come and play golf for free” 5. Amateur tournaments “We host 24 amateur tournaments on a yearly basis, so two a month. We know it will take some time for Chinese players to take part on the international platforms but we believe these five things we are doing, from the grassroots to the amateurs, and also being a medium in bridging the juniors and amateurs with the professionals, is beneficial to growing the game.”
“pace and speed, pace and speed”. He is quirky, too, laughingly describing how he plays a round of golf for exercise, running between every shot to complete 18 holes and a full eight-kilometre workout in an hour. “My handicap is golf,” he chuckles. “To me, time is not money, time is use – it’s how much you can get done in your lifetime,” Chu explains. “My father had the incredible foresight in turning wasteland into the largest golf facility and was able to put China on to the world map of golf. Now it is up to me to help popularise the game of golf in China. I need to grow the business. I don’t want to sustain the business.” In its first two decades, there were three core strands to the Mission Hills business: golf, including golf operations, membership drives and golf tourism; real estate development, which has seen 3,000 properties so far sold around the resort, some for as much as US$20 million according to local reports; and a hotel and resort operations business, including the MICE [meeting, incentive, conference and exhibition] market. Chu, in order to expand the business, is in the process of adding three more: wellness tourism, commercial development and golf club management. While the latter is a natural extension of Mission Hills’ core competency – “there are so many cities and city governments that come knocking on our door asking us to invest in their cities, because of our know-how, because of our database and also because of the tournaments we have,” says Chu, “and there are a lot of golf clubs in China that run on a deficit and they also need the expertise, the database, the sales and marketing engine that we have, to help them grow the business” – the other two areas represent significant departures. While Chu’s intention is for golf to remain Mission Hills’ core offering, he believes expanding the business can tap into the growing disposable income available to China’s rapidly increasing middle class. In wellness tourism, for example, he has already overseen the opening of the world’s largest spa and mineral hot spring, including 168 plunge pools. It is in commercial development, however, where he is at his most ambitious. “By the end of next year we will be opening up another 800 shops,
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Destinations Report 2014 VENUES
Mission Hills: The scorecard
24: courses at three Mission Hills resorts, playable by the end of 2013 30: percentage of foreign visitors to Mission Hills 40: square kilometres, the size of the three sites combined 800: new entertainment properties to be opened by Mission Hills by the end of 2014 1,200: bunkers 3,000: rounds on a peak day 4,000: caddies employed by Mission Hills 14,000: employees at Mission Hills 100,000: golfers in China in 1995 3,000,000: golfers in China in 2012
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restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs, retail in the Mission Hills facilities,” he explains, adding that he expects Mission Hills to soon be the only golf club in the world with its own Imax cinema. Over the next two years Chu plans six new hotels, which will be built in collaboration with some of the world’s leading chains. “I’m adding a lot more entertainment and lifestyle experiences into the facility,” he says, with no little relish. “If you imagine what Las Vegas looks like, that’s what I’m building – except for the gambling. “In a lot of countries the golf population is deteriorating. My analysis is people have more family values now. They don’t want to be away from families to play golf, because there is more responsibility. The second is people are much busier, with emails, BlackBerrys, people are working 24 hours a day. “The reason why I’m adding so much into Mission Hills is so the father will not feel guilty for leaving the kids and wife when they go and play golf. You have to have something for everybody to do, a destination where people will want to go together. Mission Hills’ mission statement is to create and inspire happiness, healthy and harmonious lifestyle and experiences for all – just like Disney.” Backed by significant investment from governments around China keen to take a slice of the golf tourism market, Chu says Mission Hills is piggy-backing on the current Chinese focus on developing the Third Industry, or service sector, in the same way as city authorities previously promoted agriculture and manufacturing. “Leisure, tourism development is very well supported by the government and financial institutions,” he points out. “That, plus all the real estate and development that we’ve been developing over the years has helped to pay for the growth of Mission Hills. It is a lifestyle we’re creating.” Almost casually, Chu throws into the conversation a plan for five more Mission Hills resorts, dotted around the Chinese mainland, to be built over the next five years, although not on the scale of the existing mega-developments. While building the Mission Hills business is at the heart of Chu’s vision, never far away is his desire to continue the rapid development of golf in China. Indeed, if
Since construction of Mission Hills first began in 1992, it has grown to become the biggest golf facility in the world
Mission Hills was built, at least in part, to promote golf in China, Chinese golf has now come to rely on Mission Hills to spread its message. It has become a regular host of international tournaments, a run stretching back to 1995 when it staged China’s first international tournament, the World Cup of Golf. Before then, Chu says there were around 20,000 golfers in China; immediately afterwards the number swelled to around 100,000. Six years later Tiger Woods, then the world’s undisputed number one player, came to town for the first time, prompting another spurt. “Before Tiger came the golf population had grown to 500,000 and after Tiger it doubled to one million,” Chu says. In 2007,
the World Cup – a now biennial men’s national team competition with two players per country – returned to Shenzhen as part of a long-term agreement which tied the competition to Mission Hills for 12 editions. Shenzhen hosted the tournament in 2007, 2008 and 2009, before it became a biennial event. The new Mission Hills Haiku hosted the 2011 edition. In 2012, meanwhile, Mission Hills Shenzhen hosted the WGCHSBC Champions event, one of the four annual World Golf Championship (WGC) tournaments, for the first time – with the spoils taken by Ian Poulter. “All of these tournaments have helped the golf population grow, but also the number of golf courses in China,” Chu
says, reporting that the number of regular golfers in China now exceeds three million. “There were only a handful of golf courses 20 years ago and now there are 698 golf courses in China,” he points out. “The game is still picking up but the word I would use is ‘snowballing’. “Obviously, golf in China is still in its infancy,” he adds. “Just like any other country, when golf began it was a very niche sport – it was a business sport. That is even more so in China. Golf is more than a sport; it’s a business language, it’s a social networking tool. What Mission Hills is doing right now, one thing I’ve done since my father’s departure is commission a new Mission Hills project for Mission
Hills Hainan Island to become a public golf resort. That means there is no barrier, no financial barrier, no need to invest in a membership, to have the right to play golf. I’ve positioned that ten-course facility, 180hole facility, to be all public golf, to help popularise the game of golf to the general public.” The development of junior talent capable of ultimately joining the professional ranks of the game will, Chu insists, be accelerated by golf ’s inclusion in the Olympic Games, with the promise of more funding from government and private enterprise. Mission Hills has predictably forged strong links with China’s national golf federation and it houses the Chinese national teams. “The The Destinations Report 2014 | 95
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There were only a handful of golf courses 20 years ago and now there are 698 golf courses in China.
