B.C. sport shakeup

A new era in British Columbia sport will begin March 1 when Scott Ackles is announced as the chief executive officer of the B.C. Sport Agency.

It is part of an overhaul in the province's sport system in the wake of the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

Ackles was the general manager of Vancouver's 2005 and 2011 Grey Cup festivals and replaces interim B.C. Sport Agency CEO Cathy Priestner Allinger, the Own the Podium blueprint author and VANOC executive vice-president of sport who was named last August to head of Vancouver's 2014 Special Olympics Canada Summer Games.

Ackles effectively becomes the most powerful executive in amateur sport in B.C. Former VANOC sport vice-president Tim Gayda has left his post as Sport BC CEO to be a consultant. Gayda's position will not be filled.

Sport BC and the B.C. Sport Agency will be working in concert for the betterment of sport in the province. The B.C. Sport Agency takes over management of programs that were under the wings of 2010 Legacies Now, such as the Aboriginal Youth Sport Legacy Fund and First Nations Snowboard Team. The former 2010 Legacies Now group rebranded as Lift Philanthropy Partners.

Broadcast giant quits NBC: what next for Olympics?

June 6 and 7 could be among the biggest days on the sports business calendar in 2011. They'll definitely be among the most important for the beancounters at the International Olympic Committee.

That's when American networks will be in Lausanne, Switzerland to make their bids for the rights to broadcast Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016. They may even look for a bulk discount by tendering bids on Winter 2018 and Summer 2020.

Munich, Germany, PyeongChang, South Korea and Annecy, France are bidding for 2018. The 2020 race has yet to begin.

NBC, which paid $2.2 billion for Vancouver 2010 and London 2012, is the incumbent. The former GE-owned broadcasting giant has held rights to all Summer Games since Calgary 1988 and Winter Games since Salt Lake 2002. But it will be without Dick Ebersol.

Ebersol dropped a broadcasting bombshell May 19 when his resignation from NBC was announced. NBC is now owned by Comcast and the official word is they couldn't agree on a new contract. The news broke exactly a month after Ebersol announced NBC and Versus's 10-year, $2 billion National Hockey League broadcast deal at a news conference with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

Ebersol's Olympic journey began in 1967 when he joined ABC as a researcher. Ebersol and Canadian Lorne Michaels collaborated to create Saturday Night Live for NBC in 1975. During Olympic Games, Ebersol would actually camp in custom-made quarters in NBC's facilities at the International Broadcast Centre instead of stay in a hotel room. Ebersol spoke at length about his storied career during the Denver 2009 SportAccord convention.

Ebersol enjoyed his Vancouver experience so much (and the fact that the British Columbia government became an important advertiser) that he appeared in a video honouring outgoing Premier Gordon Campbell at a Vancouver Board of Trade event on Feb. 4, 2011. NBC lost $223 million on Vancouver 2010 after being hit by the Great Recession's advertising slump.

Whether NBC's London 2012 coverage will suffer without Ebersol at the helm remains to be seen. He has many proteges who will now run the operation. NBC, sans Ebersol, said it still plans to go to Lausanne and bid for the Olympics broadcast rights, but it will be a hotly contested race with Disney-owned ABC-ESPN, Fox and CBS.

A source told me Ebersol has been bearish on a bid for Sochi 2014 for quite some time. The unfriendly time zone -- eight hours ahead of New York -- was the biggest worry. Live sports are best shown live, but not at 3 a.m. when viewers would rather be sleeping. During a meeting, Ebersol was asked what he thought Sochi would be worth. He paused for a moment and scribbled on a note pad. He turned around and showed those in the meeting. It was a big "0".

Sochi 2014 could well be a commercial bust for the IOC and whichever company wins the U.S. rights if National Hockey League players aren't playing the hockey tournament. The Russian resort is building everything from scratch and, from what I saw last June, is on-track to be ready for February 2014. But volunteers, venue operations, transportation and security remain big unknowns for Sochi, which passed the 1,000-day countdown on May 14.

The "where are they now?" podium

The 2010 Winter Olympics opened a year ago today, which meant the final lap in a test of endurance for people who spent almost seven years with VANOC. Many of them gathered at the Vancouver Convention Centre for a reunion, after the Olympic cauldron on Jack Poole Plaza was re-activated. Their post-Games careers can be split into three categories, like three steps on a podium.

GOLD: Sport

CEO John Furlong is now chairman of the Own the Podium advisory board and a director of Whistler Blackcomb, which is now traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Furlong's main source of income, for the short-term, appears to be as a motivational speaker. His Patriot Hearts memoir is key to that strategy.

Furlong is a former CEO of SportBC, the province's umbrella for amateur sports organizations. VANOC's vice-president of sport Tim Gayda was appointed CEO last year.

The only senior VANOC executive to have a senior appointment with the International Olympic Committee is chief financial officer John McLaughlin. McLaughlin was appointed to the 2018 Winter Games evaluation commission. The temporary appointment means trips to Annecy, France, Munich, Germany and PyeongChang, South Korea. McLaughlin is the commission's financial specialist.

Director of ice sports/general manager hockey Denis Hainault has a similar job with Sochi 2014.

