It didn't take much to win, and host, the Centennial Olympic Games. Not much, that is, beyond a decade of Billy Payne's life, $2.5 billion and thousands of volunteers and benefactors.
Their quest began Feb. 8, 1987. It ended almost a year after Atlanta had played host to the 1996 Olympics, when the final financial close-outs were completed.
In between launching a dream and completing a logistical nightmare, Payne and a fleet of corporate backers, civic leaders, politicians, sports marketers, athletes and coaches pushed to put a city known mainly for Civil War and civil rights on the international stage.
While the Games represent the most extreme example of hosting large-scale sporting events, the lessons learned apply for most cities as they approach similar recruiting campaigns.
Payne, 55, now leads a New York investment firm's Atlanta office. In his spare time, he often offers advice to prospective Olympic bidders seeking strategy tips. Payne encourages them to spend time wooing the committee awarding the event. Too often, he said, cities and regions waste time thumping their chests at home, rather than offering a compelling vision of their city to those making the ultimate decision.
In Atlanta, a traveling team led by Payne set a goal of meeting at least twice with each of the 100 committee members who would vote on the 1996 site (bidders no longer can travel to the committee members' hometowns, as they could when Atlanta bid). Payne visited 105 countries — and his traveling team racked up an impressive average of six individual visits for each of the committee members.
The stakes may be a bit smaller, but similar painstaking planning and dedication goes into winning Super Bowls, Final Fours, all-star games and major golf championships. No matter the city or sport, all of the successful bids invariably are backed by extensive coalition building among local hospitality, government and business executives.
Leagues and sanctioning bodies benefit from the competition among cities to host such high-profile events. Most press those advantages into a laundry list of guarantees, from the expected (discounted hotel rooms) to the Excedrin-worthy ("towels, soap, a fan, blackboard and chalk, beverages, oranges and other refreshments of the type and brand suggested by the NCAA" in all Final Four locker rooms).
For cities vying to host, realizing the cost and overwhelming time demands involved in staging a marquee game or championship can be sobering. Unlike the attendees, cities can't write it off as expense-account fun.
"You have to be careful," said Oliver Luck, chief executive at the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, where the Super Bowl and MLB All-Star Game will be played within a six-month stretch next year. "You don't want to spend $3 million on traffic and police and find out you only generated $1 million from sales taxes."
Credentials, please
Many of the largest sporting events weed out competition with basic requirements. For the all-star games in baseball, basketball and hockey, only markets with an affiliated franchise are eligible. Same with the NFL's Super Bowl.
Ready for the Final Four? Bring 40,000 seats along. Traditional arenas need not apply. Hosting a U.S. Open or PGA Championship demands a difficult course, as many as 6,000 hotel rooms and a couple thousand volunteers, for starters.
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| "You need to appeal to the small group making the decision." |
| Jon LeCrone, Horizon League |
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The real intrigue involves how the winners are selected. The Super Bowl, the American heavyweight short of hosting an Olympics, invokes all manner of suspicion. After all, it's the only issue the league can decide without 75 percent approval from its owners.
Jim Steeg, NFL senior vice president of events, remembers a 1984 marathon owners meeting, when it took six hours of voting to choose a Super Bowl city. After that, owners altered the procedure. If, after five rounds of voting, a three-quarters vote hasn't been secured, then a simple majority decides the matter in the sixth round.
It costs $250,000 to prepare a Super Bowl bid and another $7 million to $12 million to host the game. In return, cities reap a blizzard of hard-to-quantify publicity and economic impacts ranging from $150 million to $300 million. In September, the NFL will award Miami the 2007 game and, a month later, will weigh proposals from four cities before choosing the 2008 host. Final presentations by each bidding city at the owners' meetings are limited to 15 minutes.
Among the minimum requirements: a 70,000-seat NFL stadium, hotel rooms equaling 35 percent of stadium capacity within an hour of the site (the NFL alone will account for 19,500 rooms in Houston at the 2004 game) and a January average temperature greater than 50 degrees for open-air stadiums. Many rules are negotiable at the whim of the league. For example, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue may waive the weather consideration to put a championship in Washington or New York in 2008.
Beyond stadiums and hotels, leagues want anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 square feet of convention-center space, at greatly reduced costs, to stage fan fairs and exhibits. They want shuttles to stadiums, hotels, the airport and various hospitality sites. They need limousines. They need complimentary parking. And, please, don't forget some local flavor and an entertainment district. Don't have one? Create one, as Charlotte did for the 1994 NCAA Final Four with its Potemkin village of temporary bars and restaurants.