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“It is a lifestyle we’re creating,” says Ken Chu of the ongoing – and evolving – Mission Hills project
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golf club has a lot of the hardware and services,” Chu says, “but there’s so much more than the facilities and housing, such as medical facilities and equipment, psychology, physiotherapy, that goes into a sporting body and that comes from the sporting body.” Nonetheless, Chu maintains that “achieving some medals” when golf makes its Olympic bow in Rio three years from now is the ultimate, if distinctly ambitious, target. In other ways, too, he is doing what he can to try and develop Chinese golf at the elite level, including a push to try and have a Chinese player included in the President’s Cup, the biennial matchplay tournament between the US and a non-European international team. But as much as Chu believes in promoting golf in China, he also believes what has been created at Mission Hills will help the sport at a global level. “The way I see it is there’s only three million golfers in China,” Chu says. “What percentage is that compared to the number of people we have in China? It’s nought point something per cent. Look at the percentage in Great Britain, perhaps it’s 10 or 20 per cent. To begin with, for golf to be an international sport you have to have the support and participation of the Chinese nation. If the sport is only played in Europe and North America, it’s not an international sport. If we all want golf to be an international sport that means you need to have Chinese participation, because we have a quarter of the world’s population. We all know that the Chinese are explorers, we love to travel. If we are able to bring up the golf interest in China it will also help the tourism as well. We will be able to send much more golf tourism into Europe and North America, and any city welcomes tourism and welcomes golf tourism. This is not just about the game of golf, it’s about the tourism market.” Chu confirms there will be no physical international expansion of Mission Hills, at least “not in the next five years”. There is, he says, plenty of work still to do at home, building an empire, creating a lifestyle and popularising a sport. When China gets its first Major winner, though, Mission Hills and the Chu family will be able to take a healthy slice of the credit.
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Destinations report 2014 VENUES
The Singapore Sports Hub will combine the citystate’s elite venues with a selection of high-end community facilities in a unique project
Singapore’S neXT STep by David Cushnan Originally published October 2013 edition of SportsPro
The Singapore Sports Hub is the city-state’s billion-dollar baby. after a painstaking planning process, former Stade de France chief philippe Delavaud is poised to deliver the project to the line.
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he 25th March 2014. The date has been etched in the mind of Philippe Delavaud for some time. The Frenchman, a veteran of the stadium management and operations industry, has found himself in Singapore overseeing the final months of building and planning for the city-state’s new billion-dollar Sports Hub. When it opens, on the aforementioned date, it will instantly become one of the world’s leading multi-sport venues, a monument to Singapore’s international
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ambitions and the realisation of a sporting strategy that has been decades in the making. The centrepiece of the project is the new National Stadium, a 55,000-capacity facility which will face the Singapore skyline and feature a retractable roof and retractable seating, the latter a flexible innovation which will make the stadium the first in the world to be able to host rugby, cricket, soccer and athletics. The venue will also host concerts and Singapore’s National Day parade, ensuring it will play a central role in
the city-state’s national psyche. Surrounding the stadium will be a host of new facilities, along with the existing Singapore Indoor Stadium, which has been incorporated into the Sports Hub. A FINA-approved aquatics centre, with 3,000 seats but the ability to double capacity when necessary, will contain two 50-metre pools and a diving pool; a multi-purpose indoor arena will feature six sport halls, with capacity for up to 3,000 spectators, for sports such as badminton, fencing,
taekwondo, netball and volleyball; a water sports centre, located alongside the Kallang Basin waterfront area, will include canoeing, kayaking, rowing and dragon boat racing facilities; a dedicated sports lifestyle zone will be community-focused and include a skate park, wave pool, fitness centres, rock climbing, and jogging and cycling areas. The sports facilities will be supplemented by a 41,000 square metre retail and leisure complex dotted along the waterfront and promenade areas, while there are also plans
for a sports library and a museum dedicated to Singapore’s sporting history on the site. The city-state has not seen anything like the Sports Hub before. It is one of the largest sporting infrastructure public-private partnership (PPP) projects in the world and the largest ever attempted in Singapore. In effect, it is a 25-year agreement – there are 22 years to run – between the Singapore Sports Council, a government agency, and a consortium known as SportsHub Pte, which comprises investment firm InfraRed Capital
Partners, design and building subcontractor Dragages Singapore, facility maintenance firm DTZ and venue operator Global Spectrum Asia. “What we jointly manage is all the strategic issues,” explains Delavaud, a former chief executive of the Stade de France in Paris who now heads up the consortium. “We have a permanent interaction with our public partners for strategic decisions, a joint body to discuss event planning, marketing and major decisions.” The Destinations Report 2014 | 99
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Construction of the Singapore Sports Hub is entering its final stage ahead of a March 2014 launch
Four subcontractors have also been hired: the World Sport Group agency, responsible for procuring events; IT service provider T-Systems; SMRT Alpha, which will lease the retail space; and Sports Catering Services. Mastercard, Singapore Airlines, Canon, Carlsberg, Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz are amongst the corporate sponsors already on board. The public element of the PPP is the Singapore Sports Council (SSC), a body formed in 1973 to coincide with the opening of Singapore’s original National Stadium.
Now, as then, its mandate is to develop Singapore’s sporting culture and to use sport as a tool for wider growth. In 2001 the SSC drew up a ten-year programme of targets, containing five key principles: healthy citizens, community bonding, national pride, a vibrant society and economy, and international friendship. The decade that followed saw the arrival of Formula One on the streets of Singapore’s Marina Bay district in 2008, with an event which has quickly become one of the glamour races on the sport’s annual schedule, and
THe Singapore SporTS Hub in nuMberS
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culminated in the successful staging of the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in 2010. When it comes to sport, Singapore is no longer a new player, but Delavaud insists the Sports Hub represents an important development for a city-state of just over five million with international aspirations. “Singapore is used to being on the world map,” he points out, “but I’m sure this will be a new step for Singaporeans because we are breaking so many records, in terms of construction and innovation. It will be a subject of pride.” In 2008 Oon Jin Teik, the former Olympic swimmer who was then the chief executive of the SSC, told SportsPro the vision behind the Sports Hub was to create an “ecosystem” of sport and leisure. He added: “We said we needed a new stadium but getting one is easy to say. When you start designing it, it becomes very challenging. We had to get it right so we did quite a bit of research, looking at other models and venues. We didn’t just look at how the venue was constructed but the business model in running it. Our version is very practical in the sense that we don’t want a white elephant, and there is a very big emphasis on programming. We want it open 24/7.” Oon has since returned to the private sector but the vision he outlined remains on track,