Paula Kim was in charge of press operations at B.C. Place Stadium, the opening, closing and medals ceremonies venue. She is senior communications manager with the International Triathlon Union in North Vancouver, the only summer Olympic sports federation based in Canada.

Brand creative director Ali Gardner is now marketing director with Canucks Sports and Entertainment. Lawyer Chris Gear now heads CSE's legal department.

Canada's next sports mega-event is the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto. Vice-president of workforce Allan Vansen is the senior vice-president of transportation, security and village for the Toronto 2015 organizing committee. He was appointed days after the riot-marred G20 summit.

Director of merchandising and licensing Dennis Kim was appointed the Canadian Olympic Committee's executive director brand marketing.

Jason Macnaughton from communications wrapped up a one-year contract with Major League Soccer's Vancouver Whitecaps on March 31. Carly Thorson Jokic, a Macnaughton cohort at VANOC, remains with the club, taking over as communications director.

SILVER: British Columbia Crown corporations

Top level executives have made their way into jobs with British Columbia Crown corporations. This demonstrates the influence of Premier Gordon Campbell.

Construction executive vice-president Dan Doyle: BC Hydro chairman was first in summer 2009. Deputy CEO Dave Cobb followed in May 2010 to become the power monopoly's CEO. Cobb, in turn, hired VANOC vice-president of communications Renee Smith-Valade, Chris Brumwell, Greg Alexis and Jennifer Young in a major overhaul of the communications department.

Chief Information Officer Ward Chapin now has the same job with ICBC. Workforce and sustainability executive vice-president Donna Wilson is Vice-president of industry services and sustainability at WorkSafeBC. Government relations and celebrations executive vice-president David Guscott is the E-Comm 9-1-1 CEO.

BRONZE: New ventures

The best advice imparted by Furlong to the Sochi 2014 organizing committee at the June 2010 knowledge transfer sessions in Russia was to "stick together."

That's precisely what several VANOC employees have done, creating their own post-Games clusters.

Vice-president marketing Andrea Shaw is managing partner of the Twentyten Group. Shaw's company in the Landing in Gastown became the post-October 2010 home of VANOC, or what was left of it. Coincidentally, Twentyten Group's office is one floor below where the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation was based when it was awarded the 2010 Games on July 2, 2003.

Shaw is joined by commercial rights manager Bill Cooper, who is a senior partner with Twentyten. Associates include Mags Doehler, Breedon Grauer, Catherine Locke, Rob Mullowney, Kala Polman-Tuin and Stephanie Cornish.

Paralympics director Dena Coward leads a group at the Rick Hansen Foundation's Man in Motion 25th Anniversary Celebration. Torch relays director Jim Richards is coordinating Hansen's international tour. VANOC communications staffers Suzanne Reeves, Mary Fraser and John Gibson have joined them.

Vice-president of partnerships and strategy Taleeb Noormohamed is president of e-learning concern Serebra Learning Corp, and running as the Liberal candidate for North Vancouver in the May 2 federal election. Director of ticketing Chris Stairs is Serebra's vice-president of sales, while manager of partnerships Matthew Bonguorno is sales manager and torch relay communications manager Jenee Elborne is director of communications.

Katie Green, who worked under Smith-Valade, joined Hill and Knowlton Vancouver (headed by VANOC director Ken Dobell). Green was transferred to the Montreal office but is joining L'Oreal Canada as brand communications manager.

IOC back to business with first 2011 meeting

The International Olympic Committee's Executive Board met Jan. 13 at the five-ring headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland -- 11 months after the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and one year before the 2013 Youth Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria.

Executive Board doesn't release minutes. No information was released on whether VANOC was discussed behind closed doors. The Vancouver 2010 final report will be delivered to the 123rd IOC session July 1-9 at Durban, South Africa. That is where the host of the 2018 Winter Games will be chosen from among either Annecy, France, Munich, Germany or PyeongChang, South Korea. Only three bids were received. By comparison, there were eight candidates for the 2010 Games.

Executive Board added to the minimum requirements for cities to bid on the Games. The prospective host national Olympic committee must be compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency and accept the jurisdiction of the Court of Arbitration in Sport to settle disputes.

"Without that there is no candidature," Rogge said.

Executive Board also decided there could be "a waiver for the rule of the dates of the Games because of climactic and geographic issues," Rogge said.

But would the IOC move the 2022 Winter Olympics if FIFA decides to hold the 2022 Qatar World Cup in January?

"We have not had contacts with FIFA for the very good reason this is a very hypothetical discussion, FIFA has not yet taken the decision in principle to shift to winter months.

"The situation for the IOC is very clear: the IOC would organize the Winter Games in the winter obviously. The bracket we're having is roughly, last week of January and the month of February. There is no way you can organize Winter Games in December or in March.

"For us it's clear that is the bracket for the games. It would be sensible once a decision would be envisioned by FIFA, to sit around the table to see it is not harmful for either of the two partners.

"As of today we think it is far too premature."

Otherwise, how are IOC and FIFA relations after FIFA president Sepp Blatter accused the IOC of being a non-transparent organization that handles its finances like a "housewife"?

"The incident that arose is closed, it is the past, I don't think about it and I'm very glad the relationship is very good," Rogge said.

