Hickey Dismisses Fears Over Threat to European Games

(ATR) IOC member Pat Hickey tells Around the Rings the 2018 European Sports Championships will have no impact on the European Games brand.

Berlin and Glasgow will stage the 10-12 day event unveiled Thursday. It will involve 2,900 athletes taking part in athletics, cycling, rowing, swimming and triathlon. Funded by the Scottish government and Glasgow City Council, the inaugural multisports event will use many 2014 Commonwealth Games venues.

Unlike the Baku 2015 Games, the European Broadcast Union, umbrella body for the continent’s free-to-air channels, is on board. It is expected to generate more than 2,700 hours of programming; the games will reach a cumulative live television audience of about 850 million television viewers across Europe.

The European federations for the sports on the program have joined forces to establish a new event they hope will bring in significant sponsorship revenues.

A release from organizers of the Berlin-Glasgow events says the plan is to bring the existing European championships together in a sustainable format once every four years "in order to continue building their prestige, profile and media exposure."

Such ambitions raise serious concerns about the future of the European Games. But the European Olympic Committees president denies it is a threat to the European Games initiative.

"As president of the EOC, I will always welcome events which support the development of European sport and help European athletes reach their full potential," Hickey told ATR.

"But this event is a completely different initiative to the European Games, with fewer sports, fewer athletes and in a different year.

"Thanks to the Olympic Games qualification opportunities and the unique multi-sport Games experience on offer at the European Games, we will continue to attract the continent’s top athletes, and with top athletes will come the

commercial and broadcast partners to reach our audiences in Europe and beyond," the Irish IOC Executive Board member added.

The European Games was established to address the alarming decline of the continent’s athletes at Olympic level – in 1988 Europe won 74 percent of the available medals, which was down to 37 percent by 2008.

Unlike the European Sports Championships, there will be an athletes’ village and central hub for the European Games. The EOC believes the event set-up, similar to other continental Games, will raise standards.

News of the European Sports Championships comes as the EOC negotiates with several NOCs as part of the bidding phase for the 2019 European Games. The host city announcement comes in May.

Hickey claims the new 2018 multisports event won’t dilute the 2019 event or dim enthusiasm for it from NOCs and athletes, highlighting the fact that 12 of the 16 Olympic sports on the Baku 2015 roster offer Rio Olympic qualification.

The ambition for the 2019 edition is to offer Olympic qualification for more sports, although the EOC may be looking to downsize to 15-17 sports after Baku 2015 to make it more financially viable for smaller cities.

Noteworthy is that athletics and swimming will not play a big role at Baku 2015, while cycling and rowing are not featured.

The EOC had tried and failed to negotiate a deal to make athletics a bigger part of the first European Games in Baku. The street athletics program this summer only includes pole vault and high jump events.

Hansjörg Wirz, president of European Athletics Association, said the federation’s aim is to grow the profile of athletics through the European Sports Championships in 2018. The 2018 European Athletics Championships will be

staged at Berlin's Olympic Stadium, with road races and race walking events also held in the city.

This immediately raises doubts about the EA’s willingness to team up with the EOC for the 2019 edition.

Hickey told ATR that the EOC would be in dialogue with the European cycling, swimming and athletics federations "to ensure the participation of top-quality athletes for 2019."

"We had strong expressions of interest in hosting the 2019 edition from six cities, and we are close to finalizing the deal with the next hosts," he said.

"And Baku 2015 will be broadcast to 55 countries globally. For me, that already makes the European Games an established brand and an event at the pinnacle of European sport, and it is only going to get better from here."

Reported by Mark Bisson

For general comments or questions, clickhere.

​

​20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribersonly.​