With poll data showing languishing support in Boston for the effort to host the ’24 Games there, USOC CEO Scott Blackmun was both remorseful over early missteps and confident that the effort could still succeed when he spoke yesterday during a panel at the IMG World Congress of Sports. Blackmun said, “We didn’t get out of the gate, I think, the way we wanted to. If you look at past bids -- Peter Ueberroth had an interview yesterday where he said Los Angeles had 20% support at one point; London was in the 40s at one point. So as we look at the different campaigns that we have to wage, internationally, we have two and a half years until the vote. In Boston, we simply have to do a better job at the communications. It’s a really, really good bid that’s all about education, innovation and using existing facilities. It’s about cost effectiveness. So if we can engage the super intelligent and super engaged community -- and Boston press -- in the right way, we think we will win them over. And if we do, we think we’ll have a fantastic ’24 Games.” Blackmun added of the perceived mistake that Boston ’24 made in hiring politically wired consultants to fill out its staff, “We do need to make more strategic decisions. We have to include in our communications some very, very credible spokesmen who understand the Games and who the people in Boston believe in, so I think you’ll see some new things coming out of Boston. And, look, the Games would not be successful unless the people of Boston support it, so the last thing we want to do is take the Games to Boston if they don’t want it.” He said the USOC was "lucky to have four great bids" to host the games, including failed efforts from DC, L.A. and S.F., but the organization is "not in discussion with any of those three cities right now." Blackmun: "We’d be the first to acknowledge that, look, these bids cost upwards of $100 million sometimes, so that’s not a good investment of time and money unless this is something Boston really wants. And we have to engage in that battle in the near term. … So for me, it’s all about transparency and credibility at this point. And once we establish that beachhead, we’ll be able to talk about legacy.”
THE BOYS OF SUMMER: Blackmun was asked whether the USOC is smarting from the decision not to bid for the ’22 Winter Games when the two finalists -- Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan -- are not seen as popular choices. Blackmun: “We looked at that very, very carefully and the board concluded that the Summer Games is what we want to do. We haven’t hosted the Summer Games since Atlanta in 1996. We had a great experience with Salt Lake City in 2002. But our ability to reach the youth of America and get them engaged in Olympic sport had a little bit longer reach if we went for the Summer Games. In retrospect, it would have been an interesting competition because we thought Oslo would be in, Switzerland would have a city. Obviously people are concerned about the number of times the games are going to Asia as opposed to Europe, North America, etc. I would be kidding you if I had told you we hadn’t thought about it. But it is what it is and we’re looking forward and focused just on ’24 right now.”
KEEPING A LID ON SPENDING: Blackmun said IOC President Thomas Bach’s new agenda to cut costs associated with the Olympics is "brilliant because what it’s all about is how do we make the Games more affordable so that people don’t spend $50 billion, which was the reported number coming out of Sochi, or $50 billion in Beijing, because most countries can’t do that." He said, "If you look at the most recent Games, they’ve all been held by managed economies and financed by central governments. That’s not how we do it here and it’s not how we’ll ever do it here. So we have to find a way to make it more affordable. One of those is by using venues that have uses after the Games. Another is by having communities share the Games. I think his vision is brilliant and, quite frankly, it’s why we chose Boston.”