Rogge admitted the IOC is probing allegations of corruption against Issa Hayatou, who is an IOC member and FIFA vice-president. Andrew Jennings reported that Hayatou was among those involved in the ISL bribery scandal in the 1990s during the FIFA's Dirty Secrets documentary aired by Panorama in December 2010:

"We have referred this to the Ethics Commission of the IOC and the Ethics Commission is collecting information, they are discussing with the BBC. I believe that the BBC, under the condition that the identity of the sources would be preserved, would be willing to give information, and we need that information."

That Ethics Commission saw Spanish ambassador Jose Luis Dicenta Ballester replace former United Nations secretary general Javier Perez de Cuellar.

If Tottenham Hotspur FC wins the bid to take over the London Olympic stadium after the 2012 Games, it might demolish and rebuild on the same site. Rogge said "this is not our business" because it is a matter for LOCOG, the Olympic Park Legacy Society and U.K. Athletics.

"If a solution could be found for the track, we would be happy," he said. " Don't expect the IOC to intervene forcefully anyway in this issue where we are not responsible."

Rogge said discussions with the United States Olympic Committee over revenue sharing are accelerating. A truce was announced at the 2009 SportAccord convention in Denver. Smaller NOCs want a bigger piece of the revenue pie, but the USOC argues that American broadcasters and sponsors are the biggest funders of the IOC.

Rogge said "pretty soon" the IOC would meet with American broadcast companies about bidding for rights to air the Games of 2014 and beyond.

"After that meeting then there will be a decision how we are going to tender out , what the format and specifications are going to be," Rogge said.

The IOC normally sells packages in pairs, but U.S. companies want to buy four at a time if the price is right. NBC is the incumbent. It paid $2.2 billion for Vancouver 2010 and London 2012.

The IOC's finances are "solid" with reserves of US$550 million.
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6 months after Olympics, is Vancouver better?

Where were you six months ago today? Today being Aug. 28, 2010. Six months ago being Feb. 28, 2010.

It was the last day of February and the last day of the the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver and Whistler.

The biggest sporting event on the planet that day was a certain 12:15 p.m. faceoff in downtown Vancouver between Canada and the United States to decide the men’s hockey gold medal in the final event of the Games.

It ended in triumph as Sidney Crosby scored in sudden-death overtime to give Canada the last gold medal of Vancouver 2010 and a record 14 host-team Olympic championships.

International Olympic Committee marketing director Timo Lumme estimated 114 million people around the world were watching the Game. That’s a bigger number than Super Bowl.

Other numbers involving Vancouver 2010 are less impressive. Total estimated viewership was 1.8 billion, which is less than the 3.5 billion Lumme forecast during the Games. VANOC sold 1.49 million of 1.54 million tickets available, despite insisting during the Games that the inventory was 1.6 million. VANOC continues to claim it will balance its $1.76 billion budget. But only after at least $80 million in direct bailouts from taxpayers. Corporate sponsors didn't come to the table or scaled back spending, causing ripple effects and chaos behind-the-scenes.

VANOC is operating under a financial information blackout despite being a signatory to the 2002 Multi-Party Agreement that required quarterly financial reports. Clearly, the task of closing the books is harder than originally envisioned. It still must compensate owners of Whistler Blackcomb and Cypress for use of their slopes, resolve a nasty $10 million contract dispute with charter bus contractor Gameday Management and somehow reclaim $2 million from Visa and an insurer after at least three Latvians used stolen credit cards to buy thousands of tickets on the official VANOC scalping website.

VANOC will be remembered for organizing the Games amid the worst economic climate since the Great Depression. But the Games organizer’s business plan incorrectly assumed there would be no recession of any size before or during the Games.

The debates will rage for many months and years on the impacts of the $6 billion-plus Games and how politicians for the ruling B.C. Liberals downplayed the costs and overstated the benefits.

The Sea-to-Sky Highway is a safer, smoother ride. A tunnel would've been nicer than razing the Eagle Ridge Bluffs forest and swamp, however. The Canada Line is the rapid transit downtown to airport link Vancouver has always needed. The Vancouver Convention Centre is a world-class convention centre that is already bringing big meetings and events downtown that previously would not have fit.

Too bad all three of the above cost more than $3.5 billion combined. Once upon a time, the price tag for all three was estimated to be under $2 billion.

The Vancouver Olympic Centre’s pool is open. Yes, taxpayers built a recreation centre when what the International Olympic Committee ordered was a curling rink. Where the curling rink was will be a hockey rink. Killarney and Trout Lake got a fine new hockey rink each, but not additional ice sheets.

Likewise the Richmond Olympic Oval, where a pair of hockey rinks will open after reconfiguration of the ice plant. The speedskating oval ice surface is hidden for possible future use. The key word is possible.

The Vancouver Olympic Village is a ghost town. The social housing is not open and not enough luxury suites have been bought and occupied by those that can afford them. The community centre is open, the Urban Fare and London Drugs are coming soon. Who knows about the brewpub that was supposed to occupy the Salt Building. The big, red heritage shack is empty. The seawall and man-made island in False Creek are popular with walkers and rollers.

Across the way, B.C. Place Stadium is undergoing a pioneering $563 million post-Games renovation that was supposed to cost $365 million. Let’s hope its retractable roof doesn’t malfunction like the one at Olympic Stadium in Montreal after its post-Games installation.

