2012 London Olympics

Thanks also to a deal that highlights FoxSports.com stories on MSN’s home page, FoxSports.com saw record-high traffic during the first week of the Games. FoxSports.com logged 73 million visits during the first full week of the Games (July 29-Aug. 4). That number is the highest the site has ever seen for a week and more than tripled the number of visitors to its Beijing site in 2008.

Fox had told advertisers that it expected 40 million unique visitors during the Games.

During the Olympics opening weekend (July 27-29), FoxSports.com’s Olympic section had almost 11 million unique visitors. The official rights holder, NBCOlympics.com, had 7.4 million unique visitors during the opening weekend. Traffic for the Olympics’ second week will be released Tuesday or Wednesday.

“With our partnership with MSN, we were obviously going to get more traffic than we’ve ever had before,” said Rick Jaffe, senior vice president and editor-in-chief of Fox Sports Interactive Media. “We’ve done really well on the advertising side. We’ve been doing great on the traffic side from video and page views.”

The Fox Sports set overlooked Olympic Park. JOHN OURAND PHOTO

Jaffe shares the set atop east London’s Westfield Mall with sister company Sky Sports, a British TV station. He instantly fell in love with the site, located just outside of the Olympic Village, when he saw the sightlines he would have.

“It’s that instant credibility factor,” Jaffe said. “The BBC’s shots are no better than ours, and they do have the rights. This puts you right there with the people who are actually doing it at the big-time level: the BBC, NBC. We’re right there with them.”

Without online video rights, FoxSports.com decided to focus on the four most popular Olympic sports in the United States: swimming, basketball, gymnastics and track and field. Jaffe hired a former gold medalist from each sport to provide commentary throughout the Games.

FoxSports.com saw a lot of traffic, for example, after Michael Phelps won his record-setting 22nd medal. FoxSports.com produced an online program where the gold medalists discussed whether Phelps was the greatest Olympian.

Dave Morgan, USA Today Sports Media Group’s senior vice president of content and editor-in-chief, helped FoxSports.com develop its Olympic strategy. FoxSports.com hired him as a consultant before he took the USA Today job last year.

USA Today, which had about 80 staffers in London, followed a similar strategy as FoxSports.com, even if it didn’t have as grand a studio set.

“For people that watch the great production that NBC does, they’re still going to go to the TV for that. NBC’s going to have the highlights,” Morgan said. “We don’t necessarily need to compete in that area. It’s available for the audience. We don’t own it. And there’s nothing we can do with any of that to differentiate from the rights holder. … People are looking for something else. If all they are looking for is highlights, we’re out of that game anyway. We can tell by video consumption that’s not all they’re looking for.”

Instead, Morgan’s team focused on story-telling and future events, rather than spending a lot of time recapping events that already took place.

“By taking that approach, we get out of the biggest problem with video — and this is why NBC has thousands of people here — and that’s the quick turnaround,” Morgan said. “If we spend all of our time getting a videographer and a host and a gymnastics expert and a gymnastics reporter together to talk video about what just happened in team qualifying, by the time we get that up, it’s not the story anymore.”

At press time, the London Games were on pace to set a viewership record on broadcast TV and cable TV.

But they already obliterated digital numbers that came out of Beijing. The 102.6 million total video streams in the first week was higher than all of Beijing. The 45 million live video streams was more than three times higher than Beijing.

Visitors to NBCOlympics.com were spending 27 minutes per visit on the site, which more than doubled the time spent during the Beijing Olympics.

NBC was able to sell $60 million worth of ads around its digital offering. The network doesn’t sell digital ads on its own; instead, they are packaged with a more traditional TV buy.

“We have more live event programming [on television] going against itself than ever before. It’s all above where it was historically,” Lazarus said. “Simultaneous to that, we are streaming everything live. Every frame of every event that’s taking place at these Games is being streamed and available. I think it’s a technological feat that’s never been tackled.”

It’s too early to determine how this will play out in Sochi or Rio, Lazarus said. But based on the numbers coming out of London, it seems certain that NBC Sports will continue to build its digital business around the Olympics.

“It’s an evolving technology. It’s an evolving business. It’s evolving consumer habits,” Lazarus said. “Invariably, what we do in Sochi will be different from what we’re doing here. We will evolve our coverage. I haven’t thought of how. Nothing should stay the same from Games to Games.”

