Festivals and other gigantic events are held every year in other parts of the world. Some events are done annually, like city marathons, a town cook fest, independence day celebration, Hong Kong Rugby Sevens and etc. And some are held over s certain period of time like for example every 4 years, like the Summer Olympics and the World Cup.
But what makes these events successful? How do we classify or identify that this event is successful and this event is not. What are the long term and short term economic impact of the successful and failed events?
This paper will show two major Olympic events that are considered by the masses one of the successful and failed Olympic events, the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games which is considered successful and the 2004 Athens Olympic Games which is considered as a failure.
A Brief History of the Olympic Games
The Summer Olympic Games are an international multi-sport event, occurring every four years, organized by the International Olympic Committee. Medals are awarded in each event, with gold medals for first place, silver for second and bronze for third, a tradition that started since 1904.
The games have expanded from a 42 event competition with fewer than 250 male athletes to a 300 event sporting tradition with over 10,000 competitors of both sexes from 205 nations.
The Olympic Games is the biggest of events that a city can organize. The size of the Olympic event and the activities needed for the preparation and hosting of the Games are in a scale able to act as a catalyst for urban redevelopment, enabling changes which might normally take several decades to complete.
The 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympic Games
The 1996 Summer Olympics of Atlanta, officially known as the Games of the XXVI Olympiad and unofficially known as the Centennial Olympics were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in Atlanta, Georgia.
In 1990, the city of Atlanta made and won its bid to host the 1996 Olympic Games. The city of Atlanta did not waste any time and begun several major developments in order to prepare for the Olympics, especially in the infrastructure side.
Benefits made by the Olympic Event to the City
Considered by many people a success, the Atlanta Olympics bought as much attention to a once one of the un-popular city in the U.S. It made a great impact on the city and turned the city into one of the modernized city in America. One of the structures that were built for instance are the building of the mid-rise dormitories built for the Olympic Village. These dormitories became one of the residential housing for Georgia State University, and has recently has been transferred for use by Georgia Institute of Technology. Another example is the Centennial Olympic Stadium. Design for the Olympic event and was later converted into the baseball stadium called Turner Field for the Atlanta Braves. The venue for the track and field was converted to Centennial Olympic Park and still being use as of today, which now became one of the tourist spots in Atlanta (Engle, 1999).
The Atlanta Olympics followed the model established by the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. It took USD 1.8 billion to stage the Olympic event. Government funds were used for security and to pay for the games, and the Atlanta Committee relied heavily on sponsorship and ticket sales resulting to a USD 10 million profit.
It was reported that the direct physical economic impact of the Olympics on Georgia is between $3.5 billion and $5 billion, with the Atlanta region receiving the vast majority of that sum. Short term job creation has been estimated at 80,000 jobs, with State tax revenues from this event amounted at $176 million (Engle, 1999).
The enormous physical infrastructure investments, economic development, advertising and the global exposure for Atlanta continues to yield substantial economic returns on years to come. Officials estimate the total investment in physical infrastructure is at $500 million.
The impact of the Games as a sporting event has proven very strong. Atlanta has already had its professional and college sports teams as one of their community treasures. But with the arrival of the Olympics, the city widen it venues to stage the sporting events, thus increasing public perception of the city of sports. The Georgia Dome, completed in 1993 for the city's professional football team, offered the city another Olympic venue with long term utility.
Impact of Tourism in Atlanta
Atlanta's tourism market, previously a weak one, also benefitted from the Olympic hype, in the short time, visitors spent a record $14.7 billion in Georgia in 1996, the majority of which took place outside the Olympic time period. Hotels, restaurants and sporting venues built for the Olympics generated substantial revenues during the Games; many enjoyed strong revenues immediately after the Games as visitors flocked to see where the action had taken place (Engle, 1999).
What Made the Event a Success?
Cooperation was the key that made the Atlanta summer Olympics successful. The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) did not waste any time to plan for the event. They held tightly to their schedules and sought countless community partners to successfully stage the Games. The committee defined its missions and goals that helped them focus on strategic action steps. The community partners and the committee responsibilities were well defined that help them focus and helping them to successfully meet their responsibilities. Dozens of organizations were organized and public private partnerships were created to achieve specific goals in order to help Atlanta be well prepared and in time for the Olympic event.
The city of Atlanta, well known for its past racial tensions and hostilities against African-American peoples (Bauerlein, 2001), the citizens of Atlanta, stand united in planning the event. Given the racial tensions and political hostilities over the past few years in the history of Atlanta, the most notable accomplishment of the Olympic movement may have been the degree of unity it has created. For more than eight years, the city of Atlanta, Fulton County, the State of Georgia and numerous other local jurisdictions worked together and with a multitude of private interests in an extraordinary collaboration and with impressive results (Engle, 1999).
One of the notable successful projects that the committee made was the formation of "Corporation for the Olympic Development in Atlanta." This partnership allowed the city and private developers to invest $80 million in funds, $32 million of which were public funds, in revitalizing several in town neighborhoods. Projects included residential rehabilitation and development, commercial revitalization, and street development. These projects helped pave the way for todays in town housing boom (Engle, 1999).