Robson Square, the biggest free public magnet of the Games, is closed for renovations. Who knows when the GE-sponsored public ice rink will reopen.

The Olympic Streetcar came and went from its False Creek South line between the Canada Line’s Olympic Village Station and Granville Island. Bombardier was willing to leave the two Brussels streetcars there through summer, but city hall had other priorities. Like homes for chickens, more bike lanes and an expensive renovation to Mayor Gregor Robertson and city manager Penny Ballem’s offices.

General Motors Place was Canada Hockey Place for the Games, but is now Rogers Arena. The automaker that drove through bankruptcy last year was under pressure to drive out of its naming rights deal early. The Toronto telecommunications company, a minor partner in the Canadian Olympic Broadcasting Consortium, took over.

The Countdown Clock at the Vancouver Art Gallery still displays zeros, but its days there are numbered. The Olympic half is destined for B.C. Place Stadium's B.C. Sports Hall of Fame. The Paralympic half is going to the Whistler Olympic Park's day lodge. Will there be a permanent memorial to Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, the 21-year-old who died on the Whistler Sliding Centre track on opening day of the 21st Games?

The Downtown Eastside remains Canada’s home for the homeless. An urban ghetto like no other in North America. The Woodward’s complex has breathed new life into the neighbourhood, but the area remains full of people who are ill and addicted, wandering aimlessly, in need of help.

The Games were, essentially, a strategy to improve the real estate and tourism industries.

House sales boomed for a few months after the Games, until hitting the brakes in July with a 20.1 percent drop in Vancouver.

Have you seen all the “for lease” signs outside offices and warehouses in Metro Vancouver? The city’s vacancy rate for the first half of 2010 was officially under 5 percent, but the suburbs are suffering.

Burnaby’s 13.08 percent vacancy rate is 6 percent worse than 2009. Richmond’s 17.58 percent is 5 percent worse than the previous year. Yes, there is new supply on the market that has yet to be absorbed, but there many companies big and small companies downsizing or disappearing.

The Microsoft Canada Development Centre in Richmond is shutting down this fall and remaining employees are moving to downtown Vancouver. That's a 73,000 square foot space for lease and it's not the only one in the Knight Street corridor in Richmond, which is rapidly becoming a lonely place to locate.

Metro Vancouver Commerce, an economic development campaign drive by Vancouver, Richmond and Surrey, claims it created $60 million to $70 million of new business to the region because of the Olympics. But the MVC publicity bumph is easily dissected. Two of the deals announced were worth $52 million combined and involved existing partnerships. The promotion
took credit for the six-and-a-half-year, $27 million contract extension between Lockheed Martin of Maryland and Abbotsford-based Cascade Aerospace, even though Abbotsford was not an MVC participant.

Organizers won't disclose the names of the 100 businesspeople they wined and dined during the Olympics. In fact, MVC appears to have been a sly strategy for staff of the city-funded Vancouver Economic Development Commission to get free Olympic tickets while helping VANOC boost its slumping sales after sponsors cut back.

Tourism Vancouver says overnight stays are up 4.8 percent through June, but that’s in comparison to 2009 which was not a banner year. The February figure of 547,357 was the best February ever, breaking the 2008 mark of 507,199. January showed a year-over-year drop, but March, April, May and June showed improvements over 2009. Except February, all months measured were below the annual averages since 2005.

July and August are the bread-and-butter, million-plus visitor months for Vancouver tourism. Those numbers, when tabulated, will tell us whether the $38.6 million taxpayer-funded You Gotta Be Here tourism ad campaign was worth it.

Federal and British Columbia politicians spending billions of your dollars on economic stimulus projects want you to believe in an economic rebound and a post-Olympic boom. Could the opposite have happened: A minor, post-Games recession, perhaps?

It will take more months than just six to fully assess the legacies of the biggest event in British Columbia history. In some cases, it will take years.

Nobody can deny that it was the city's greatest party. But was the hangover worth it?

Bottom to TOP

The economic recovery may best be described as "fragile," but yet another sign of progress will become apparent on Wednesday. That's when Procter and Gamble is expected to become the newest member of the International Olympic Committee's TOP sponsor roster in London, site of the 2012 Summer Games.

VANOC could have used such an alliance. It had to buy a heckuva lot of toilet paper, shampoo and soap for the Olympic Village. Ivory Soap and Colgate toothpaste, and Hain Celestial's Jason and Avalon Organics products were on the shelves of the general stores at the athletes' villages.

Meanwhile, Cinncinati-based P&G was already in Vancouver as a U.S. Olympic Committee sponsor. It took over the Simon Fraser University Wosk Centre for Dialogue and transformed it into the P&G Family Home for athletes and relatives from the Excited States. It included a Pringles Room, Tide Laundry Centre and Pampers Village kids play area.

The IOC doesn't release details of the TOP program, but it's believed to be in the neighbourhood of $100 million per Games. The IOC paid VANOC $22 million in compensation after it failed to add two sponsors to the list of nine. The decrease in global activation hit VANOC hard. When the IOC made its bailout offer, the governments of Canada ($30.7 million) and British Columbia ($50 million) also bucked up with bailout funds.

