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Catching Up With Aramark’s Marc Bruno
Since signing a deal to have Aramark supply food to athletes and media at the Olympics, Aramark’s Marc Bruno has traveled to Beijing 25 times to prepare the company for its largest undertaking at an Olympics since it first got involved 40 years ago. Today, the president of stadiums and arenas, sports and entertainment, oversees a staff of 7,000 employees at the Olympics who serve as many as 10,000 meals a day. He sat down with SportsBusiness Journal staff writer Tripp Mickle to talk about that effort. Read More >Comments -
Aramark Serves Record Number Of Olympic Meals
Aramark served 41,200 meals Monday in Beijing, setting a record for the most food ever served by the company during its 40-year history working with the Olympics.
The total surpasses the most meals the food services company served in Athens by 21 percent. In the athlete cafeteria alone, the company served 10,580 dinners. Read More > -
Virginia Firm GreenTech Completes Bird’s Nest Field
For the past couple of days, the Bird’s Nest has been a beehive of activity.
The Bird’s Nest is the nickname for Beijing’s National Stadium, where Friday’s opening ceremony was held and the Olympic track and field competition begins Friday. Maybe you didn’t notice, but during the opening ceremony there was no grass on the field. Instead, it was covered with wood planks and various surfaces to help stage the performance art of 14,000 participants.This is where GreenTech comes in. Read More >
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OUTSIDE THE RINGS
Dealing With Life And Death At The Games
He is a coach. That was obvious.
Before he addressed the journalists sitting around the conference table, U.S. Olympic men’s volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon grabbed a pen and drew a chart. He placed each reporter’s name at his or her spot on his little map.
A coach. Organized. Prepared.
He is a son-in-law, a husband. That’s clear, too. He is the face and voice of the Bachman family in China for now. Read More > -
Medal Stand
Gold
Johnson & Johnson
J&J gets the gold for two reasons. First, in the wake of the tragic stabbing of Todd and Barbara Bachman over the weekend, the company provided a physician to the family. Yesterday, the Bachman's daughter and son-in-law, the U.S. men's volleyball coach, issued a statement thanking the company.
The second reason is because of the sponsor's Olympic showcase on the Green.
The exhibit centers on the theme of a "Caring World," highlighting J&J's contributions to health and culminating with three of China's 2,000-year-old Terracotta Warriors.
Silver
Jason Lezak
The 32-year-old anchor of the amazing U.S. men's 400-meter freestyle relay team is already getting calls from interested companies, according to his agent, PMG's Evan Morgenstein, and Lezak's Web site momentarily crashed after Monday's race due to all of the traffic on it.
Bronze
Sponsors going green in Beijing
Almost every sponsor showcase on the ground in Beijing emphasizes the respective company's "Green" efforts, such as Samsung's biodegradable phones. But all of this messaging seems a little hypocritical considering sponsors will raze the monstrous exhibits they've built after the Paralympics in September. That's hardly the tack of a conservationist.
Tin
Olympic family attendance
Attendance in special sections for Olympic family has been soft at numerous events, making empty seats visible on TV. This was a problem in Athens and continues to be a problem in Beijing, where events are sold out. Perhaps the IOC and its sponsors should consider adding a secondary ticket supplier so that it can easily unload those tickets to interested fans frustrated that these Games are "sold out." -
OUTSIDE THE RINGS
Getting Out To Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City
Tiananmen Square is Beijing’s equivalent of the National Mall in D.C. It’s vast, sprawling, covered with Chinese tourists and surrounded by national landmarks.
I found myself there on Sunday for a quick sightseeing excursion. A light rain was falling and the humidity was heavy, so like most days here I was profusely sweating and regretting lugging my laptop with me. Read More > -
J&J Exhibit Offers Rare Glimpse Of Chinese History
When the automatic doors at the Johnson & Johnson showcase on the Olympic Green swung open last week giving a group of Chinese government officials their first glimpse of three Terracotta Warriors, a vice mayor of Beijing walked up to J&J Olympic marketing executive Owen Rankin with a stunned look on his face.
“Are these the real ones?” the vice mayor asked.
“Yes,” Rankin said. “They’re real ones.” Read More > -
BOCOG To ‘Encourage’ Olympic Green Visitors
BOCOG acknowledged that there were “not too many people” on the Olympic Green, and BOCOG Vice President Wang Wei today said that the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee would “encourage more people to come to the Olympic Green.” Read More >
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OUTSIDE THE RINGS
Trying To Be So Cool And Then The Water Came
I was trying to be so cool. The place demanded it.
We were in the very fancy Raffles Beijing Hotel, the sort of posh hangout where no SportsBusiness Journal Olympics correspondent had gone before and lived to tell about it.
On relatively short notice, Gerhard Heiberg, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s marketing commission, said he would sit for an interview with SBJ Olympics beat reporter Tripp Mickle and me. (It will appear soon on this very same Olympic microsite.) Read More > -
Medal Stand
Gold
The world's most-watched basketball game in history between China and the U.S. on Sunday morning was a big win for the NBA and AEG. The two partnered in January to market, program and operate the Beijing Olympic basketball arena after the Games. The sold-out game bolstered their efforts to sell naming rights, founding partnerships and suites by showing the true potential of the Beijing market.
NBC
Ratings are off to a rocking start for the network. It scored a 18.6/33 final Nielsen rating on Friday night and didn¹t suffer at all from its decision to delay the broadcast of the Opening Ceremony by 12 hours. It followed that with a 13.9/27 on Saturday in prime time. Web traffic is rolling along, as well. Through two days, NBCOlympics.com had 132.6 million page views, a 614 percent increase from Athens.
Silver
The NBA and AEG
Bronze
Katie Hoff and the U.S. women's swimming team
Billed as the female version of Michael Phelps, Hoff (and her U.S. women¹s swimming team counterparts) have gotten off to a shaky start. Hoff finished a somewhat shocking third in the 400 individual medley, one of her signature events, and then faded to a silver medal after holding a huge lead late in the 400 freestyle. On the heels of those swims, the U.S. women's team did not have a gold-medal swim through the first three days of swimming competition.
Tin
Foot traffic in the Olympic sponsor village
Most BOCOG and TOP sponsors who expected anywhere from 6,000 to 15,000 visitors a day at their showcases on the Olympic Green were disappointed after the first weekend. BOCOG is only allowing people with tickets to events on the Olympic Green (fencing, swimming, field hockey, archery, tennis, diving, water polo and gymnastics) so fewer people were getting access to the village than expected. Some sponsors had only 3,000 visitors their first days of the Games, and that¹s for facilities that cost more than $1 million to construct.
