Menu
On The Ground in Rio

Ben's Blog: Rio 2016 Struggling To Manage, Train Corps Of Volunteers

Rio 2016 organizers are struggling to manage their corps of more than 56,000 unpaid volunteers, leading to reports of unhelpful directions, conflicting advice and lack of consistent rules at security checkpoints.

Organizing committee spokesperson Mario Andrada said the volunteers are not badly trained in general but have been assigned to different locations after others failed to report for work.

“There’s no lack of training,” Andrada said. “We’ve probably had to move them around more than we wanted. You know, the level of volunteers that give up, the people who don’t show up the next day, it’s a bit higher than we expected. In some areas we have to move them around to cover the other structures, and as a matter of fact, we keep getting more and more volunteers because we need more of them.”

On Monday afternoon, Louis Vega, Dow Chemical Co. chief of staff and VP of Olympic and sports solutions, arrived late to a meeting after struggling to navigate the Olympic Park. Volunteers could not help him find a credentials-only path into the media building, he said.

“Normally volunteers know the venues inside and out,” Vega said.

Other sources have passed along anecdotes of volunteers apparently not understanding security protocol at the media and athlete villages. Reporters are often given conflicting advice on which bus is going where from major venues.

Andrada said the volunteer corps is improving and will get better as they spend more time at their assigned venues.

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Global/Issues/2016/08/10/On-The-Ground-In-Rio/Volunteers.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Global/Issues/2016/08/10/On-The-Ground-In-Rio/Volunteers.aspx

CLOSE