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One-On-One With USA Gymnastics' Steve Penny
Since being named president of USA Gymnastics in 2005, Steve Penny has been working to strengthen the organization in and out of the gym. He entered the sports business after graduating from the University of Washington and then spent time with the Seattle Mariners, the Goodwill Games and Bob Walsh Enterprises, a Seattle sports marketing firm. Penny first worked with the Olympics as managing director of USA Cycling, and he served as a senior vice president of USA Gymnastics before assuming his current role. Penny spoke earlier this summer with SportsBusiness Journal staff writer Tripp Mickle. Read More >
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Medal Stand
Gold
YouTube
Google's video provider scored a major coup, scooping up the rights to stream about three hours a day of Olympic events in 77 countries, including South Korea, India and Nigeria.
Silver
Beijing venues
The glowing reviews of China's Olympic venues keep rolling in and it's putting a shine on the run-up to the Games. New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote that the Bird's Nest "has an intoxicating beauty that lingers in the imagination."
Bronze
Tyson Gay
The sprinter has decided to attend the opening ceremonies, becoming one of a select few star athletes who will because of concerns about exposing themselves to pollution. It's a bold but diplomatic move that exhibits a buy-in to the Olympic spirit that the IOC always promotes.
Tin
The peace of the Games
What promised to be a peaceful and controlled Olympics was thrown into doubt this week by a reported attack on a police station in the Xinjiang region, 2,100 miles from Beijing. -
OUTSIDE THE RINGS
Packing For Beijing: No Jungle Underwear For Me
Over the course of the last two months, Jay Weiner (our correspondent), Tom Stinson (our Olympics editor) and I have held weekly conference calls about how we’re going to cover the Games. At the end of each one, I typically bounced a question or two off Jay about covering the Olympics. He helped answer everything from how to get a phone that works in China (buy a GSM phone and plan on popping a Sim card in when you get there) to what an RF is and why I needed to register for it (it’s so you can get wireless Internet in the Main Press Center).
The last question I asked Jay before he left for Beijing last week was how to pack for the Olympics.
“Yeah,” Stinson said, “I wouldn’t want you all to clash or wear the same thing.” Read More > -
Catching Up With Puma's Joerg Zobel
China has 1.3 billion people, and twice as many feet. The shoe and sports apparel market in a nation filled with young people is rich and competitive.
Joerg Zobel is general manager of Asia Pacific for Puma, and today the German-based sports apparel company showed its true colors. In a merger of music, fashion and sports, Puma staged a media event with Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who could come away from Beijing with three gold medals. The event was a little sports and a lot of lifestyle, a word Zobel uses often. Read More > -
Puma Using Jamaican Sprinter To Bolt Into China
Part news conference, part fashion show, part TV talk show, Jamaican world-record holder Usain Bolt arrived in Beijing today. His entry wasn’t on a track but, rather, at a jazz nightclub in a swanky shopping mall in Beijing.
Bolt’s appearance was staged by Puma. The Jamaican, who holds the 100-meter world mark and the fastest 200 meters in the world this year, is Puma’s most high-profile athlete at an Olympics dominated by Adidas — an official sponsor of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee — and Nike — a USOC sponsor. Read More > -
News Notes: 24 Hour Fitness To Extend USOC Deal
24 Hour Fitness will announce Wednesday that it has renewed its deal through 2012 as the official fitness center sponsor of the U.S. Olympic team. 24 Hour Fitness is also expected to expand its jobs program for Olympians. 24 Hour started its backing of the U.S. Olympic Committee and a host of national governing bodies in 2004. Terms of the deal were not available.
U.S. Gymnastics Looks to Grow
With the Olympic spotlight about to shine on its biggest stage, USA Gymnastics is going to tend to its garden.
In an effort to grow its grassroots programs, USAG, in collaboration with the National Gymnastics Foundation, has created a national marketing campaign to add young gymnasts. Its target: moms and dads. Read More > -
NBCOlympics.com Puts Focus On Niche Sports
The unprecedented tonnage of online content planned for the Beijing Olympics is now well-known: a record 2,200 hours of live competition on NBCOlympics.com and several thousand more hours of on-demand material. But perhaps even more interesting is how consumption patterns will materialize during the Games. Read More >
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Getting Our Arms Around Olympic Gigantism
Bet you didn't know that when the TOP sponsorship program started in 1985, its total revenue into International Olympic Committee coffers was $96 million. In 2008 dollars, that's a seemingly whopping $192 million.
But this year, the IOC has generated $866 million through its global TOP program.
Or imagine this: In 1948, the first broadcast rights fee for an Olympics was paid to the London local organizing committee. Fee: $3,000. That equates to about 26 grand today. Read More > -
On The Ground: GWU Professor Lisa Delpy Neirotti
Over the next few weeks, SportsBusiness Journal/SportsBusiness Daily will speak to various sports business execs who are on the ground for the Beijing Games to gain perspective and first-person accounts of this historically significant event. Today we feature Lisa Delpy Neirotti, associate professor of tourism & sports management at George Washington University. Delpy Neirotti, who departed on a 13 1/2-hour flight from Dulles to Beijing last Monday, has been to 13 Olympics. This time around, she's leading a group of 28 students to the Games from August 4-24. Read More >
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OUTSIDE THE RINGS
My Reading List As I Prepared For Beijing
When I went to study abroad in London during college through Boston University, they sent me a reading list of books to thumb through before I arrived. I didn’t read a single one. London seemed familiar and I knew my British history.
China? Not so much.
When I got credentialed to cover the Olympics last year, I knew the basics. A fifth of the world’s population. A booming economy. A lot of factories taking U.S. jobs. In other words, I didn’t know a lot, so I created my own list. Check it out and cram in what you can over the next few weeks. Read More >