My cab driver from Victoria station to my hotel was like the family’s aggravated son. He had been excited when London won the Olympics seven years ago, but the more he listened to talk radio and heard about road closures, the more agitated he became. He spent most of the drive apologizing for how much longer the drive was than it should be.

“They’ve got everything shut down around Buckingham Palace for the cycling this weekend,” he said. “It’s going to be dreadful.”

He had made plans to avoid the coming calamity by taking two weeks off during the Olympics. It was a tactic a lot of Londoners took during the first week of the Games.

■  ■  ■

I had my own sense of dread about these Olympics. I was worried about the weather, the failure of security contractor G4S and the lines for venues.

The news that came from London the past six months turned an Olympics I was looking forward to into one filled with foreboding.

My first day didn’t help matters.

I planned to buy a mobile phone for emails and calls after I arrived. But I wasn’t prepared to do it at Westfield Stratford mall. The mall, which is the biggest in Europe, acts as the de facto entrance to the Olympic Park. It had five different mobile phone retailers. It took me an hour to figure out which phone to buy from which store.

When I tried to set up my email account on it two hours later, I discovered it was too outdated for our corporate email system. That meant I had to spend another hour walking back to the mall from Olympic Park and an hour after that swapping it out for a phone that did work. All in, I spent four hours of my first day just trying to get a phone that I could use.

Fortunately, things got easier from there. And Danny Boyle had a lot to do with that. There was an enormous difference in the country’s mood after the opening ceremony. Everyone collectively seemed to think, “Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.”

And it wasn’t. For them or for me.

During the next two weeks, I spent my days bouncing from sports to meetings to interviews. I saw handball, archery, diving, beach volleyball, shooting, rowing, swimming, gymnastics, basketball, tennis, track and field, track cycling, volleyball and boxing. I ate 18 Cliff bars, chewed 60 sticks of spearmint gum, and ate more boxed sandwiches than I can remember. I worked at seven different Starbucks.

I saw Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt make history, and went to a party attended by Jessica Ennis and the actor who played Matthew from “Downton Abbey.” I snuck in speed tours of Westminster Abbey, Churchill’s War Room and the Tate Modern. I visited Hampstead Heath with a college friend and heard her 2-year-old son, who is being raised in London, point at a deep gray sky and say, “Ahh, it’s sunny!”

I was called a wanker outside a tube stop and identified as an American “because [my] teeth are white.” I heard a Scottish emcee taunt the prime minister and coin a new phrase for raking sand between beach volleyball sets. “It’s rakey, rakey time!!!!”

I watched the lights flicker on and heard the closing-time-bell ring at a half-dozen pubs. I felt underdressed at Wimbledon and got damp with rain watching women’s marathon runners race through a downpour.

I heard music everywhere. “Born in the USA” after Phelps won his 19^th Olympic medal, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” as sand was raked at beach volleyball and LCD Soundsystem’s “This is how it Starts” during a 1,500-meter semifinal.

I marveled at the bag of tricks organizers used to keep people smiling for two straight weeks. They hired jazz dancers to perform in front of a long line for the Javelin, they gave away free water and ice cream on a hot day, and volunteers kept things humorous with an array of jokes. “They look OK, but I’m not sure about you lot.”

By my last trip to the park, it was clear London was a different place than it had been when I arrived. Great Britain had been through some dark times over the last year or so. Austerity measures had made the nation feel weak, and the riots that hit London last year left its citizens uncertain about the future. But the Olympics and Team GB’s overwhelming medal success had changed that.

Chris Kay, a 63-year-old retired civil engineer who I walked to the Olympic Park with that last day, put it this way: “The Olympics is a morale booster. It’s not a good time for us. This is a shot in the arm and a reminder we can do something big.”

■  ■  ■

By the time I left Friday morning, London was loose and upbeat. The Olympics were almost over, and though tickets had been scarce and business had been slower than expected, optimism replaced the city’s doom and gloom.

My cab driver to Victoria station was chipper even in his British pessimism.

“How’s it been?” I said.

“Absolute crap!” he answered.

Business had been rubbish, he said, but he’d learned from a passenger who’d helped organize another Olympics that business is always rubbish during the Games. It’s not until four or five years after the Games, when people who watched decide to visit the host city, that businesses see increases. And he was OK with that.