On July 16, Dow became a sponsor through 2020. Dow was a VANOC sponsor and would have become a global sponsor sooner had the recession not happened. Environmental sustainability is the IOC's third pillar, after sport and culture. Dow walks a fine line. Many environmentalists are quick to remind those who listen that Dow bought Union Carbide. A December 1984 leak at the company's Bhopal, India pesticide factory killed almost 3,800 people, according to a government estimate. More than half-a-million people were injured. Dow claims no responsibility because it had no stake in Union Carbide at the time. It was a disaster waiting to happen, according to investigators.

Another disaster waiting to happen, according to the New York Times, was that British Petroleum oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The biggest waterborne environmental catastrophe in United States history involves a company that became a U.S. Olympic Committee sponsor before Vancouver 2010. BP is also an official sponsor of London 2012. Rogge said that it would be welcome to remain, so long as there is no proof that the oil rig disaster was caused by negligence.

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.

No Vancouver 2014

There will not be a Vancouver 2014.

Who would organize it and who would pay for it? VANOC is dismantling itself and, well, you know all about the British Columbia government's budget problems and the HST in the former Host-province.

Rumors swirled during Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics that the Russians wouldn’t be ready to host the 2014 Winter Games because work had barely begun in Sochi.

Sochi 2014 president Dmitry Chernyshenko tried to thwart the rumors at a Vancouver news conference at the end of February by calling his hometown the “world’s biggest construction site.”

It wasn’t spin folks, it’s the truth. I was there last week and saw the massive amount of work to build venues, hotels, tunnels, bridges, port facilities and power plants. Some $30 billion of public and private money is being spent. It’s nothing like we saw in Vancouver because the Russians are building from scratch. It’s actually the winter version of Beijing. Chernyshenko wants the sporting venues to be finished two winters before his Games.

Work hasn’t begun on the 40,000-seat Olympic stadium near the shores of the Black Sea, but the Bolshoi Ice Palace hockey rink (below) is on-track to be finished by the end of next year. Sochi, like Vancouver, has a year-round, construction-friendly climate.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin didn’t come to Vancouver, but he hosted a dinner in Sochi for International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge on June 7. These are Putin’s Games. He is on a mission to make Russia a super-power again and not just in the realm of sports. This is also a second chance at hosting the five-ring circus. Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union hosted the 1980 Summer Olympics which were boycotted by 65 countries in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan.

The peaks around Sochi, 2 kilometres high, still have snow from last winter. Despite the subtropical Black Sea coastal climate that gives Sochi-proper bananas and tea plantations, the mountains are snow magnets. Several resort villages are being built to accompany the alpine and nordic venues. There are 19,000 workers at 58 sites. They live in portables stacked three-deep in villages dotted along the banks of the Mzymta River. Mzymta means “crazy” and the level of work done to divert the river would probably not pass a Canadian environmental assessment.

With almost three-and-a-half years to go, the Games should also be built on-time, unless the doomsday predictions of Sergei Volkov come true. The consultant to Sochi 2014 quit and fled to Ukraine. He said a lack of engineering assessment has taken place and works are being conducted in a seismically active area with unstable slopes.

Ultimately, Sochi’s greatest weakness could be its lack of international sporting events and lack of English and French speakers. Organizers are scrambling to create a Russian volunteer culture. They already have a few quality people -- some 70 who participated in the June 7-10 Vancouver 2010 Debrief at the Krasnaya Polyana resort. But they will need more than 20,000 by Games-time.

The organizing committee has people with competent English language skills, but the same can’t be said for restaurateurs and cabbies. The frontline of the tourism industry.

While Sochi readies itself, June 22-23 in Lausanne, Switzerland will be the next chapter in bidding for the 2018 Winter Games. Representatives of Annecy, France, Munich, Germany and PyeongChang, South Korea will submit their applications. The IOC executive board could rubber stamp all three or make a short-list of two. The 2018 host will be decided next year at the IOC congress in Durban, South Africa.

There are already whispers of a Canadian bid for the 2022 Winter Games from Quebec City and a group in Calgary is preparing a challenge.

Are you tired of the IIHF?

International Ice Hockey Federation public relations czar Szymon Szemberg says he’s tired of Sidney Crosby and various, twentysomething hockey players claiming they’re too tired to play at the World Hockey Championship.

Well, I’m tired, too. Tired of Europeans who govern the Great Canadian Game holding a world championship that clashes with the Stanley Cup playoffs and calling it a world championship. It really is the “annual European springtime invitational.”

I’m tired of the IIHF forgetting that the NHL, whose fans pay players like Crosby, compressed its schedule in 2009-2010 to accommodate the Vancouver Olympics. Surely the IIHF must’ve noticed an increase in its Swiss bank account after the most-watched hockey tournament of all-time.

I’m tired of the IIHF neglecting opportunities to develop the game outside North America and Europe. Dear IIHF: did you hear about the economic boom in China and the construction of ice rinks all over Asia in the past decade?

I’m tired of the IIHF spending little time or money to develop women’s hockey and sledge hockey.

Most of all, I’m tired of the IIHF running its affairs like a secret society with a rule-breaking ex-referee as its president.

Rene Fasel was outed by a Swiss newspaper last year for alleged kickbacks. A Deloitte probe paid for by the IIHF was never published. Finally, after the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee said “tsk-tsk” to Fasel for favouring a friend, but it didn’t send Fasel to the penalty box.

