Pump it up!
The Olympics bubble, running deer & sheep, plus football's conveyor belt
The Olympic torch is on the 60th stage of its relay around France. Moderate rapture accompanies the journey. Today, Beauvais, a couple of hours north of Paris – not allowing for the Olympian gridlock that is already irking locals anxious to escape for their grandes vacances. Just eight days now until the opening ceremony and hard to make an economic argument for the Games.
A government study published a year after London 2012 claimed an expected £41 billion economic legacy from holding the Olympics and Paralympics. I guess the authors believed their maths, but few observers did. Heroic assumptions and fairy-tale spreadsheets usually prop up bids to host major sporting jamborees. Impact studies then provide the post-event justification, so laying the foundations for similar ventures in future.
London’s mayor during the 2005 bid which beat off competition from Paris, Ken Livingstone, famously had little to no interest in sport, but seized the opportunity to use the Games to radically redevelop an impoverished chunk of the city’s east. This was London 2012’s great legacy, not an upswing in the nation’s health nor a sugar-rush of economic activity – neither materialised.
Paris’ plan for this year’s Games is a direct contrast to London’s. Its use of existing venues plays to the sustainability agenda that is a mark of today’s times. In keeping, wider infrastructure spending has been modest by the standards of previous Olympic hosts. In spite of twelve years of inflation, the Paris budget of just under £8 billion (roughly half on operating costs and half on facilities) is about £1 billion lower than London’s final outgoings.
Not that this is likely to placate a French public that has been slow to show any enthusiasm for the venture. Tickets remain plentiful, even for the medal sessions for the marquee sports such as athletics. Hotel prices have fallen steadily over the past year, rewarding those like me who have cancelled and rebooked the same room at regular intervals.
It's not just domestic interest either. Earlier this month Air France issued a profit warning having grossly overestimated demand for flights into Paris this summer. Recent visitors to the French capital have reported little obvious Olympic promotion. The current political turmoil won’t have helped, but the seeds of an under-powered marketing strategy will have been laid months if not years ago. And if the locals aren’t buzzing with anticipation, then foreigners will be less likely to jump on one of those half empty flights.
"Only once in a century does one host Olympic and Paralympic Games, only once in a millennium does one rebuild a cathedral… 2024, a year of determination, choices, recovery, pride. In fact, a year of hope." President Macron’s New Year address ringing hollow mid-2024
The operating model embedded in the agreement between any Olympic host and the International Olympic Committee is loaded in the latter’s favour. The IOC takes the lion’s share of the commercial revenue and bears little of the cost, leaving the city to fund the Games on ticket income and whatever local sponsorship it can garner. Such is the presumed cachet of hosting, bringing with it supposed spin-off benefits from both tourism and trade deals struck with visiting bigwigs.
But of course, huge contracts are not really the product of a few tickets for the 100 meters final and a stay at the George V, whatever one might fantasise.
Olympic tourists simply displace those who choose to holiday elsewhere if they have no interest in sightseeing surrounded by sport. And Parisian restauranteurs have already clocked that a day zigzagging between Olympic venues doesn’t allow time for a leisurely dinner. What economic boost?
Most of Paris 2024’s toy mascots are made in China, not France - 92% of them according to Le Monde
With Los Angeles and Brisbane nailed down as the next two Olympic hosts and both Saudi Arabia and India heavily rumoured to be keen to stage future Games, it is impossible to envisage the IOC’s model changing any time soon.
As chair of a governing body, I am currently in the bubble of obsession that always inflates while the Olympic torch is on its journey. When in the middle of a Games I find myself grateful for credulous politicians who buy into the dream of global kudos that the IOC peddles to governments and cities.
Two forecasts: the sport will be great, as ever; and in a year’s time there will be a report purporting to show whoever happens to be in power in France that Paris 2024 was very definitely worthwhile.
If you’re happy to park my scepticism about impact studies, you can get a sense of the economic boost Paris organisers are expecting here
A version of this article first appeared in The Times on 16 July
Don’t shoot Bambi!
A local school accompanied the recent general election with its own hustings and pupil vote. Nothing unusual, you might think. But this one replaced political parties with candidates advocating for sports previously part of the the Olympics to be readmitted to the Games.
Tug-of-war, croquet, plunge for distance diving and running deer all featured. The last of these was a new one on me. This involves shots being fired at a moving deer-shaped target. It appeared at the Games between 1908 and 1924 and then twice in the 1950s.
The school poll was won by tug-of war. Those against the sport argued it involved too much cheating but an enthusiastic electorate was undeterred. One to try again at Riyadh 2036 perhaps?
Croquet trailed badly. The sport only ever appeared at the 1900 Paris Olympics when every medal was won by France. The hosts were the only nation that entered - bad form, or so persuasive naysayers argued at the school hustings. The French Olympic Committee has clearly missed a trick - should have lobbied the IOC for croquet’s return in 2024 to boost its medal prospects.
Dear England
By my reckoning the England squad at the Euros have played senior football for 46 of the 92 clubs - exactly half - that make up the country’s top four divisions, including 16 of the 20 Premier League teams. Plus a handful of National League sides and a few youth appearances for other clubs besides. Fair to say then that the majority of English fans had an emotional stake in the tournament over and above national pride. Assuming, like me, that a former player is always viewed as ‘one of ours’.
The EFL should be hammering home this statistic in its negotiations with the Premier League over financial support. Negotiations that progress at a seemingly glacial pace. The talent conveyor belt is real, and the top flight clubs (and England) are its beneficiaries.
The ‘missing’ four Premier League clubs? Fulham, Ipswich, Leicester and Wolves. Happy to be corrected if I’ve missed a connection.
Golden fleeces
To Sark for the weekend*. No escaping the Olympics though. I can report that the postbox painted gold to celebrate Carl Hester’s dressage victory at London 2012 is being kept in tip top condition. Paris will be Hester’s fourth Games for Team GB.
If you like your sport a little more local, this weekend sees the annual Sark Sheep Racing (with jockeys). You can take a peek at last year’s action here
* Thanks to the Sark Running Club for letting me tag along on their Monday evening run
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