Again and again
How to value endorphins as London bids for two sporting repeats
“Everybody came to see and let the good times roll” Status Quo
For London 2012 and London 2017 read London 2040 and London 2029. Plans are afoot to persuade the IOC and World Athletics to return their flagship events to Britain’s capital. This isn’t a case of rinse and repeat (twice), however. With urban regeneration no longer part of London’s equation, the onus will be on those carrying the torches of ambition to persuade central government of the benefits of sporting endorphin rushes for a cash-strapped nation.
There has been some mayoral chuntering about the possibility of an Olympic return to London for a while. Now, though, Sadiq Khan has broken cover in declaring an ambition to host the 2040 Games as well as to secure a World Athletics Championships in 2029.
While it is unclear who, if anyone, currently owns the work plan for an Olympic bid, Khan’s declaration will be music to the ears of Katherine Grainger who has recently flipped from chairing UK Sport (lottery funder of GB’s athletes) to chair of the BOA (owner-manager of Team GB). Around the time she moved offices, Grainger told the BBC of her concerns that Britain had too few major sporting events in its hosting calendar over the coming years.
The BOA would be at the heart of any bid project, lobbying first the UK government to nail down the necessary backing, before turning to the IOC leadership and its members. Two Games in the same city within three decades would be unprecedented This would also require London to see off either Saudi Arabia or the continent of Africa, both of which will be in the IOC’s sights as it seeks to complete its continental set of hosts.
By contrast, the project to win hosting rights for the World Athletics Champs is already up and running under the aegis of Athletic Ventures, an enterprise comprising governing body UK Athletics and the organisers of both the London Marathon and Great North Run.
Crucially, this triumvirate is not asking for the UK government to be the financial backer of last resort, which has traditionally been the case for big events across sports. The international federations who control the rights to major championships have looked to governments to provide guarantees so as not to risk their own solvency or that of their national members, such as UK Athletics, who formally take on the role of hosts.
If commercial organisations become accepted alternative underwriters, then the range of possible host cities grows - albeit with added financial risk. Athletic Ventures is not setting a global precedent, but it could prove a breakthrough example at home that clears the way for Britain to expand its sporting event portfolio.
It helps that the World Athletics Championships has a cost running to the tens of millions rather than the billions that an Olympics and adjacent Paralympics require - even though London already has all of the necessary sporting venues. I was chair of both UK Athletics and London 2017. These champs had a budget of £75 million and turned a surplus of around £6 million. This after a commitment of a combined £16 million from UK Sport and London itself, plus some cash and a big slug of effort from our people at UKA. The government’s underwrite wasn’t called upon.
In breaking cover with its bid intentions, Athletic Ventures has made a bold ask of £45 million funding from government. It is unclear what cash Sadiq Khan is prepared to commit from London’s coffers, or what the joint venture’s three partners are tipping into the pot beyond their expertise and labour. So the trade proposed to government is to let it off the underwrite hook in return for a hard cash contribution. I applaud the initiative, which should focus minds at DCMS and the Treasury.
The sum requested looks steep compared to 2017, but immediate surprise at its scale melts away when one reflects on eight years of inflation with four more still to come, the heightened requirements of World Athletics for its event (including more athlete prize money), and a plan for a greatly expanded legacy programme compared to last time out. The big unknowns are the extent of Britons’ appetite to buy track & field tickets across nine days of competition (in 2017 we were still surfing the post London 2012 wave) and the state of the domestic sponsorship market in current straitened times.
This July’s London Athletics Meet is about to sell out, boding well for ticket revenues from a World Champs in the same stadium
Is it all worth the cost and risk? Bids for events are justified by pre-event estimates of expected economic impact and post-event analyses which invariably seem to back up the original rationale for hosting. London 2017 was no exception. The bidding partners for 2029 are claiming an expected £400 million boost to the London and wider national economy, a hefty multiple of their funding ask.
My scepticism about such estimates is that for all the spreadsheets behind the numbers, they necessarily rely on assumptions that are both heroic and impossible to verify. Not necessarily wrong, just unprovable.
For me, the strongest argument for hosting major sporting events is the opportunity they provide for people to witness sporting excellence in the flesh, the communal experience this engenders, the inspiration that entails, and the broader feel good vibe for the nation. Try putting a price on that if you must, but I believe it is priceless. Doesn’t make the task of deciding how much to invest any easier, but sport is hardly unique in asking politicians to place a value on societal good feeling.
Athletic Ventures and Sadiq Khan won’t be alone in seeing the social and economic value of hosting the pinnacle athletics event again in four years’ time. I’m hoping the bid team swiftly clears the hurdle of persuading government of its merits so that it can focus on reminding World Athletics just how much athletes and fans enjoyed their time here in 2017. Go London!
No news as yet about a parallel bid to host the World Para Athletics Championships alongside the World Athletics ones. I’m assured though that one is in the grand plan.
Back-to-back champs was one of the triumphs in 2017, providing Para athletes with an audience - in stadia and remotely - dimensionally greater than anything seen before or since for any sport outside the Paralympic Games themselves. Definitely one for the ‘must do again’ list.
Relegation threat
If a report in The Times is to be believed, lobbyists for 2029 and 2040 might struggle to identify the target for their blandishments. Sport has often struggled for share of voice within DCMS, but at least it has a clearly identified home. Now it is rumoured that “Starmer’s team” wants to abolish DCMS, “splitting it between the business department, the education department and the Treasury - allowing them to fire Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State.”
Eh? I’ve long advocated for more joined-up thinking across government departments to harness the societal power of sport. This, though, reads more like a scattering to the four, sorry three, winds. The fourth wind, if there is to be a scattering, is surely the health department, or is no-one in government alive to sport’s power to lower healthcare costs?
Man v machine
The second of Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track events was in Miami at the weekend and its final afternoon coincided with F1’s Grand Prix in the same city. Flipping between the two, I was struck by how much both leant on confected excitement and suffered from longeurs in which commentators struggled. At least Johnson got a crowd into the small athletics venue on Sunday. Might mean his venture does manage to make it to a second season. But only if he’s brave enough to overhaul its format and find some money for higher production values - not to F1 standards, but at least within sight of them.
Between the posts
Last week’s Sport inc. on the RFU governance review swiftly garnered the highest number of reads of any of this newsletter’s 200 editions. Not sure whether that tells me more about the demographic of you, my audience, or the level of interest in the way English rugby is structured and led. Probably a bit of both. Please keep bouncing my scribblings around as our review team is keen to gather as much feedback as we can through the current consultation process.
Always interesting to read your thoughts on athletics in particular, Ed - as it’s a sport for which for some reason I have only a passing interest in as a spectator, while participating in actively as a runner (which is pretty much the opposite of my position on football).
In any case, your comment on July’s London athletics event being about to sell out successfully triggered a couple more ticket sales, for my wife and me - which will be my first visit there (or to an athletics event) since Super Saturday in 2012.