The Inside Story - IOC Cuts International Promotion for 2020 Olympic Bids

(ATR) Around the Rings is told that cities bidding for the 2020 Olympics will face severe restrictions on promotion during the London Games under new IOC rules meant to slash bid budgets.

IOC Olympic Games executive director Gilbert Felli confirms to ATR that the 2020 candidates will largely be prohibited from international PR at the Olympics – a first for a bidding contest in the run-up to a host city vote.

"It is not a problem [for them]. We have Olympic Games in London and the cities can be there and see what's going on and speak to people, but no international promotion," he says. "They are more than welcome to be present."

"It is good enough because cities [traditionally] spend so much money on international promotion. It is good for them," Felli adds.

Under a calendar approved at the IOC Executive Board meeting in April, the period for international promotion for 2020 candidates is not allowed to begin until January 2013. That will exclude the London Games and other international sports meetings scheduled ahead of then.

The IOC will still credential six observers from each candidate city, as is customary in this stage of the bid process. But in past campaigns the cities received the green light for international promotion once the IOC Executive Board confirmed which cities made the final list of candidates for the race. That timing usually gave the cities a year for international promotion, a span of time that included the Summer Olympics.

IOC EB member Craig Reedie tells ATRthat he believes some allowances for promotion will be made for the London Games.

"The issue of London in July 2012 has yet to be finalized," he says.

"In Vancouver NOCs were allowed to create some publicity in their NOC Houses and I cannot believe that the same will not be allowed in London. This is an elegant and practical way of allowing the bidding NOCs to assist their candidate cities," adds Reedie.

The IOC decided to cut the international PR period following a debrief of the 2016 Olympic bid cities. Rio triumphed over Madrid in the final round of voting, with Chicago and Tokyo also missing out.

"All the cities agreed it cost them a lot of money to do that and asked the IOC to make it shorter so less would be spent on it," Felli explains.

"We are trying to reduce the costs for the bidding."

One expert tells Around the Rings that a summer bid budget is now close to $100 million.

Baku, Doha, Istanbul, Madrid, Rome and Tokyo are the cities vying to stage the 2020 Games. The IOC is scheduled to select which of those six will advance to candidate city status in May 2012. The vote by the IOC for the host city is set for Sept. 7, 2013.

The first significant event in the two-year-long bidding contest is the 2020 applicant cities seminar on Nov. 3 and 4 in Lausanne, where Felli and his colleagues will offer guidelines and advice on the process to the cities.

Besides the London Olympics, other international events where cities have usually presented their bids but are now outside the calendar for promotion include the general assemblies for the European Olympic Committees, Pan American Sports Organization and Olympic Council of Asia. These key meetings usually fall within the time now covered by the IOC promotion ban.

Terrence Burns, whose firm Helios is known for its expertise on Olympic bidding, tells ATR that the change may not make a difference to the 2020 race.

"The cities have to understand that there's only about 1,500 people in the Olympic Family they need to reach, not millions through ads on CNN and the International Herald Tribune," says Burns.

"During the most recent bids we have foundthe most effective way to promote a bid is in meetings with the Olympic Family," he says.

A former executive with the Chicago bid for 2016 says the candidate cities have been forced to travel to countless events around the globe, "with diminishing returns".

Some meetings conflicted with other obligations, such as the appearances of the 2016 cities at the 2009 AIPS conventionin Milan.Rio de Janeiro (which won anyway) was able to send only one person to AIPS as the IOC Evaluation Commission was visiting Rio at the same time. The Chicagoan says thatonce all five 2016 cities showed up at some event in Germany only to find no IOC members were there to meet with.

Reported by Mark Bisson and Ed Hula