“The roads have been absolutely dead,” he said. “It’s been lovely, really.”

It was 60 degrees and sunny outside as the cab sped through central London. I looked out the window as we drove past Number 10 Downing Street and Trafalgar Square. London was just waking up, and I couldn’t help but think that my cabbie was right.

The Olympics had been lovely.

Two of three women on the U.S. team won medals, with middleweight Claressa Shields winning gold on Thursday and flyweight Marlen Esparza claiming bronze. But the nine U.S. men all were eliminated short of the semifinals.

“Certainly, it would have been good for the country and for our network if they had been a little more successful,” said Stephen Espinoza, executive vice president and general manager of Showtime Sports. “But that doesn’t change our programming approach. The team still represents the cream of the crop of young U.S. boxers. And participating in the Olympics is still an achievement.”

Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer was in London this week to scout and, presumably, recruit talent. Schaefer said last week that he didn’t want to discuss further plans until after the Games.

Schaefer made it clear before he headed to London that he was interested not only in American talent, but in others. The company has deep promotional ties in Mexico and also promotes British star Amir Kahn, a silver medalist in 2004. Four fighters from Great Britain’s team remained alive entering the semifinals. But no boxers from Mexico, Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic — three Spanish-speaking countries that are most likely to produce fighters who are marketable in the U.S. — made it to the semis.

While Showtime and CBS are willing to air Olympians who hail from outside the U.S., the network’s commitment is based around the Americans. They announced the deal before the Games in the hope that it would percolate interest among fight fans.

“We were hoping that the idea of seeing these Olympians make their debut on CBS stuck with people while they were following the Olympic Games,” Espinoza said. “So if somebody caught their eye, we would have the seed of an idea germinating; a hint that this was coming. We wanted people to anticipate their pro debuts.”

The Olympians’ debuts will mark the first time boxing has aired live on CBS since 1998. NBC is scheduled to air its first pro fight card since 2004 in December.

The store was designed with help from Nike, Ralph Lauren and Polo, which gives it the same feel as a department store, with branded areas for each company’s products. The brands also provided store specialists to assist shoppers and manage merchandise.

Peter Zeytoonjian, USOC managing director of consumer products, said the brand’s assistance in creating a good retail environment, the diversity of apparel, the USOC’s new logo and the number of London-based expatriates visiting the store all combined to deliver strong sales the last two weeks.

“Everything has done fantastically well,” Zeytoonjian said.

The USOC also is selling the apparel in the U.S. at Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Polo Ralph Lauren stores. Its goal is to hit $100 million in retail sales around the Games. The USOC would not release current sales figures, but on Thursday said merchandise sales have more than doubled those from Beijing.

The USOC and its licensees already are making preparations for Sochi 2014. Nike and Ralph Lauren are close to finalizing their product lines and will finish that process in September.

Zeytoonjian said he expects sales for Sochi to be bigger than Vancouver.

■ How did the London organizers do?

KATZOFF: The first two days were really rough on transport. We definitely had our hands full. I will say to their credit they helped us attack the problem and fix it. But it was a very rough start, like a lot of them are.

From that point on, for our clients, it’s been one of the best operations I’ve ever seen. The fact that they decided to take money and put 100 (bag scanners) in instead of 30 means you can go in and not have to wait in line. That initial guest experience is fantastic. It’s not like Beijing where people are (irritated) before they get to the venue.

T3 (private cars for sponsors and Olympic executives) was the only thing that didn’t work.

O’CONNOR: We had a pretty rough couple of days.

■ What was so bad in the first days? T3 service?

KATZOFF: It wasn’t just the T3.

O’CONNOR: It was all of it. We had multiple motor coaches and passenger vehicles not show up. I’ve never had days where zero vehicles show up. I had those days.

To the credit of LOCOG, they gave passes with every ticket to the Tube. That access allowed every partner, regardless of the issues, to have an alternative at hand. There was an instant plan B. If you’re good at what you do, to your guests, it’s seamless. You just say, “I guess we’re taking the Tube today.” And you go onto the Tube and it becomes a cultural experience and it’s easy.

PLUCHINO: I’ve taken the Tube a lot. I’ve had absolutely no problems. This overcrowding concern, the doom-and-gloom thing, you’re-going-to-have-to-wait-30-minutes-to-get-down-the-steps, it hasn’t happened.