even if the project has suffered significant delays. Though the Sports Hub was originally slated to open in 2011, construction work only began in earnest in October 2010 when the existing National Stadium was demolished, freeing up the necessary land. Delavaud explains that some 40,000 piles had to be inserted in the soil before construction on the new arena could begin, due to poor soil conditions. It is just one example, he says, of a project not without its challenges. “The stadium is full of innovation and full of first-time [projects], so most of what we do is prototype,” he admits. “There has been a learning curve.” Delavaud cites the National Stadium’s roof as but one example. Designed by Arup, the dome structure is ultra-thin, designed specifically to provide shade but also allowing for a state of the art, energy efficient cooling system for spectators. “It is a prototype,” Devalaud repeats, “so we have had to take the time, which was in our schedule, to learn how to implement it. We had it designed, we did feasibility studies, but we had a concept to prove and deliver.” The flexibility which has been designed into the stadium, and indeed all the surrounding facilities, has ensured that the Sports Hub will be in a position to host a broad range of events, be they international or local. Operationally, the Sports Hub management have a mandate to ensure that happens. “Our strategy has been very clear,” Delavaud outlines. “We have performance indicators for international events, for local events, for community events, so we cannot just decide tomorrow that we will just take care of, say, international football. We have to do it and the governing bodies, with our public partner, are able to check that we are in line with the strategy. It’s a segmented and holistic approach, which fits our strategy and that of the country.” The importance of Singapore’s wider sports development strategy will be demonstrated by the fact that all Sports Hub facilities will be open to the public. Delavaud calls the project a “game-changer”, adding: “It’s really about creating momentum and acceleration. All the spotlight will be focused on us: the international community will look at us, the Singaporean community will look at us, people practising sports, people watching
The national Stadium will boast a high-end retractable roof and be able to host a range of sports
sports. Everyone, in the next years, will be looking at what we are going to deliver. “When the Sports Hub is opened it will be different to how it was before the Sports Hub in terms of how to watch live sports – something that has not been very developed in Singapore before. People will have a huge amount of opportunity to watch live sport, but also to practise sports because all our facilities will be open to everyone, not just elite athletes. Everyone will have an opportunity to participate, watch and support at the Sports Hub.” The full calendar of Sports Hub-hosted events has yet to be revealed – it is expected in October – but one global event already secured is the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour Championships, the season finale featuring the eight top-ranked players of the year. In May, Singapore was awarded the contract to host the tournament, which has been played in Istanbul since 2011, for five years, starting in 2014. It saw off bids from Tianjin in China and Mexico’s Monterrey to stage the US$6.5 million showpiece. “It’s a best-of-its-kind event,” Delavaud says, “and there’s no comparable event in women’s tennis. It’s a way to show Singaporeans a best-of-its-kind event and it’s a way to show international tourists that they can get something in Singapore they cannot get in other places. “The event will have a big impact. It’s thrilling: we will have a fanzone, public training, we will organise a convention, a fashion show and all types of content around sports and leisure, women in sport,
business in sport – it’s a comprehensive event and the Sports Hub is really designed for that. We are not only one stadium, we are not only one indoor arena – there are very efficient indoor arenas around the world, there are very efficient stadiums but here we have the opportunity to deliver something different, in a very compact way.” Locally, Delavaud is negotiating with national sports federations in Singapore for the Sports Hub to become their new home. Further afield, he is already targeting a Rugby World Cup Sevens event as well as a “multi-sports event, which is internationally recognised”, although he insists he does not have a specific one in mind. “We have a list,” he adds, explaining that a visit to May’s SportAccord Convention in St Petersburg was used to begin talks with international federations and rights holders and to begin to promote the new facilities. The combination of the Singaporean government’s major events fund and a centre which Delavaud neatly describes as “pre-qualified for most international events” would appear to be a potent one. The Frenchman also believes Singapore’s history of hosting major events adds an important layer of confidence. “Singapore has been able to deliver outstanding performance,” he says, “in terms of organisation, safety and security, public welcome, hosting, tourist hotel bookings, airport facilities, and so on.” Singapore already has the experience; in just a few short months it will have the hardware to match. The Destinations Report 2014 | 101
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LEGACY
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Destinations Report 2014 LEGACY
The SPoRTS ConSulTanCy The BRIefIng: legacy
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t might be the most overused word in the sports industry but ‘legacy’ is by no means a redundant one, according to Angus Buchanan of The Sports Consultancy. “The word is in the lexicon and rightly,” he says. “It just happened to be a nebulous concept that someone gave a word to but nobody would question whether we should be talking about place or destination marketing as a key benefit, or economic impact. Those words go unchallenged. Legacy, for some reason, is. But I don’t see a reason why it should be. It’s incredibly important. We should probably all get over the fact it seems like a cliché because it’s critical, fundamental.” Legacy has become a catch-all for virtually everything that happens after an event has been staged, some of it tangible – the physical infrastructure, for example – and some of it rather less so – the so-called ‘feelgood factor’ - but Datnow argues that it can at least be compartmentalised. “There’s a skills legacy, the amount of people who were skilled through the London Olympic Games who are now, for example, in Baku and Glasgow. There are significant lessons to be learnt from skilling a domestic workforce to deliver all the various elements from hospitality to international relations to event delivery and logistics. There’s a volunteering legacy, and social legacies and then the more traditional ones like stadium and event legacies. I think we’re seeing very positive legacies, certainly on the events side in the UK. I think people criticise legacy because it can be nebulous in some people’s minds – people question where is the legacy for London? Some of the less tangible legacies, like social cohesion, reducing obesity, the 104 | www.sportspromedia.com
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We should probably all get over the fact it seems like a cliché because it’s fundamental. feelgood factor, are very difficult to quantify. “One of the key things is working out what your legacies will be and then managing expectations because I think there can be nothing worse than promising legacies which aren’t fulfilled,” he adds. “Provided legacy plans are realistic and achievable I think the public will feel as though it has got a return on investment if those legacies are achieved.” Legacy will be a watchword in Russia and Brazil this year, as each stages its own mega-event. Years in the planning and involving significant physical infrastructure developments, the Sochi 2014 winter Olympics and June’s Fifa World Cup have been closely monitored during the build-up and, in all likelihood, will be closely scrutinised in the months and years after they have been completed, both by interested observers from around the world but also by the country’s residents. In Brazil, the build-up to last year’s Confederations Cup was marred by protests in several of the country’s major cities, in part a reaction to the level of public spending on new stadia to host soccer’s biggest tournament. “If the argument is we are building infrastructure simply for the event, that is something that is very hard to communicate to the populous and that might be the impression Brazilians have around the
”
Fifa World Cup. I don’t think that would be fair, but that might be the impression. “There is nothing more reassuring, and we speak from experience from a rights-holder’s perspective, than approaching a market and seeing a sports facility and hearing ‘we are building it anyway, but the fact we’re building it means we can host you and the timing in which we’re having this discussion may allow you to have some input into the construction to make sure it fits your major event – but it’s a reason for us to celebrate the completion of infrastructure’. If it does, you have a much easier job of communicating that to your citizenry.” Ensuring that the public is engaged from the beginning of a major event project – the pre-bidding stage – is fundamental to the chances of maximising the benefits and creating a legacy of which a host can be proud, although, as Buchanan points out, that need rather depends on the style of government. “They vary wildly from country to country – and in some cases, quite frankly, the necessity of the bringing the public with you will vary according to the style of government,” he says. “Perhaps, rather than thinking about legacy,” Buchanan continues, “it’s about where the major event fits within your own national or city development. ‘Is it
the fact we really need to redevelop the waterfront area of Barcelona [host of the 1992 summer Olympic Games] and a great way to capitalise on that and celebrate it will be by hosting a major, major event, which will provide us with a fixed timeline and the impetus required to do it?’ What comes first – is it the desire for redevelopment and to build infrastructure, or is it the desire just to host a major event? It’s communicating what it is you’re trying to achieve.
