Steve Pagliuca spent his first week as chairman of the Boston 2024 Olympic bid committee trying to reassure the International Olympic Committee that Boston residents eventually will support the bid. Part of that task will be unlocking more explicit endorsements from reluctant Boston corporate titans.
Since the U.S. Olympic Committee chose Boston as its designated bid city in January, privately funded Boston 2024 has struggled to win over the general public, leading former chairman John Fish to turn the reins over to Pagliuca, co-owner of the Boston Celtics and managing partner of Boston-based Bain Capital, late last month. The bid effort hasn’t been helped, many say, by widespread reluctance among Boston’s corporations to fully, publicly endorse the bid.
“I just think everyone is, to use an aviation term, in a holding pattern,” said Brian Higgins, a top Boston executive for New York-based Apollo Jets who recently met with bid committee officials and counts himself as a huge supporter. Most of his high-end clients are too, he says, but they won’t say so publicly.
“It’s a wait-and-see approach before people put their support behind it, their financial support, and more importantly their time, which is worth more than all of that,” Higgins said. “People want to perceive that it has a better chance of happening versus it being a nonstarter.”
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Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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To the rescue?
Steve Pagliuca
■ Age: 60
■ New chairman, Boston 2024
■ Co-owner, Boston Celtics
■ Managing director, Bain Capital
To be sure, support isn’t entirely lacking. Twenty companies and 59 individuals or families have contributed to the Boston 2024 cause, according to its website, and The Boston Globe reported in March that funding stood at $23 million. Others, like Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino and Hill Holliday co-founder Jack Connors, have agreed to give their labor to the effort.
But many other influential executives in Boston who control large workforces, budgets and the means to reach the mass market have said little as public support dipped and critics became louder.
Their hesitance ranges from reluctance to be seen as drawing a premature conclusion about the Games’ merit, to a fear of attaching their brand to Boston 2024 after a string of negative publicity around uncertain venue planning, costly consultant contracts and the possibility of taxpayers getting the bill for cost overruns. On Wednesday, the onslaught continued when Boston media obtained documents showing that the initial proposal relies on promises of government bonds and special legislation. There’s also the basic concern that Boston 2024 could fail.
Most executives didn’t return messages seeking comment for this article or refused to speak on the record. The Boston Chamber of Commerce, which hasn’t mentioned the Olympics on its website since March, also did not reply to requests for comment.
Erin Murphy, Boston 2024 vice president and COO, said in an email that the group has come this far thanks to significant support from a diverse range of businesses.
“As we continue to shape our bid and engage with the community, we will add many more bright minds and business leaders to our team,” Murphy said.
It’s still early, supporters say. But the clock is ticking toward the September deadline for the USOC to officially nominate Boston, and bids typically can’t win without robust, widespread consensus in favor of the Games.
Bid committee officials have reached out to businesses early and often, and the response has been enthusiastic — in private, said Jim Delaney, president and CEO of Activate Sports & Entertainment, a sports marketing and PR firm in Boston.
“But if the local citizenry, if your local customers, might not be into it, why would you come out publicly in loud support of this effort?” Delaney said. “Why potentially damage your brand by aligning with something the population isn’t interested in?”
Backers believe a revised bid proposal due out in late June will help settle many concerns about cost projections, venues and the risk to taxpayers, freeing up prominent businesses to more confidently support the bid. At a minimum, observers said, they expect that document to allay fears of a worst-case scenario — that the USOC would drop Boston as its bid choice, however remote that possibility.
But in the meantime, opponents are not shy about drawing conclusions.
“We kind of have the operating assumption that Boston 2024 has basically asked every business leader in the commonwealth to jump on its team,” said Chris Dempsey, co-founder of No Boston Olympics. “And the ones who decided not to are either opposed to the Games or at least have some healthy skepticism that it’s the right thing, a) for their business and b) for the commonwealth in general.”
That’s perhaps overstating the case — three business leaders described themselves as 2024 enthusiasts but would not speak on the record. But robust political support from the business community could help ease passage of a public referendum in 2016 and convince the IOC that the Games are really wanted.
Michael Payne, a former IOC marketing director who advises bid cities and sponsorship clients on Olympic matters, said the bid committee must convince businesses of the long-term “legacy” benefits of the Games to avoid focusing on the short-term disruption. Also, he said, they should take issues of cost overruns head-on to give businesses more confidence in their own position.
Payne said the USOC’s choice of Boston in January took many by surprise, forcing the committee to play catch-up on the public relations side of the equation.
“What Boston has clearly got to do is fast-track their whole PR/communications campaign to make sure that people are debating the issues from fact as opposed to hearsay, misunderstanding or comparing to previous Games, apples to oranges,” Payne said.
Supporters are putting a lot of stock in Pagliuca’s ability to bring around hesitant constituents. Unlike Fish, a construction magnate, Pagliuca’s business of the Celtics is intrinsically tied to public opinion, Higgins said. “I think hopefully in the next 60 to 90 to 180 days, you’ll hopefully start seeing a better campaign with these guys in place,” he said.
But Pagliuca’s other day job, as managing director for Bain Capital, could pose problems, said one veteran sports marketing executive. In a city populated with populist liberals leery of big business, Pagliuca’s experience as a private equity investor and corporate turnaround artist isn’t necessarily a positive, according to this source, who did not want to be named.
“I think [the leadership change] gives them the ability to say they’re starting fresh, but I’m not sure Pagliuca generates a huge amount of confidence that Lucchino or Mitt Romney might,” the executive said. “And as much as people love the Celtics, he’s got the baggage of being a Bain Capital guy.”