■ On the T3 issues, what was the issue?

KATZOFF: It was the way the navigation system (GPS) was programmed and was point-to-point (from official venues to official venues). When you look at the size of what we’re operating here, it just wasn’t practical. I’ll give you an example: I’m staying at the P&G headquarters hotel. They won’t do a T3 drop-off (for VIPs) there. But they’ll do a T3 drop-off at the Park Plaza Westminster, which is a 20-minute walk away. So if you’re lucky enough like Visa to be at the Chancery Hotel, which is a T3 stop, you can use the cars. Otherwise, it’s difficult.

PLUCHINO: The T3 cars I’ve taken, some of it is the GPS. Early in the Games the GPS went down.

KATZOFF: And there’s a lot of drivers not from London. And that’s the biggest problem.

PLUCHINO: Exactly. When your entire system is based on a system technology and you don’t have a backup plan, what happens?

The other thing for the first week of the Games was the (live site at) Hyde Park was not as well attended as some of our clients would have liked or even the mayor’s office would have liked. What was the reason for that? It was promoted as a ticketed venue. That implies cost. Well, it was a free ticket. They were looking to get 150,000 people a day in there. That didn’t happen.

■ These Olympics, with the exception of Olympic Park, are really fragmented. Venues like Earls Court and Horse Guards and Wembley and Wimbledon are spread out. The Olympics easily get lost in London. How has that affected the Olympic atmosphere in the city?

PLUCHINO: There’s good Olympic vibe at Olympic Park because you have hundreds of thousands of people there. I would agree that in central London because it’s spread out that maybe it’s lacking that Olympic feel, that Olympic buzz.

Iconic venues like at Horse Guards Parade made the London Games special.

KATZOFF: I agree. It’s not like being in downtown Vancouver where everybody’s faces are painted and everyone’s flags are out. But the fact that they decided to pick iconic venues like archery at Lord’s Cricket Ground, Wembley, Earls Court, Wimbledon, Horse Guards Parade were brilliant.

O’CONNOR: From a hospitality and entertainment perspective, (those venues) combine cultural with athletics all in one. It takes people to the tourist spots they want to go to already. We walk people to the beach volleyball (at Horse Guards), they walk through Trafalgar (Square), they see it all. That’s fantastic.

■ If Beijing was China’s coming out party and a chance for all the companies you work with to enter the Chinese marketplace, what will London be remembered for?

O’CONNOR: For our clients, it’s a fantastic all-around experience. I don’t think this Games for us was remotely similar to Beijing in the sense that you walked away thinking, “This is China’s Games.” I wouldn’t say here that people will walk away thinking, “This is a British Games.” There was a great distribution of equity between the different countries that are here. We’re seeing new athletes rise to the top.

Our guests will walk away having had a great cultural and athletic experience. It’s been seamless to them. They’re on the London Eye one minute, Buckingham Palace the next. They’re watching the Dream Team in the basketball arena that night. They’re having dinner at Mosimann’s. It’s a fantastic hospitality opportunity. It was easy. It really was easy, with the exception of transportation.

PLUCHINO: People will be leaving here with a great international feel. Some of that has to do with the fact that London is one of the most international cities in the world. But you still had those 205 countries (competing here) in Beijing, didn’t you? And you did not come away with that international feel. This was truly the world coming together, which is what the Olympics are all about.

It was a welcoming environment for people. I always say it this way. You come to the Olympics, you expect the sport to be the best in the world. That’s a given. You expect the event to be operated well. You expect the stadiums to be brand new. But if you don’t feel welcome and it wasn’t a hospitable environment, that’s what you’ll go home with. I think people will leave these Games with a very good feel for England, London and the Games.

KATZOFF: It’s hard for me to disagree with Mary and Gary. It was the perfect conversion of one of the greatest cities in the world with some of the greatest athletic moments of the world. For people to say they were here to see Michael Phelps break the all-time Olympic record. For people to say I’ve always dreamed about going to Wimbledon. People walk by Parliament or Westminster Abbey and they’re awestruck by having a chance to see them. From the emotional side, the sports side and cultural side, there’s been a really good convergence.

■ What are the lessons from this Olympics for Rio and Sochi?