“I think you could argue in the case of Brazil and the Middle East, they are in the position where they are saying ‘we are ready now, we are developing and that means we have the infrastructure and are capable now to build and host a major event’. In the case of Sochi, [IOC president] Thomas Bach recently said that when you talk about a US$50 billion budget, you are lumping into that an enormous amount of redevelopment that
was going on in any event. It would be unfair to set that off against one event. It comes down to making sure the capital requirements of the investment required to host an event is appropriate considering where you are in the development of infrastructure and whether it fits your overall plan for regional, city or national development rather than an end in itself. Because when it’s an end in itself, you end up with white elephants.”
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12 LESSONS FROM 2012 By James Emmett and Eoin Connolly Originally published September 2013 edition of SportsPro
Over a year on on from the London Olympics and the legacy promises made by the organisers and the bid team are coming under scrutiny. Some of them are tangible today, others may not be gleaned for many years. Effective or not, there are lessons to be heeded but also, as our comprehensive legacy update shows, several conclusions which can already be drawn.
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1. London’s international image was softened and modernised The 2012 Games were never going to be about putting the British capital on the map since it’s already at its centre, the line of longitude having been fixed at zero in London since the 1800s. The city is one of the most instantly recognisable in the world, and has been for hundreds of years. But, because of its history, the global view of London is arguably derived from a bygone era – all Georgian architecture, stiff upper lips, an obsession with tea and absolutely no eye contact at any time on public transport. That changed with London 2012. For the 680,000 foreign visitors who came to the UK specifically to watch or work at the Olympics or Paralympics, and to the billions watching around the world, the Games transmitted an energy, an easiness and a general happiness not traditionally associated with London or Londoners. Tessa Jowell, a Londoner born
and bred and the British politician most closely associated with the Games, puts it best. “I think what the Olympic Games has succeeded in doing is presenting a different image of London,” she says, “from one principally defined by old heritage to one defined by new and young creativity, and I think people now understand that London is an open, diverse and tolerant city; it’s a young city. And that has confounded the stereotype of London of even five years ago.” As secretary of state for the department of culture, media and sport in the early 2000s, it was Jowell who convinced Tony Blair’s government to support a London bid for the Games. The day after that bid was ultimately won, in July 2005, London was struck by a coordinated terrorist attack to its public transport network. 52 were killed and 700 were injured.
From that point, security was going to be a central theme in preparing for the Games – a sentiment that was only heightened when the summer of 2011 saw riots break out across the city. And despite the preevent wobble from key contractor G4S – whose inability to deliver the promised number of security staff prompted the army to step in to man entrances and carry out security checks – security at Gamestime was impeccable. Figures released on the day of the closing ceremony showed that just 250 arrests were made by police working on Olympic security, and 139 of those were for ticket touting. The inclusion of free transport travel cards for all Olympic ticket holders was another PR coup for London, softening the impact for visitors of the city’s reputation as one of the most expensive in the world.
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2. Economic impact will be measured, both positively and negatively, for years to come When the British government signed off on the initial bid, it was in the belief that the Games would not only attract tourists for years to come, but would signal to the world that Britain was open for (more) business. The government would later have five economic targets from London 2012: to support the UK’s economic recovery by maximising trade and investment opportunities, to enhance the UK’s reputation for delivering large-scale projects, to act as a showcase for UK expertise, to improve the ambition and capability of British business, and to grow tourism. Such is the nature of statistics, there will always be figures available not only to those who believed the Games were an incomparable economic catalyst, but to those that believed them a cataclysmic waste of money, too. To mark the first anniversary of the Games, the British government, in tandem with the Mayor of London’s office, released a report entitled ‘Inspired by 2012: The legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games’. The report announced that, to date, UK£9.9 billion in international trade and investment had been won as a direct result of Games-time activity, with tourist spend set to exceed UK£19 billion for the first time this year. As far as exports go, UK£120 million of contracts have gone to British companies for work on the Brazil 2014 Fifa World Cup, and the Rio 2016 Olympics, while over 60 contracts have been won by UK companies for work on the Sochi 2014 Games and the 2018 Fifa World Cup in Russia. The report puts some flesh on those bones by highlighting the work of UK Trade and Investment (UKTI). Working to a government target of UK£11 billion in Games-inspired trade and investment by 2016, UKTI delivered 17 days of business summits for 4,000 business leaders from 63 countries at the British Business Embassy at Lancaster House. Of the UK£9.9 billion
The British government wove London 2012 into efforts to drive international investment in the UK
headline investment figure, the report attributes UK£5.9 billion in export sales from UKTI events such as the British Business Embassy. London mayor Boris Johnson stocked up on enough political capital to last him at least another election during the Games, but he was also busy entertaining 200 international senior executives last summer. London House hosted an additional 3,000 people in an initiative that the report states has created almost 2,000 jobs in London through 24 investment projects, including one from Huawei Technologies of China, one from Infosys of India, and another from Gensler of the US. The report points to continued investment in London to come: the UK£1.2 billion development in Royal Albert Dock by Chinese company ABP, the UK£700 million investment into Battersea Nine Elms
by Chinese developer Dalian Wanda Group, and the UK£1 billion regeneration project in Croydon being undertaken partly by the Australian retail developer Westfield. Whether these investments would have gone ahead were it not for the Olympics is another matter. “A number of the figures in the report are based on assumptions rather than cash in the bank,” says Jowell, urging caution. “I think that we’d all want to see the cash in the bank before in any way being comfortable that we’ve realised the potential. The tourism legacy is one that will build year on year.” While international visitor numbers were up year on year by one per cent in 2012, Britain’s tourism agency, VisitBritain, has a target to generate an extra 4.7 million visitors to the UK by 2016, and an extra UK£2.3 billion in tourism spend.
70,000 – the number of previously unemployed Londoners who found work as a result of the Games, according to the 2012 Olympic Jobs Evaluation Report 108 | www.sportspromedia.com
3. No Fifa World Cup, but plenty of events to go round In the run-up to the Games, governmentgalvanised bids from across Britain’s sporting landscape saw a line-up of some 70 major events committed to British soil over the next ten years. Those events all fall under UK Sport’s ‘Gold Event Series’, and 36 of them are world or European championships. Of course, there would have been an agenda-dominating event to come in 2018 had England’s bid to host that year’s Fifa World Cup not fallen well short when the votes were made in 2010. Nevertheless,
It is hoped that the new Ride London cycling event can become an annual staple for the city
London 2012 has proved, if proof were needed, that the UK not only has the capacity to host major international events, but that in doing so it can augment the reputation of those events to another level. Organisers of both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France cycling races will be counting on that as they capitalise on the UK’s current cycling boom by bringing the starts of their respective events to Belfast and Yorkshire next year. Ride London, a weekend-long London Marathon-style cycling event in and around the capital, achieved huge success in its inaugural running in early August. With a little more effort securing big names for the professional race, it could become one of the standout annual events spawned by the Games. According to Iain Edmondson, head of major events at official promotional body London & Partners, effective Games-time data capture should ensure that the UK’s ability to sell out events endures. The Locog database, Edmondson explains, consists of five million people who signed up and were interested in tickets for certain sports during the Games. “The ability to communicate with that audience has now been passed on to a consortium of UK Sport, London & Partners and Sport England,” he says, “and there are monthly communications that go out to that audience that are appropriate and targeted to their interests, or evolved to meet the future interests. It’s collectively people being smart enough to recognise the value in that to do it and do it properly.”