Consider Denver, tapped by the NBA last month as host of the 2005 All-Star weekend. Tim Litherland, director of sports at the Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the league's requirements left no doubt about the task ahead. NBA hosts must deliver 5,000 hotel rooms, 90 percent with four-star quality or better. The ever-expanding fan jam will be held at the convention center: "We'll be completing that as the game approaches," Litherland said.
Houston knows how Denver feels. A key component in its Super Bowl package next year is the opening of its first light-rail line, ferrying visitors between the Convention Center and, yes, a newly expanded convention hall. The train service begins in January — one month before the NFL's big game arrives.
Matters are much more severe in Vancouver, host of the 2010 Winter Olympics. One day after the city erupted in celebration over its successful bid, government leaders and businessmen openly fretted over a looming upgrade that includes $620 million in Olympic village and athletic venues, $600 million in highway improvements, a $450 million convention center and a $1.7 billion rapid transit line.
Because of the logistical hoops, the NBA and other leagues prefer awarding games several years out. Ski Austin, NBA senior vice president of events, said the 2006 site should be determined by the end of this year. The NFL's Steeg said five years' lead time works for the Super Bowl. The NCAA goes even further. Earlier this month, Final Fours were awarded through 2011.
Do the math
Perennial debates linger over the merits of such name-brand events. Each brings thousands of visitors while boosting business at hotels and restaurants. Publicity and national coverage follow in tow.
Quantifying those things becomes tricky, particularly when many stadiums and arenas are built with largely public money. Does one Super Bowl make $450 million Reliant Stadium a good investment? Does the inherent corporate arm-twisting — requiring millions of dollars to stage an all-star game or Final Four — take away from better civic causes?
The furious jockeying among prospective cities supersedes the concerns of skeptics.
There are occasions when the franchise wonders whether the game creates more headaches than happiness. Philadelphia 76ers executive Ed Snider vowed never to bid for an All-Star Game again after the NBA gobbled up all but about 2,400 tickets to the 2002 game — leaving Snider with the unpleasant task of telling most of his 16,000 season-ticket holders they would be watching on TV, or not at all.
Even the economic impact studies diverge quickly. Baseball estimates an All-Star Game's value at $80 million. The Atlanta Sports Council, which uses a formula developed by the accounting firm of McKinsey & Co. and Georgia State University, calculated a $49.6 million impact when Turner Field had the game in 2000.
Gary Stokan, president of the Atlanta Sports Council, said the city's recent five-year run — sparked by a stadium-building boom boosted by the Olympics — has produced a $1 billion return. The tally includes NBA and baseball all-star games, the Super Bowl, the Final Four, a PGA Championship and regular events such as the Southeastern Conference football championship and the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.
Atlanta spent $7.6 million on the Super Bowl, $2 million on the Final Four and $1.5 million on last season's NBA All-Star Game. Stokan said the biggest limitation in continuing such a run is finding new ways to fund such events.
"As good as our business community is, we can't just keep hitting the same people again and again," he said. "That's what concerns me most, especially during tough economic times."
As always, spending on stadiums remains a key element for wooing championship games. Detroit and Houston are taking their cues from Atlanta. Both cities recently opened new NFL stadiums and parlayed those additions into Super Bowl selections as well as innovative configurations for successful Final Four bids.
Detroit's Comerica Park is on tap for the 2005 baseball All-Star Game, and the Ryder Cup plays Motown next year. Houston already has the baseball All-Stars, Final Four and Super Bowl lined up, with a bid for the NBA All-Star Game sure to follow once its $200 million downtown arena opens this fall.
Bernadette Mansur, vice president of communications at the NHL, said new venues weigh heavily, as does regional flavor. The hockey All-Star Game, worth $15 million to $20 million, according to the league, celebrated South Florida at its most recent incarnation, bringing the Stanley Cup into Miami by boat. In St. Paul next year, an ice palace will be constructed to mark the occasion.
A city with an ample blend of local color and ready-made tourist haunts is San Antonio. The NCAA is so smitten with the south Texas city that it put the 2008 men's Final Four and 2010 women's championship there during its most recent selections. The men's Final Four is in San Antonio in 2004, as well. Before that, the Alamodome hosted the NCAA Final Four in 1998, producing a $48 million impact based on local studies.
Landing the Final Four is almost as difficult as winning one. The NCAA spends nine months reviewing bids before whittling down a handful of cities for the men's basketball committee to vote on.
"You need broad community support, you need to understand the broad aspects of the event and you need to appeal to the small group making the decision," said Jon LeCrone, commissioner of the Horizon League, which, with Butler University, has worked on several Final Four bids for Indianapolis. "And you need a little extra. With us, it's our state's basketball tradition. It stands out, and every little bit helps."
Erik Spanberg writes for The Business Journal in Charlotte.