PLUCHINO: Although we’ve said there have been a few hiccups on the organizational side of things, Rio can learn how to organize a Games. We all know Rio can be logistically challenging. Organization and organizational skills may be a challenge for Rio.

KATZOFF: Despite the fact that organizers spend hundreds of millions of dollars, it all comes down to security and transportation. I hope the takeaway, and we’re going to raise it with the IOC and organizers going forward, is to get aggregators (bus contracting companies) out of the middle and let the agencies or sponsors deal directly with end producers. I don’t ever want to be put into the position we were put into. It’s happened too many times.

O’CONNOR: One great learning they can take away, despite the G4S debacle, is security. We have a tremendous amount of security in the Waldorf (where the Chinese Olympic Committee is based), and they are so well connected with Scotland Yard and Olympics security. The fact that there was a big worry, and everything thus far has been really well handled. Rio is a security concern for all of us. If they can learn from what they did in London to protect people coming to the Games, that would be fantastic.

The success of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team led to some overnight sensations and a new nickname. The “Fierce Five” all saw more than 100,000 new followers each, with all-around champion Gabby Douglas leading the way with nearly 600,000 new followers.

On the international side, some of the biggest Twitter stories have come from athletes who haven’t medaled. The controversy surrounding the harassment of British diver Tom Daley has led to a large spike in supportive followers, and inspirational South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, the “Blade Runner,” also has added nearly 100,000 new followers after his historic appearance in the Games. Sprint icon Usain Bolt had added more than 500,000 new followers even before his historic victory Thursday in the 200 meters.

Listed below are the Twitter followers for the official pages of notable U.S. Olympians on the day of the opening ceremony on July 27 compared to Thursday.

Twitter Followers	Friday, July 27	THURSDAY AUG. 9	ADDITIONAL FOLLOWERS
SWIMMING AND DIVING
MEN
Michael Phelps	292,207	1,227,843	935,636
Ryan Lochte	143,674	897,783	754,109
Nathan Adrian	13,124	118,173	105,049
Brendan Hansen	10,195	38,290	28,095
Conor Dwyer	8,439	42,410	33,971
Cullen Jones	19,419	45,182	25,763
Ricky Berens	12,336	37,622	25,286
Matt Grevers	23,242	39,107	15,865
Tyler Clary	6,180	21,860	15,680
WOMEN
Missy Franklin	82,342	341,067	258,725
Rebecca Soni	18,109	69,167	51,058
Dana Vollmer	9,693	59,795	50,102
Allison Schmitt	3,577	49,397	45,820
Natalie Coughlin	58,644	88,399	29,755
Elizabeth Beisel	6,647	20,392	13,745
Jessica Hardy	15,229	26,281	11,052
GYMNASTICS
MEN
Danell Leyva	13,703	66,076	52,373
WOMEN
Gabby Douglas	35,754	600,967	565,213
Jordyn Wieber	62,457	438,030	375,573
Aly Raisman	39,966	382,413	342,447
McKayla Maroney	35,612	322,674	287,062
Kyla Ross	25,690	183,912	158,222
TRACK AND FIELD
MEN
Tyson Gay	37,865	53,735	15,870
WOMEN
Lolo Jones	182,855	287,350	104,495
Allyson Felix	51,869	85,298	33,429
Sanya Richards-Ross	29,830	58,735	28,905
Kellie Wells	7,395	28,361	20,966
Carmelita Jeter	8,924	21,232	12,308
BEACH VOLLEYBALL
WOMEN
Misty May-Treanor	88,188	133,980	45,792
Kerri Walsh Jennings	83,668	110,088	26,420
INTERNATIONAL ATHLETES OF NOTE
Tom Daley (Great Britain/diving)	344,632	1,170,866	826,234
Usain Bolt (Jamaica/track)	634,092	1,174,411	540,319
Jessica Ennis (Great Britain/track)	213,410	602,247	388,837
Bradley Wiggins (Great Britain/cycling)	296,782	510,299	213,517
Oscar Pistorius (South Africa/track)	54,822	125,193	70,371
Yohan Blake (Jamaica/track)	7,222	64,143	56,921

Note: Charts do not include Olympic athletes who are more known for the teams and leagues in which they usually compete, such as NBA players and professional tennis players. Sources: SportsBusiness Journal research, Twittercounter.com