Selected international sporting events in the UK, post London 2012 Rugby League World Cup
2013
Triathlon World Championships Grand Final
2013
IPC Athletics Grand Prix Final
2013
World Youth Netball Championships
2013
World Squash Championships
2013
Gymnastics World Cup
2013
WTF Taekwondo Grand Prix Final
2013
Wheelchair Singles Tennis Masters
2014
Giro d’Italia
2014
Tour de France
2014
Ryder Cup
2014
Commonwealth Games
2014
IRB Rugby World Cup
2015
World Gymnastics Championships
2015
IPC Swimming World Championships
2015
European Wheelchair Basketball Championships
2015
World Canoe Slalom Championships
2015
European Eventing Championships
2015
European Hockey Championships
2015
IAAF World Athletics Championships
2017
IPC World Athletics Championships
2017
ICC Cricket World Cup
2019
4. Olympic stadium saga aside, proper legacy planning ensured a commercial future for the Olympic Park July’s Anniversary Games may have been a good opportunity for Londoners to indulge some early-onset nostalgia but it was also a reminder of the costly row that threatened to undermine the London 2012 legacy programme. London’s Olympic Stadium will now, finally, be stripped down from its Games mode and reconfigured – at an unexpected UK£150 million expense – as a 54,000-capacity soccer stadium with
retractable seating in place for athletics. Premier League club West Ham United will move in as the anchor tenant in the summer of 2016, by which time the stadium will already have proven its worth as a multi-sport facility when it hosts games in the 2015 Rugby World Cup. Third-tier soccer club Leyton Orient remain hopeful of a groundshare. The IAAF World Athletics Championships and their IPC equivalent
will arrive in 2017, while early rumours are circulating that the stadium will also form the centrepiece of a London bid for the 2022 Commonwealth Games. For Edmondson, an agonising process has at least produced the desired result. “To be honest, it’s perfect, really,” he says. “Getting something that’s complementary to what London offers.” Other new permanent venues left over from the Games will fill similar gaps in the British The Destinations Report 2014 | 109
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With the future of the Olympic Stadium settled, all of the permanent venues at the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park have commercial plans in place
capital’s sporting landscape. The city has long suffered from a lack of Olympic-sized swimming pools, as Edmondson points out, and both the Aquatics Centre – set to host the 2015 European Swimming Championships – and the velopark will have a community and elite purpose. Both Edmondson and Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, one of the UK’s greatest ever athletes and a member of the Locog team, flag up the potential of the less heralded Copper Box handball arena as an appropriate home for sports like British basketball and handball. Then there is the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park itself – already the new home of the Wireless music festival – with its adjacent housing and Westfield shopping centre. Jowell describes the reclamation of a long-derelict area as “the most tangible legacy left by the Games”, pointing out that three-quarters of the UK£7 billion spent on that part of the Olympic project went
on regeneration: “meaning washing two million tonnes of soil, decontaminating the radioactivity, getting rid of the mountains of rubbish, piles of old fridges, shopping trolleys, and general dereliction.” The iCITY consortium also signed a 200-year lease on the UK£300 million international media centre in May, transforming it into a high-capacity digital data storage facility, and renting space to the likes of Loughborough University, Hackney Community College and BT Sport. Connections to east London were heavily bolstered in the years before the Games and London’s transport network coped unexpectedly well with the heavy volumes of visitors. Still, major projects such as the UK£14.8 billion west-to-east Crossrail network are ongoing, as are debates over the future of the city’s airport infrastructure. Edmondson, however, points to “really big changes which sometimes go under the
radar” as key transport benefits of London 2012. “Just things like accessibility and disabled access on public transport – buses, Underground, even taxis – have taken a massive step forward in the quality of life for people in London,” he says. “The Olympics has been a catalyst for that.” Contributions to Olympic Stadium conversion costs: UK Treasury
UK£60 million
Newham Council
UK£40 million
London Legacy Development Corporation
UK£20 million
West Ham United FC
UK£15 million (plus UK£2 million a year rent, share of catering revenues, lump sum if club is sold in next ten years)
The construction of 11,000 new homes is planned at the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park, plus the largest new green space in any European city. 110 | www.sportspromedia.com
5. Olympic sport cannot drive nationwide sports participation on its own, but there is still time to develop a coherent strategy Perhaps none of London 2012’s bold legacy claims has looked as difficult to deliver upon as the suggestion that the Olympics would encourage greater participation. Pre-Games targets to encourage two million more Britons to take up sport before the opening ceremony were quietly revised. A year after the Games, it is unclear to what extent national habits are changing. The headline figure that the British government is keen to stress is that 1.3 million more people in the country are participating in sport on a weekly basis than in 2005, when the bid was successful. In London, according to the mayor’s office, an extra 277,500 had taken up sport over the same period. These figures themselves are disputed, with Tessa Jowell noting that the targets set during the bid phase had counted those doing sport three times a week, rather than once. A deeper row has brewed over funding. The government has ring-fenced spending on elite athletes through the UK Sport vehicle – which distributes money from the government and National Lottery to sports based on their performance against medal targets. However, there are concerns that grassroots spending, particularly on school sport, is more vulnerable. An annual UK£150 million ‘legacy boost’ for schools was announced at the start of the year but that comes in place of a UK£162 fund which was withdrawn in 2010. In January, plans to merge UK Sport with Sport England – one of the home nation bodies responsible for delivering funding to the grassroots – were scrapped. That decision was welcomed by sporting bodies as providing stability, but the lack of a coherent grassroots strategy may yet undermine the achievements
Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson (second left) says “systemic change” is needed in UK school sport
British sport is making on the world stage. Grey-Thompson calls for a “radical change” in how sport is taught in schools, with an emphasis on more bespoke training in physical education for teachers. “It’s not about investing massive sums of money,” she says, “it’s about systemic change.” Jowell cleaves to a similar line. “It requires drive and purpose,” she says of reform to school sport, “training more coaches, harnessing the huge volunteer army of coaches. More people volunteer in sport than they do in any other activity in the country. There is enormous potential here to be realised. We’ve just got to get on and do it.” Few elements of the UK’s post-Olympic strategy have become quite so politicised as participation. In September, the
Conservative-led coalition government scrapped a requirement for schoolchildren to take part in a guaranteed two hours of sport per week. Boris Johnson – perhaps burnishing his credentials as London’s Olympic mayor for a future run at the leadership of the party – responded by demanding two hours of school sport per day. For her part, Labour’s Jowell has suggested “a cross-party commitment to a ten-year plan for sporting growth”. Edmondson, meanwhile, gives his backing to mass participation schemes like the weekly Park Run – a timed, free five-kilometre run operated in several UK cities – as a way of stimulating greater activity. “Because it’s more about making it accessible,” he says, “and making it sustainable in numbers.”
