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Pan Am Games provide a small taste of Rio

The medal winners certainly don’t consider the Pan American Games to be merely practice, but many Olympic sponsors, marketers, support staff and TV producers saw the Toronto event as just that: a dry run for Rio.

Lacking many top-tier athletes and a prominent TV presence, the Pan Am Games hardly dent the American sports psyche. But with 41 countries contesting 36 sports over 17 days, or sort of a mini-Olympics for North and South America, Toronto provided a window into the unique challenges sure to be presented by the 2016 Summer Olympics and a chance to try new things ahead of Rio. All just 90 minutes by air from New York City.

ESPN Deportes crew and broadcasters on the set in Toronto, where the media and sponsors are using the Pan American Games to help them get ready for next year’s Summer Olympics.
Photo by: ESPN
Nick Griffith, an Olympic marketing specialist at Octagon, accompanied a three-person client contingent to Toronto for three days last week. He showed them how marketers manage the scope of a multisport event and the diversity of the audience, which comes from dozens of cultures and runs the gamut from avid sports fans to casual corporate guests.

“I think it does open their eyes, because you can’t really understand what the [Olympic] Games are like if you haven’t attended the event in the past,” Griffith said over an early morning coffee near Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square, one of the focal points of the Pan Am festivities. “This is a smaller version of that.”

In some cases, the Pan Am Games, which ended Sunday, was the first and only time operational teams will have to jell before Rio.

On July 21, ESPN International senior coordinating producer Maria Soares was supervising live coverage from the network’s on-location studio near Lake Ontario. Rio was in the back of her mind.

Next year, ESPN has nonexclusive Olympic rights to all of Latin America, which will mean four distinct regional broadcasts — northern Latin America, the Caribbean, southern Latin America and Brazil. Up to 300 employees are going to Rio, and ESPN will have at least 12 roving reporter teams there. Toronto 2015 is the largest Olympic-style event ESPN has ever aired, and the company’s operation in Rio will nearly double it, Soares said.

In Toronto, ESPN Deportes tried out several new tactics that it will also employ in Brazil. The network used reporters with live video feed capabilities for the first time (instead of requiring them to deliver tape to headquarters) and also for the first time assigned reporters to social media and the “color” of the Games. The network also is managing a major expansion of digital coverage, cycling athlete interviews through three sets, creating content for live TV, studio shows and Web-friendly digital clips.

The team itself got a trial run, too.

“We hand-selected what we thought might be the Olympic team and said, let’s have them do Pan Am Games, because we wanted them to get a real hands-on experience to this type of multisport event,” Soares said. “There’s no way to rehearse for the Olympics unless you’re doing something like this.”

Simply walking around the venues watching fans is a benefit to sponsors, Griffith said, even those who might be experienced in other sports.

“You can see how [fans] dressed, the premiums they take to,” Griffith said. “Some sponsors are passing out flags, and that seems popular. You see pin trading. You’re not going to see that at a soccer match.”

For local Canadian marketers, the Pan Am Games offered a chance to scout athletes, said Matt Lewis, managing director of GMR Marketing’s Toronto office. The Canadian Olympic Committee encouraged more elite athletes to participate in the Pan Am Games in hopes of boosting the country’s medal count and drawing local fans. Brazil had a similar strategy in terms of boosting interest ahead of the Rio Games.

“It’s a bit of an audition a year out,” Lewis said. “It’s an opportunity for the clients to come and see the athletes in their element, in their sport, and understand how that aligns with your brand.”

The U.S. Olympic Committee used the Pan Am Games as a chance to keep fine-tuning the little things, such as how it distributes uniforms and ceremonial gear to Team USA, which had 623 members in Toronto. Usually, the athletes are herded into a massive conference room and turned loose to find their own sized gear.

This year, however, the USOC attempted to distribute the correct clothing ahead of time and called only the athletes who needed exchanges to the Toronto airport Hilton. The USOC’s media, sports medicine and transportation operations all were practicing for Rio and jelling as a team, said Alan Ashley, chief of sport performance and the ranking USOC executive in Toronto.

“We’re trying out little things like that all over the place,” Ashley said.

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