Six months from the opening of the Olympic Games in Athens, officials are joining in a chorus of reassurances that the event will be adequately secured against terrorist threats.
It is a natural response to underlying fears about Athens that are not going away anytime soon. The Greek government has a nation's image to protect. The International Olympic Committee wants to encourage jittery sponsors, athletes and, last but not least, its own voting members that they will not be endangered.
Before 9/11, awarding the Games to Greece was a logistical gamble. Now, the stakes are even higher.
"Security measures have to be on an order of magnitude greater than ever before in Olympic history," said Rand Corp. vice president and global terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman. "An Olympics in Greece is a plum target for terrorists."
When all is said and done, Greece will invest close to $1 billion to secure the Games. Greek Minister of Public Order George Floridis recently went to Washington to assure senior American officials that "the best organized plan humanly possible" is in place.
Since his visit, Greek officials have reached broad agreements with the U.S. government that include American participation in pivotal security exercises in March, and a provision to use U.S. satellite technology during the Games, according to the Greek newspaper Kathimerini in its Jan. 26 edition.
IOC President Jacques Rogge issued a statement last week expressing his confidence in Games security measures, but added, "No one can guarantee 100 percent security."
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| Greek special forces slide down ropes from a helicopter during training exercises near Athens recently. |
It was not mere rhetoric. As an example of at least one potential gap, the head of security of the Athens subway system, Dimosthenes Giannissopoulos, told The Associated Press last week that his privately funded operation is $12.6 million short of the money it needs to buy security equipment to secure the underground rail network.
"Physical security needs to be robust and dynamic," said Hoffman, whose 2003 white paper on the future threat of al Qaeda notes the terror network is more likely to use guerrilla-style isolated attacks than those of a scale of 9/11. "Even the cosmetic things [such as metal detectors] have a tremendous deterrent effect."
Hoffman said the "soft target" in Athens represents the true test of the security network on the ground, as he recalled the fear stirred by "one bomb in a backpack" planted in Centennial Park, which was not an official Games venue in Atlanta in 1996.
More than any Olympic Games host nation, Greece has no margin for error in delivering what it has promised.
"They are going to have to prove it," Hoffman said. "And they've been soliciting a tremendous amount of advice. It's not just the Greek policeman standing on the corner we are depending on here. The threshold for providing that proof [of total security] will be the highest of any Games in memory."
FAMILY RELATIONS: When Nike and the U.S. Olympic Committee last month formally announced their new alliance beginning in 2005, Nike rival Adidas was rendered the ultimate lame duck. Nike takes over for four years the same sponsor category — medals podium apparel — that Adidas acquired in a one-shot deal for the 2004 Athens Games.
Adidas sports marketing director Kevin Wulff told Bloomberg News that the company did not renew the category because it was "ready to move on."
But USOC chief of marketing Jim Grice said the Nike deal has not strained relations with Adidas.
"We are very much moving forward in the direction of Athens from an outfitting and retail [licensing] perspective," Grice said. "We are very much looking forward to it."
Another USOC relationship facing renewed complexity is its telecommunication deal with AT&T Wireless, recently identified as an acquisition target of rival Cingular.
Planning for the final countdown to Athens continues with AT&T Wireless, Grice said.
FLEETING MOMENTS: Bank of America Corp. is thought to be one of the three sponsorship category renewals the U.S. Olympic Committee is counting on this year ahead of the Athens Games, extending to 2008 a deal set to expire at the end of 2004.
If a renewal occurs, it is unlikely to come before a scheduled March 17 shareholder vote on Bank of America's proposed $47 billion acquisition of FleetBoston Financial Corp.
A BofA spokesman, Scott Scredon, said the merger would not affect Cathy Bessant's role as the company's chief marketing officer. The role of Dockery Clark, executive vice president, Olympic, sports and event marketing, also will not change "as far as I know," he said.
"The two events [merger and Olympic planning] were really not related," Scredon said. "We are trying to get through the Super Bowl and get through the merger and then go from there."
DIRE SNAPSHOT: Global Olympic sponsor Eastman Kodak announced it will cut 15,000 jobs to reduce its manufacturing capacity by one-third. Kodak is struggling to recover from a delayed entry into the digital photography era.
Before the downturn in its forecasts, Kodak extended its worldwide sponsorship of the Olympic Games through 2008. Is the venerable brand looking for a way out of the $55 million deal?
"While they are making significant job cuts," said Chris Welton, the head of IOC marketing agency Meridian Management, "we are hearing from them that they intend to continue to invest in marketing to grow their business and that the Olympics [are] an important part of that."
GLOBE SPINNING: Soccer's world federation chief, Joseph "Sepp" Blatter, recently issued what amounted to a retraction of his controversial statement that the marketing popularity of women's soccer in the future depended, in part, on "tighter shorts." FIFA's president told reporters in Tunisia, site of the African Cup of Nations tournament, that the remark was a product of "the creativity of the media." In other words, Blatter believes he was misquoted. ... The USOC is planning a March unveiling of the return of the Titan Games, an umbrella event featuring Olympic combat sports like wrestling and tae kwon do. The three-day event will be hosted by Atlanta in June. ... Officials from the U.S. government, and American and international Olympic committees, were scheduled to assemble in the northern Iraq city of Suleymaniyah last week to witness the election of officials to run a new national Olympic committee. Iraq's former Olympic committee was stripped of IOC membership last year after reports that athletes were routinely tortured by the late Uday Hussein. ... South Korea's Un Yong Kim was suspended as an IOC member and vice president pending the outcome of federal investigations of charges that Kim embezzled funds in his role as a top Olympic administrator in the country. He was taken into custody by Korean authorities last week.
Steve Woodward can be reached at swoodward@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
