Vancouver 2010: more modest than believed

The snow is almost all gone from Cypress Mountain. Yeah, the snowboarding and freestyle skiing venue that needed truckloads of snow from almost 200 kilometres away in February had a March and April dump that kept the slopes white in May.

Something else is melting. The superficial political sloganeering that Vancouver 2010 was the most successful Winter Olympics ever.

Do you believe? I don't and you shouldn't.

Let's be realistic. A recession happened on the way to the Games. VANOC assumed no recession, big or small, would happen before the Games. Oops. The fact that Vancouver 2010 happened, had few empty seats at ice events and filled the streets of Vancouver with revellers should be celebrated. IOC president Jacques Rogge couldn't have chosen better words to describe the Games than "excellent" and "friendly."

But they weren't as excellent as IOC marketing director Timo Lumme speculated at a Feb. 23 news conference in the main press centre. Lumme grandly estimated that 3.5 billion people -- half the population of the planet -- would watch Vancouver 2010 by the time it was over.

That 3.5 billion figure was taken for gospel by the world media and became the rallying cry for politicians like Premier Gordon Campbell.

Well, the July 6-published IOC Marketing Report for Vancouver 2010 tells a different, more modest story. The potential audience for the Games was 3.8 billion. That's the number of people with access to televisions with channels containing coverage of the Games.

But the real number that Mr. Campbell should start using is 1.8 billion. That's the actual viewership globally.

Of course, Premier "Red-Ink" Mittens is used to reality checks and smaller numbers. He is, after all, plummeting in popularity on the strength (weakness?) of the HST, which is being used to pay the debt for being host of the 2010 Games.

By comparison, 3.5 billion was the IOC estimate for actual viewership of the Beijing Games in 2008.

The wildcard, however, is Internet viewership. The IOC doesn't count that because there is no similar means of measuring ratings scientifically. In North America and Europe, we know that TV viewers often surf the web simultaneously on their laptops or mobile phones. One person is one viewer, even if they're looking at two screens.

While the IOC revised downward its estimate of how many watched the Games, it finally disclosed how many tickets were used at the Games. I call this liberating information from the dreaded VANOC virtual waiting room.

VANOC has held onto such numbers so tightly. After a May 19 news conference, I approached both deputy CEO Dave Cobb -- whose portfolio included ticketing -- and chief financial officer John McLaughlin. They both played the "I don't know, ask him" game. Not very convincing. They knew the number, but didn't want it to be public until late fall when VANOC's audited final report is expected.

The IOC offered the real numbers and they're not record breaking. Vancouver 2010 claimed a 1.6 million-ticket inventory on the closing day of the Games. Meanwhile, the actual sales were 1.49 million out of 1.54 million, according to the IOC.

General admission tickets had been cancelled and refunded for Cypress Mountain events. Thousands of tickets were unsold for skiing and sliding events in Whistler.

In November 2009, the third Canadian phase was delayed because of the embarrassing programming malfunction of the hated virtual waiting room on the Tickets.com website.

The IOC reported $257 million revenue, which is just $3.4 million shy of the target.

At Salt Lake 2002, organizers reported in June of that year sales of 1,525,118 of 1,605,524 available tickets for US$183 million. At the time, the U.S. dollar was so strong that the Canadian equivalent was more than $290 million.

McLaughlin reluctantly admitted on July 20 that the IOC numbers are accurate. He also said efforts to resolve the $2 million loss from a Latvian Visa card fraud scam with an insurer and Visa itself were "slow" and likely to take months.

Remember when VANOC said in September 2008 that the public would get 70% of tickets and the Olympic family 30%? The scales tipped further to the public as a result of reduced activation by sponsors. The IOC report shows 71% of sales in Canada, 16% of sales internationally (including the U.S.), 11% to sponsors and broadcasters and 2% to the IOC and international sports federations.