6. The euphoria has faded, but the confidence remains “They said we couldn’t run a bath,” said Boris Johnson in July, “and we delivered the greatest Olympic and Paralympic Games the world has ever seen.” Self-confidence might be the biggest
unseen benefit to the UK of last year’s Olympic Games, after a build-up marked by a very British self-defeatism about the country’s major events capabilities. “I remember until about six weeks before
the Games,” says Grey-Thompson, “every other conversation I had was with people saying, ‘We’re never going to finish building it, the Games Makers will never turn up, the sport will be rubbish and the transport won’t The Destinations Report 2014 | 111
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work, the weather’s going to be rubbish.’” The result, of course, was quite different, with even the sun cooperating for two weeks of one of the UK’s wettest recent summers. Those tasked with building on last year’s success, Edmondson says, are taking fresh belief into the organisation of major events. “There’s almost a desire to do it because we can,” he says, citing London’s 2014 Tour de France stage as an example, “rather than thinking, how the hell are we going to do that?” The euphoria which greeted London 2012 has unsurprisingly proved harder to recapture, even if it has not been forgotten.
And eye contact is once again forbidden on public transport. For millions in the UK, the Games were a holiday from a period marked by economic uncertainty and austerity. The fate of the country’s Paralympic heroes is a case in point. In 2012 their achievements were said to have changed national attitudes towards disability but in 2013, several medallists face major lifestyle challenges due to government benefit reforms. Still, over two thirds of those questioned in a BBC survey conducted by ComRes to mark the first anniversary of the Games said that public expenditure on them had been
worthwhile, a figure which rose markedly in areas closer to the capital. Ultimately, goodwill around the Games will probably be tied to ongoing success in British sport, not to mention the viability of more tangible legacy projects. Edmondson foresees a further effect of the Games which will be measured over generations, rather than years. In decades to come, he notes, the young people affected by the Games will be policy-makers themselves, and he believes “that’s where we’ll really see the shift in the landscape of making it easier for sport to be part of our daily lives in the UK”.
7. The Games Maker model was a revelation that will spawn a thousand copycats For many of the millions of people who attended London 2012 events last year, the spirit and success of the Games were embodied by the Games Makers, the 70,000 purple-shirted volunteers who lent cheer and backbone to the local effort. “I think we’ve proved that if you let people be themselves that the character will come out,” said Phil Sherwood, the head of volunteering for Locog, in an interview with SportsPro late last year, “and that whilst we’ve got this reserved nature we’re actually a very, very welcoming nation.” Sherwood has himself established staff relations consultancy Purple and Red, bringing his Games Makers experience to the corporate and events world. The success of the London 2012 project has awakened interest in volunteering, with thousands of Britons hoping to share in the sense of fulfilment enjoyed by those at London 2012. To some extent, this has meant highlighting the importance of volunteers to British sport, with groups like Sport Makers aiming to connect people with opportunities at local clubs and events. Major event planners are also making greater play of their use of volunteers, following the Games Maker model. In June, over 900 red-shirted ‘cricketeers’ were a highly visible presence at cricket grounds as England and Wales hosted the ICC Champions Trophy, while ‘race makers’ were on hand to help at British horse racing venues across the summer. July’s Anniversary Games saw volunteers flood back to the Olympic Park. 112 | www.sportspromedia.com
The Games Maker project was a major London 2012 success and will be replicated at other events
Anecdotally, there is plenty of evidence that being part of the Games has left its mark on those who helped out. “I saw someone on the tube the other day and asked him where he was a Games Maker,” says Grey-Thompson,
“and he got really excited because I’d spotted his trainers. I’m sure it wasn’t perfect, but the fact that they still wear their shoes and watches means it must have rubbed off.” The impact may well be felt much
Grey-Thompson recalls spotting a thrilled ex-Olympic volunteer after recognising his grey trainers
62 per cent of Games Makers said they hoped to continue volunteering after London 2012 42 per cent of Londoners said the Games Makers had inspired them to begin volunteering or increase their efforts Figures from Inspired by 2012: The legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, report issued by UK government and mayor of London
further afield than that. 104 young Russians participated in the Sochi-London-Sochi project last year, and will go on to lead teams of volunteers in the winter Games in 2014. Around 25,000 volunteers are expected to be involved in Sochi 2014. The
project is a pioneering one in a country where volunteerism remains an unfamiliar movement, and the organisers hope it will have the added benefit of presenting a younger, friendlier Russian face to the world. That is an ambition shared by those
preparing for the Fifa World Cup there in 2018. Speaking to SportsPro in October 2012, the local organising committee chief executive Alexey Sorokin said: “The key word is soul. We will show the world a hospitable Russian soul.”
8 . London 2012 was also a lesson for the Olympic movement In IOC president Jacques Rogge’s closing speech to the “happy and glorious” 2012 Olympics, he made a point of singling out London’s Games Makers for praise. After 17 “unforgettable days”, Rogge declared, the world would “never forget the smiles, the kindness and the spirit of the wonderful volunteers, the much-needed heroes of the Games”. London’s volunteering operation is likely to be taken and replicated in future Games, and there were several other ‘takeaways’ for the IOC to consider. The fervour which greeted each day of competition during the Paralympics, and the successful marketing campaign that provoked it, were a breakthrough for disability sport. “The equivalence of the Olympic and Paralympic Games was hugely important for disability in general,” says Jowell. If London gave the Paralympic movement a springboard, there are moves within the city itself to sustain that momentum. Speaking in the wake of the Anniversary Games, the three-day event a year on from London 2012 that saw elite athletes and para-athletes compete again in front of capacity crowds at the Olympic Stadium, Edmondson explains that concerted efforts were made to have the IPC Athletics World Championships run alongside the ablebodied version in London in 2017.
The aggressive stance taken against the use of Olympic marks by small businesses was unpopular
“Since the Games there’s been a desire to say, ‘Well, look, this is actually the kind of thing that London can do for global sport,’ that we want to help sustain a shift for disability sport which 2017 will be a big marker for that,” he explains. “British Athletics are doing a lot for other disability sport events in the lead-up to that as well. It’s actually something that we’re doing that’s good for the city but also good for global sport. Having a much more visible platform for disability sport is nothing but a good thing, really.”