Tiresome, isn’t it?

Cool Britannia or Tool Britannia?

It didn’t take long on May 19 for someone in cyberspace (do they still call it that?) to compare the phallic, one-eyed London 2012 mascots Wenlock and Mandeville to penises (can we say that on radio?).

What would you rather have? A union jack-draped bulldog named Winston with bad human teeth, wearing a bowler hat and monocle while hoisting a mug of room-temperature beer with his paw?

The mascots will be $30 million souvenir sales drivers for the next Summer Olympics and Paralympics, which already have a cubist logo that someone likened to Lisa Simpson getting ahead, if you know what I mean.



Can’t wait to see what kind of torch they’ll come up with in the new, Cool Britannia. Certainly it can’t top Vancouver’s joint-shaped torch.

The design of the Olympics, as we learned in Vancouver, is something that can never please all the people, all the time.

The least-controversial and perhaps most-popular element VANOC delivered was the look of the Games itself. Directed by the late Leo Obstbaum, the multi-layered, wavy green and blue, mountains and sea textured collage is almost all gone. You can still see some of it on the northeast side of the Pacific Coliseum.

Of course, VANOC had a rocky start in 2005 with its Ilanaaq the Inukshuk logo inspired by the English Bay inukshuk left over from Expo 86. Original artist Alvin Kanak never got recognition. Many people pointed out that there is no Inuit tribe in British Columbia, so why use a symbol of the north? The answer was easy. The federal government wanted to tell the world Canada was flexing its muscles in the Arctic. Don't trespass on our frozen tundra, eh!




The man becomes mountain-themed Paralympic logo was perhaps more suitable, but it was for the lower-profile Paralympics.

Mascots Miga, Quatchi and Sumi were one-part First Nations mythology and one-part cute Japanimation. Orange-toqued sidekick Muk Muk -- based on a real Vancouver Island marmot -- was never given the life-sized treatment.

Cuddly miniature versions are available at bulk liquidation sales for a fraction of the price paid by tourists at Games-time. (Hey, I thought sales records were set?)



So, welcome to the world, Wenlock and Mandeville. Because you’re British, someone probably told you already to keep a stiff upper lip. I’ll just tell you this from personal experience: A reader called me a dick once and I laughed at him.

While you’re ridiculed at home, you’ll be replicated by the millions in Chinese toy factories for the next two years. Just hope your bosses at London 2012 do what Vancouver 2010 executives failed to do: show and tell people where those factories are and how the workers are treated.

Make transparency a legacy of London 2012.

Vancouver 2010 didn’t have the heart and mind to be so bold.

Peacock plucked in Vancouver

Speaking of NBC, the Peacock network lost $223 million on its Vancouver 2010 coverage, according to the April 16-released quarterly report.

That’s $27 million better than the worst-case scenario, but $23 million worse than the original $200 million estimate of GE CEO Jeff Immelt.

NBC paid $2.2 billion for the Vancouver/London package in 2003 when the advertising market was rosier. A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to Vancouver, called the recession. The last time the Olympics were in a North American time zone was Salt
Lake 2002 when NBC made a $70 million profit.

The Games did bring $800 million in revenue to GE and the ratings were 14% higher than Turin 2006.

ESPN/ABC and FOX are readying to bid for Sochi 2014 and Rio de Janeiro 2016. Will NBC match their offers? s

Scranton 2010

I don’t know how much it costs to get your product mentioned on The Office.

That's because the going rate was censored from a document obtained under Freedom of Information. But it did reveal the cost of the British Columbia Olympic tourism campaign on NBC was $17.255 million.

The You Gotta Be Here campaign starred Michael J. Fox, Sarah McLachlan and Steve Nash. I revealed that it also included a product placement on The Office.

The Feb. 11 episode began with Michael Scott calling a Vancouver hotel to confirm a reservation for the Olympics. The Office also produced a web-exclusive video with a special song about Canada in general and B.C. in particular.

This is the new normal, folks. Because of digital video recorders, commercials are being skipped and advertisers’ money is being wasted. The only way to ensure bang for the buck is by being inside the content.

No peeking: VANOC hiding finances until the fall

VANOC has stopped issuing quarterly reports, which is contrary to the pledge made in November 2002’s Multiparty
Agreement. It said, should Vancouver win the Games, the organizing committee “will provide the parties with quarterly updates to the business plan within 60 days after the end of each quarter of each fiscal year, including forecasts of revenues and expenses."

CEO John Furlong said the rapidly shrinking VANOC workforce has no time to do reports anymore. Its last was for the quarter ended Oct. 31, 2009. The next and final report is coming in October.

“We’re in a completely different frame of mind, we’re trying to reconcile everything, we don’t have the time for that now,” he said after an April 16 Vancouver Board of Trade speech. “We need to get everything sorted out, you’ll get a full final report.

“We’re down to the smallest team we can have, we need to get out of business so that we have the best financial legacy that we can. Our team is infinitely smaller, we don’t have the resources we had through the Games to do that.”

The Games were a creative success that looked spectacular on TV. Even Mother Nature allowed the sun to shine for several days. But VANOC isn’t willing to let the sun shine on its financial figures until the fall. Until then, we can only speculate on the size of the International Olympic Committee and British Columbia government bailouts to make the books balance.