Other partnerships also flourished around the housing revitalization effort including the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, a non-profit created to broker deals between community based non-profits, for-profit corporations and foundations. Together they constructed or rehabilitated more than 1300 units of affordable housing in neighborhoods surrounding Olympic venues (Engle, 1999).
The 2004 Athens Summer Olympics
Officially known as the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad was a premier international multi sporting event that was held in Athens Greece. The Athens 2004 marked the first time since 1996 Summer Olympics that all countries with a National Olympic Committee were in attendance. The Olympic motto was "Welcome Home" for this was also the first time since 1896 that the Olympics were held in Greece.
By some people, the 2004 Summer Olympics were considered by some people, a failed event. The Athens Olympic committee wasted the first 3 years on doing the preparations and had to make up for the lost time over the past few years. By the 2004, the Olympic project is still behind schedule, the roof for the Aquatic Center (although optional) was not built, Infrastructure, such as the tram line linking venues in southern Athens to the city proper, and numerous venues were finished just two months before the games. The same goes to the main Olympic Stadium as well. By late July and early August, Athens managed to deliver the Olympic venue just in time, a week before the opening ceremony. It was reported that the subsequent pace of preparation and made the rush to finish the Athens venues is considered one of the tightest finishes in Olympics history.
Economic Impact to the City of Athens
During the Athens Olympic Games, not one advertising billboard could be seen in the city, because the organizers clearly wanted to have a more cultural approach rather than a commercial. The organizers came up with a greeting slogan "Welcome Home," indicating that they advocated a cultural rather than commercial approach (profit or loss, 2008).
ATHOC tried to restrict the commercial element of the games and kept the number of sponsors to a record low. In previous Olympic events, sponsors are permitted to erect billboards in the competing venues, but during the Athens Olympic Games, all that were visible were the Olympic emblem and slogans. Sponsors were not even allowed to advertise outside the competing venues, and before the opening of the Athens Olympic Games, ATHOC ordered the dismantling of more than 10,000 billboards in the city. As far as staging a "heritage"-type non-commercialized Olympic Games, ATHOC's method was sound and politically significant. But in the economic point of view, without the sponsors help, it has been known to be commercially disastrous (profit and loss, 2008).
The Athens Olympics, which cost a record £9.4bn to stage (way over its original budget, which rocketed after the September 11 terrorist attacks increased security costs) have left Greece stacked under a huge debt. In the months after the Games, it was reported that the shortfall amounted to €50,000 for each Greek household, and taxpayers are still taking up the bill. Maintenance of the sites alone has cost as much as £500m. As many as 21 out of the 22 venues lie abandoned. The open-air swimming pool is empty and stained, while squatters camp outside the graffiti-festooned Faliron complex, which hosted events such as taekwondo and beach volleyball (Cost of Athens Olympics, 2004).
The Greek authority has announced that they have plans to sell off the venues that have become such a drain on the country's struggling economy, but until now, the venues still stands and un-used at the expense of the city tax payers. Despite the success of the sporting events and the smooth running of the Games were workers pulled of a small miracle by finishing some venues with hours to go, as well as undoubted improvements to the city's infrastructure - notably its subway - Athens has become a manual on how not to stage the Olympics (After the Party, 2008).
The Olympics are now almost a cursed word in Athens, most regularly used by politicians who use the issue of decay as a powerful campaigning point. The Games will never return there. They will not be allowed to, if for no other reason than that the level of public outrage at the grotesque waste of money on oversized venues with no future is disastrous (profit or loss, 2008).
Reason for Failure
Poor control of cost, lack of corporate sponsorship, inadequate marketing and promotions and lack of strategic planning are the reasons why the Athens Olympic event failed. Unlike the 1996 Atlanta event, corporate sponsorship and marketing promotions was limited and therefore the ATHOC relied heavily on government funding to hold the event, which in turn, left Greece in a huge economic debt.
Venues, transportation and other infrastructure projects were delayed to the point that they finish all these projects, 2 weeks before that game's opening ceremony. And in one point, the IOC was considering to change the Olympic venue to another country. There is not even a sufficient hotel rooms for tourist to stay and the ATHOC has to encourage its citizens to rent out rooms in their houses to alleviate the shortage.
Conclusion
In order to make a mega event to be successful, there are a number of things to be considered in order to make it a success. But most of all, I believe that one of the major element for one mega event to succeed is the country's government and it's country's citizen support. Without these in my opinion, it will be hard for event managers to conduct the event. Imagine, without government backing, it will be hard for you to plan the venue. And in choosing the venue, there a lot of thing needed to be considered such as traffic, public safety, waste management and etc... That mostly relies on the government sector.
Cooperation is also needed to make an events and festivals a success. Just like in the case of ACOG, they tried to put aside their differences in order to make their Olympic event, a successful one. Working together exponentially grows the community's capacity for success and I believe that the ATHOC should have learned.