Locog’s attitude to diversity in general is one to be applauded and mimicked. Sponsors and suppliers were encouraged to think about who they employed and how they gave back to their communities, and the organisers themselves practised what they preached. “Locog did what they were trying to get other companies to do,” says GreyThompson. “I think the age range went from 16 to 70, and that included lots of diversity. The public coming to the Games was diverse, so the business had to be The Destinations Report 2014 | 113
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diverse. They had a lot of pin badges; they had an LGBT pin, a disability pin, and stuff like that so that people felt part of it. I think the LGBT pin was the biggest selling pin.” With Russia’s anti-gay laws coming into focus as the country prepares to host the 2014 winter Games in Sochi, it is a legacy the Olympic movement could do with transferring immediately. Commercially, despite the success of the local sponsorship programme, the anti-ambush regulations now deemed mandatory by the IOC in the law of any country wishing to host the Games put strain on the hundreds of businesses that helped put on the London Games. Unable to talk about their association until a landmark ‘Supplier Recognition Programme’ was agreed between the British Olympic Association, the UK government and the IOC, nearly 700 licensees are only now benefiting from being able to tell their own Olympic stories. “I think the IOC is going to have to look again at the degree of restriction imposed on branding and intellectual
London 2012 could come to be seen as a watershed in the progress of the Paralympic movement
property,” says Jowell. “Certainly one of the things that did cause bad feeling was small and medium-sized businesses that took part
in creating the Olympic Park not being able to declare their responsibility for the role they played in it. I think that was missing a chance.”
9. The UK is experiencing the natural ebb of an Olympic sponsorship cycle, but there are sponsors out there Talk of London and the UK being consumed by a sponsorship vacuum in the wake of the Games is exaggerated. There will be an inevitable drop-off in corporate funding after any Olympics. The majority of support from Locog sponsors went into organising the Games themselves – as the 57 per cent of value-in-kind income the organisers received from them will attest – while the wider local market will also dry up as non-Olympic sponsors looking to create some kind of illicit association no longer have a reason to do so. Regardless of the Games, London was and remains one of the world’s sporting and cultural capitals, and therefore an inevitable magnet for sponsors. Fresh from its role as Locog’s communications and Paralympicsspecific sponsor, BT is significantly increasing its sports sponsorship spending, owing largely to its entrance into the sports broadcast landscape this year. Of all the campaigns around the Games, Virgin Media’s ambushing broadband one is 114 | www.sportspromedia.com
perhaps the most enduring. Ads featuring a Branson-bearded Mo Farah and Usain Bolt are still being produced, and with more no doubt in the pipeline as the telecoms brand builds towards the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, a property it signed an official partnership with in May. Another branch of the Virgin business empire, Virgin Money, has signed a significant deal post-Olympics, renewing its title sponsorship of the London Marathon for five years in April. UK-based multinational insurance company Prudential had no association with the Games, but signed on as the title backer of the cycling legacy event Ride London in a three-year deal. Meanwhile Sainsbury’s, a key backer of the Paralympics, acted in the same role for London’s athletics legacy event, the Anniversary Games, though that deal was part of a wider agreement that saw the supermarket chain come in to replace Aviva as a major sponsor of British Athletics. The track and field governing body was one of eight in the UK to have major deals expire
in the immediate aftermath of the Games. Not all of them have been so effective in finding replacements. Unable to find a sponsor to back its own planned legacy event, for example, the British Volleyball Federation had to scrap plans to hold another event at Horse Guards Parade this year. To ensure a commercial legacy for Britain’s Olympic governing bodies, Sir Keith Mills, one of Britain’s most celebrated entrepreneurs and the deputy chairman of Locog, had proposed pooling the rights of most of the country’s sporting governing bodies in the wake of the Games. The British Sports Marketing Bureau project, however, never got off the ground. “There are more than 70 sports bodies in the UK, governing bodies of sports, Sports Coach UK, the English Institute of Sport, and they all currently try to raise their own commercial partnerships,” Mills explained to SportsPro in late July. “My experience of working with commercial partners is that commercial partners generally are not
interested in a sport, they’re interested in people who buy their products. So if you’re P&G, you’re only interested in things that can get you to mums because mums buy their products. The bureau would then have gone off and put together a school sports programme with some netball, gymnastics,
some swimming, a collection of rights, which deliver to P&G what they want. “The majority of people in sport thought this was a really good idea. It might not have represented the FA or the RFU but pretty much the rest of sport. So we said, ‘If you tell us you will endorse us, we, and I was going
to take the lead on it, we’re going to get some money from government, set up a not-forprofit company, I’ll go out and hire the people and we’ll go out and represent sport. It won’t cost you a penny.’ Out of 70 we got just short of 40 that said ‘yes’ and that was a long way short of where we needed to get to.”
10. International Inspiration is a model for the IOC, but the onus is still on sponsors to lead the way in the community If legacy is now a central theme in any major event bidding process, it is probably thanks to London’s bid for the 2012 Games. Fresh from the Athens Olympics of 2004 – perhaps the best example of a Games carried out with little to no forethought as to what would come afterwards – the London team went into the 2005 IOC voting process with a powerful dual goal that resonated with an IOC membership desperate to avoid another expensive hangover. The 2012 Games would provide a tangible legacy not only in London, the bid team claimed, but also around the world. “We were absolutely determined that these would not only be London’s Games in the UK, but they would be London’s Games with extended global benefit,” recalls Jowell, a key member of the bidding party. Mills, vice chairman of the bid, has subsequently admitted that at that stage the bid team hadn’t the faintest idea about how they would go about achieving the global part of that promise. What emerged was International Inspiration, a programme developed by Unicef, the British Council and UK Sport and designed to enrich the lives of millions of youngsters around the world through sport and physical education. Even before London 2012 the programme
had achieved its original target of reaching 12 million children in 20 countries; the onus now is on making sure International Inspiration initiatives become sustainable in the long term. “The fact it is now being carried on is quite exciting,” notes Grey-Thompson. If a global Olympic CSR model now seems to be in place, it might also be argued that London 2012 demonstrated the increasing importance attached to community-focused initiatives by corporates in the UK. To cite one example, Lloyds TSB bank, a top-tier domestic Locog partner, shaped much of its Games sponsorship around a programme called Local Heroes, selecting 45 up-andcoming athletes from different parts of the country to provide a focal point in communities across the nation. Lloyds also launched the National School Sport Week in collaboration with the Youth Sports Trust, with 21,000 schools signing up to take part. In some cases non-Games sponsors have taken up the baton in the months since London 2012. British supermarket chain Asda, for example, signed up gold medalist long jumper Greg Rutherford in July to front its new Asda Active fitness drive, which helped the Sports Leaders UK charity run 400 free sports days in primary
Olympic gymnast Beth Tweddle takes part in an official London 2012 legacy project for children
schools across Britain this summer. Such initiatives appear to lend weight to Jowell’s view that “up and down the country there are projects that are creating social benefit that would never have happened without the Olympics”.