When we peel back the curtain, we’ll find that the recession made this the least successful Games since Montreal 1976.

Paralympics lost in a sea of big-time sport

Filipino Manny Pacquiao, the pound-for-pound best boxer in the world, won the first fight at the new Cowboy Stadium.

Michael Schumacher started his Formula 1 comeback in Bahrain.

The IndyCar season started in Sao Paulo.

David Beckham suffered a World Cup dream-ending achilles injury.

Curling’s Brier was on in Halifax, so was Grapefruit and Cactus League baseball and NFL free agency.

The March Madness bracket was released for the NCAA men’s basketball playoffs.

The Vancouver Canucks played their first home game after a six-week, Olympic-imposed vacation from General Motors Place.

Winter sports athletes who starred at the Vancouver Olympics in skiing and snowboarding finished their world cup tours.

Oh yeah, the Paralympics began.

Para-what?

Sure, we know that the Winter Games for athletes with a disability are a magnificent spectacle of amateur sports because the event is happening in our backyard until March 21. But what about the rest of the world?

Not so much.

Paralympians from 44 countries are enjoying their own stage, but it’s a small stage that is getting little attention from the rest of the world because of the sheer volume of bigger events with recognizable names. As long as this continues, the Paralympics will always be the add-on to the Olympics and the athletes will have little chance at stardom.

International Paralympic Committee president Sir Philip Craven fails to realize that his stubborn stance is actually stunting the growth of sports for people with disabilities.

Dr. Robert Steadward of Edmonton, the IPC’s founding president, boldly stated on March 10 that the Winter Paralympics should be held simultaneously with the Winter Olympics in the same city and venues for the sake of efficiency and to increase the profile. People with disabilities want equality.

There were 2,803 accredited written and photographic press personnel from around the world at the Vancouver Olympics.
There are less than 600 at the Paralympics and most of them are from British Columbia outlets. Most of the world media has gone home and turned its attention elsewhere.

“We believe that Paralympians compete at the Paralympics and there’s no real need for them to compete at the Olympics,” Craven said at a March 12 news conference.

“It’s not my idea of progress, we’ve got a good formula now with the Winter Games and Summer Games,” Craven said. “This is the way it is, and I don’t believe in changing formulae when they work.”

But it doesn’t work because the Paralympics have only two major sponsors -- Visa and Samsung -- and even the big Olympic broadcasters like NBC in the United States and CTV in Canada pay lip service to coverage. If Paralympians could compete in their events during the Olympic period, they would naturally have huge attention.

I was reminded of the power of the Olympics at the Paralympic opening ceremony when Rick Hansen captivated the nearly 60,000 fans in B.C. Place Stadium with his moving speech about the power of sport.

Hansen wheeled around the world from 1985 to 1987 to raise funds for spinal cord research and to campaign for access and equality for people with disabilities. In 1984 Hansen raced in a 1,500 metre event during the Los Angeles Olympics in Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It was broadcast worldwide. The kid from Williams Lake was a global star because he was on a global stage.

If he competed in a second-tier event seen by few after those Olympics, would Hansen’s Man in Motion world tour have been so successful? Would he be one of the most-trusted, most-inspirational Canadians?

Just asking.

Integrate the Paralympics and Olympics. Celebrate the spirit of athletes of all abilities in the same event. The time has come.

Record numbers forecast for Vancouver, but not record profits

The International Olympic Committee’s marketing director estimated 3.5 billion viewers would experience some of Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics.

Timo Lumme said more than 300 broadcasters in 200 territories delivered the first all high-definition Winter Games to TV viewers. He said the total amount of content delivered was 50,000 hours, which is more than Salt Lake 2002 and Turin 2006 combined.

“In four short years from Torino to Vancouver we’ve had a continuing digital explosion,” Lumme said. “We now have the same amount of hours globally covered on digital media, Internet and mobile, as we have on the old media, broadcast.”
In Canada, a record 22 million people were watching when Sidney Crosby scored the gold medal-winning overtime goal in the hockey final. CTV reported average prime time viewership of 5.8 million.

The ratings were in record territories, but the recessionary Games won’t translate to record profits because of the advertising slump. NBC parent General Electric already announced in December that it would lose $200 million because of Vancouver 2010 and is being coy about its post-London 2012 plans. NBC Olympics chief Dick Ebersol is bearish about Sochi 2014, mainly because it's eight hours ahead of New York. Fox and ESPN have mulled bids.

Also in December, CTV Olympics president Keith Pelley said the aim was to break-even. CTV bid US$153 million five years ago for 2010 and 2012 rights, more than double the CBC contract for US$73 million for 2006 and 2008.

"We've said what we're going to say about the economics leading into the Games. Now we're totally focusing on the actual Games and we'll address the consolidated numbers shortly thereafter,” Pelley said during the Games.

The IOC promised VANOC a roster of 11 global sponsors, but it stalled at nine and no new deals were announced in Vancouver. Last summer, the IOC pledged to help VANOC with losses up to $22 million unless the gap could be narrowed through other means.

The B.C. government is the ultimate guarantor and launched a $38 million tourism ad campaign before the Games. The You Gotta Be Here out-of-home ads took up substantial space in the Olympic city and at transit stations, filling space that would have been used by private sponsors had the recession not happened.

