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USOC BOD Overruled Probst, Blackmun To Pick Boston For '24 Bid

The USOC BOD overruled both Chair Larry Probst and CEO Scott Blackmun to pick Boston as its candidate city for the '24 Games in January, despite Boston’s bad polling numbers and a deeply flawed bid, Wasserman Media Group Chair & CEO Casey Wasserman said Friday. Responding to an L.A. Council member’s question about how L.A. lost to Boston, only to return to the limelight after the Boston bid collapsed in July, Wasserman said the L.A. bid committee focused its sales pitch on Probst and USOC staff, and had won them over. But the board, including members with Boston loyalties he did not name, chose Boston on the theory that the IOC wanted a new city. L.A. hosted the Olympics twice before.

“Boston’s poll numbers were never good,” said Wasserman, who is leading the LA 2024 bid group. “There were ‘No Boston’ protesters in San Francisco when we made our final presentation to the board, outside the meetings. So, ‘No Boston’ was active from the beginning and continued, and the bid book that they put forward wasn’t a bid book that was defensible. But, a board is a board, and they let that board vote.” Wasserman said the board’s debate pitted the reasoning that a new candidate would be more welcomed internationally ended up trumping L.A.’s technical superiority. “But the truth is, a new city with a plan that’s not feasible is not a good city to bid with, and that quickly became evident,” he said.

A USOC spokesman declined to comment. Read Wasserman’s full comments here.

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SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

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