11. There was no cyber revolution, but substantive technological leaps were made The first social Olympics presented the organisers with two substantial challenges. Firstly, to make sure that digital devices worked so that Olympic experiences could be recorded, en masse, like never before – satisfying plenty of sponsor activation plans
in the process. But secondly, to protect the Olympic movement’s chief source of income – television rights fees – by ensuring that use of digital devices didn’t infringe on any broadcaster rights. While encouraging the use of social
media under the catchy internal motto ‘don’t commercialise it, personalise it’, the IOC’s television department was nevertheless prompted to deal with around 100,000 incidences of what it deemed to be piracy during the Games, and most of The Destinations Report 2014 | 115
Destinations Report 2014 LEGACY
Athletes took to sharing experiences of London
the illegal, personally uploaded live streams “within minutes”. That so many illegal streams from unique positions inside venues were possible is, in its own way, a credit to the beefed-up network capacity around the Olympic Park. Ofcom, the UK’s independent regulator for communications, borrowed radio spectrum capacity from the Ministry of Defence as part of its strategy to keep everyone connected at the Games. It was a strategy that Jowell calls “a big leap” forward. “We didn’t have the communications collapse that we had, for instance, at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games,” she
says. “I think the management of spectrum by Ofcom showed that you could have people taking pictures on their smartphones, phoning their mums and dads, girlfriends and boyfriends and being able to get through.” Grey-Thompson, who was vice chair of Locog’s athletes’ commission, says the wrangling that went on to get a Wi-Fi system installed in the athletes village would seem extraordinary now. “You’re trying to think four or five years ahead,” she says. “It seems so out of date now, but we had a really big fight early on to get Wi-Fi in the village. They were saying, ‘Really? Are you sure we need to spend on that?’”
3,500 – the number of point of sale devices with contactless capabilities installed by IOC sponsor Visa across Olympic venues. “That’s the same size as a city like Reading – it’s huge,” explained Mariano Dima, chief marketing officer at Visa Europe, which used the Games to showcase new contactless payment technology in tandem with Lloyds TSB and Samsung. 12. The media have never been more interested in the Olympic and Paralympic Games, but they are no longer the sole information gatekeepers While Facebook was founded before the Athens Olympics in 2004, and Twitter arrived two years later, London 2012 was truly the first digital Games. 20,000 members of the media were accredited in London, but, thanks principally to social media, information sources extended far beyond that number.
The UK media came down with Olympic fever
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“I was commentating on the cycling from the Mall and it was quite fun watching the British cyclists’ Twitter numbers change – going from 200 to 49,000 at the end of the day,” recalls Grey-Thompson. It wasn’t just the athletes: agenda-setting was done to a large extent by the wider public. “Our media feel it’s their duty to strip the gloss of optimism and achievement and present a rather more critical view,” explains Jowell of the British press corps, equally lauded and criticised around the world for their tenacity. “But they found themselves unable to do that becausea to do so would have been completely out of sync with the public mood. In a way what happened with the first four days of our Olympics was that the public owned them as theirs.” The mutually propelling positivity and interest from the public and the media spilled over from the Olympics into the Paralympics, helped to some degree by the fact that for the first time home broadcast duties were split between the two Games.
Channel 4 won awards for its coverage of the Paralympics, and is operating with a newfound confidence as a sports broadcaster today, but its marketing around the event was catching. “The Paralympics were at a whole new level,” confirms Grey-Thompson, who, with 11 gold medals to her name, is Britain’s greatest-ever Paralympian. “There were significantly more media there than at any other Games. British people like watching sport, they’re not necessarily bothered what it is. “I think there’s been a massive change in the way Paralympians are viewed with these Games and that’s because of the media coverage.” The civil rights issues in Russia and the social unrest seen during the Confederations Cup in Brazil are bound to be topics of focus for foreign media at the next two Games. Taking a lead, again, from the public mood may well result in rather different headlines than were produced last summer.
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Destinations report 2014 COLUMN
Supporting Canberra’S next 100 yearS James paterson, director of repucom’s government, tourism and events division.
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anberra is Australia’s capital city and part of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), one of the eight States and Territories of Australia. Officially established as Australia’s capital city in 1913, it is now home to almost 400,000 residents. Last year, Canberra celebrated its centenary and this gave Canberra the strategic opportunity to showcase itself as major event destination. It also gave the city an opportunity to show event owners and sporting federations its excellent infrastructure and that it could successfully host a large variety of events from major blockbuster art exhibitions at the National Gallery, or first ever events like the Rugby League Test match between Australia and New Zealand and a cricket one day international featuring Australia. The ACT Government contracted Repucom to robustly measure both the holistic impact of its entire major event portfolio as well as gauge the support of the people of Canberra for hosting future events. The final strategic imperative was to provide the ACT with a consistent and objective pre and post event investment selection process designed for fully informed and objective decision making. The ACT Government fully embraced the notion that major events should deliver a host of benefits beyond purely economic gains. A tailored event impact evaluation program was therefore put in place to measure the following key impacts: Global marketing and media impacts To measure the event’s ability to showcase what Canberra has to offer and reinforce its key brand attributes in order to drive future visitation. Tourism impacts - To understand visitor satisfaction with Canberra as a destination. Event attendee satisfaction - To understand what attendees liked and didn’t like across all touch points of an event. Social and community impacts - To 118 | www.sportspromedia.com
gauge the impacts (both positive and negative) on the wider community and how, each event increased vibrancy, civic pride and whether they made Canberra a better place to live and work. Sponsorship impact - To measure sponsor awareness, perceptions and future purchase consideration. Economic impact – Visitation numbers, origin and whether attendees came or extended their stay as a direct result of the event. This detailed post event impact measurement was undertaken across both the ACT Government’s major event portfolio as well as the four Australian professional teams it supports. A separate representative on-going community impact tracking study with multiple objectives was also undertaken: To understand the awareness, engagement, interest and attendance across Canberra’s centenary events. In fact, almost three out of four people attended at least one event, 97 per cent of Canberrans were aware of the events and 85 per cent of them also believed that the events increased civic pride. To understand how important major events are viewed by the Canberra community. 94 per cent of Canberrans were supportive of an on-going calendar of major events. To research the appetite of the residents of Canberra for continued backing and future government investment in major events. Nine out of ten people expressed their support and 77 per cent of the residents of Canberra were happy that taxpayer funds were being used to invest in events. To assist future strategic direction. Driving visitors and supporting the economy were seen to be the most favoured benefits of hosting events in Canberra. To assist future strategic direction around what event genres the people of
Canberra would like to see. The people of Canberra proposed a varied major event program to cater for all tastes. There was also significant additional research that specifically analysed the levels of awareness and engagement with each key event as well a tracking study to benchmark the sporting interest, participation, consumption and engagement of the people of Canberra. Not only did this allow ACT Government to understand the holistic impact of its major events and the teams it supports, but it also provided a mandate to continue to invest in major events as well as helping to define the direction of what those future events might be. The final piece of strategic research required by the ACT Government was a thorough review of its current event investment procedures. Repucom was briefed to build a tailored, best practice event strategy framework to enable the ACT Government to maximise the benefits and outcomes it receives from its future major event investments, whilst utilising a consistent and directly comparable evaluation methodology. With Canberra having recently launched its new brand messaging and logo, this strategic approach has enabled the ACT Government to better understand the value and success of its events, the attitudes of its residents and how to align its future activities to showcase Canberra as a modern and transformational city that is looking forward to its next 100 years.
Delivering Business Solutions in Sport Brands - Host Cities - Rights Holders - Venues
www.thesportsconsultancy.com Contact: Angus Buchanan/Robert Datnow Address: The Sports Consultancy, 81 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6HJ - Tel: +44 (0) 20 7323 0007 - Email: info@thesportsconsultancy.com