Golden smog to spoil VANOC's green spin

Watch out for the inevitable golden smog when Vancouver gets a stretch of sunny weather. It will not look good on TV.

VANOC and its partners have turned the hype machine up to 11 in their bid to sell the world on the idea that these will be Greenest Games Ever. They will, in fact, be brown. Petro-Canada-supplied diesel -- six million litres, to be exact -- is fueling the Aggreko-provided generators that are providing power to venues. The Aggreko generators are hidden from public view, behind the look of the Games temporary hoarding. They’re supposed to be there for backup only. The three clusters around B.C. Place Stadium are providing the dome primary power. B.C. Hydro did not instal a system upgrade.

And then there are the diesel motorcoaches. The fleet includes full-size buses all the way from Capital Trailways in Montgomery, Ala., and Cowtown Charters in Fort Worth, Texas while B.C. companies are stuck on the outside, looking in after being fed government propaganda for years claiming the Games would benefit all.

These buses were driven across the continent and are plying streets of Vancouver mostly empty for the benefit of media schedules. The 1,100 whale-sized buses in the VANOC fleet are a big reason why severe measures were enacted to create Olympic lanes that have removed curb lanes and parking from public use in the city’s busiest areas.

VANOC sustainability vice-president Linda Coady liked to talk about how VANOC would be “right-sizing” transportation vehicles to balance supply and demand. Coady’s department is attached at the hip to the VANOC communications department, but apparently has no connection with the all-important transportation group that actually manages supply and demand.....

How tragic that it was that a 21-year-old athlete died on the first day of the 21st Winter Games. Expect one of the legacies of the Games to be a wrongful death lawsuit by the parents of Nodar Kumaritashvili.....

Will Cypress Mountain’s reputation forever be harmed? Boosters of the Games loved to wax poetically about it being the first Olympic venue with a view of the Pacific Ocean. A blessing for TV cameras but a curse for the sport. At its best, weather at Cypress can change from bad to worse and back to good in 15 minutes. And then there was the poor VANOC planning for food service and crowd flows. What were those 2008 and 2009 test events about?.....

There are only three bidders for the 2018 Winter Games: Annecy, France, Munich, Germany and PyeongChang, South Korea. PyeongChang is hoping it’s third time lucky, after losing to Vancouver and Sochi.

Munich hosted the 1972 Summer Games, forever tainted by the hostage-taking of Israeli athletes who were later killed. What happens during and after the Vancouver Games will have great impacts on the Munich bid that not even the ageless beauty of Katarina Witt can overcome.

Vancouver is the biggest Winter Games host and it has a globally important sea port and airport. That is a big reason why the security bill is $900 million. The Vancouver Games have been a logistical nightmare behind the scenes with a transportation plan that was never properly tested. It was supposed to have been completed by the end of 2007.....

Funny that the first gold medal of the Bailout Games belongs to Montrealer Alexandre Bilodeau. He wasn’t born when Canada didn’t win its first gold medal at home in the 1976 Games but his name is pronounced like “bill-o-dough.”

Here it is

Where were you 345 weeks ago?

General Motors Place and Whistler Village were abuzz bright and early on a spectacular day after Canada Day when the International Olympic Committee chose Vancouver to host the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Now it’s almost here.

For 17 days Vancouver will be the world’s sport and media capital. It will be memorable and it will be costly. The Vancouver Games will be the least-successful since Montreal 1976 once the Games are over and the bills tallied.

It will be a Games of contrasts.

The world will find out how rich and poor the city is, with peaks of opulent wealth and valleys of poverty just blocks apart in downtown. Many First Nations people will feel a sense of pride and belonging like never before; others will feel greatly disenfranchised.

Locals will wonder where their Olympic payday is. The security overkill and transportation tie-ups will deter visits to downtown and some businesses will struggle to stay open.

The most-anticipated non-sporting event of the Games won’t be the parties at Holland Heineken House, Club Bud at the Commodore or Molson Canadian Hockey House, but the Feb. 19 auction of Whistler Blackcomb-owner Intrawest.

The VANOC transportation plan will become apparent as the weakest link of its planning. Order will come from the chaos in the second week.

The Wall Street media will be watching with an eagle-eye to make sure sponsors spend responsibly amid the continuing economic malaise that has greatly curtailed sponsor spending and caused governments to buck up even more than anticipated.

There will be no Barack Obama or “London Liz” on stolen native land. Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean will become the world’s most famous native of Haiti and John Furlong will trump Bono as the most famous Irishman with a microphone.

The Olympics are a decade of politics and economics and 17 days of sport. The agony of defeat and thrill of victory will make new stars.

American skier Lindsay Vonn is driving for five gold medals. The headline is already written: Vonn-couver. Canadian cross-country skier Brian McKeever is aiming to be the first to compete in both the Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, the Snow Leopard from Ghana via Scotland, will be the Vancouver equivalent of Eddie the Eagle. He won’t win gold, but the broadcaster who can pronounce his name flawlessly more than once could.

The success and failure of the $110 million Own the Podium program will be gauged daily when Canadians analyze the medals standings.

Canada could win every gold medal available but if one of them isn’t men’s hockey, then the Games could be deemed a puckin’ failure.