Because of the soft economy, several corporate sponsors of the 2002 Salt Lake City Games have trimmed their hospitality budgets or are only now deciding how they will wine and dine influential guests and clients. As the economy continues to struggle, some big-spending sponsors are signaling a new caution. Menus are being simplified, entertainment venues won’t be decorated as plentiful and perks such as thermos bottles and blankets won’t be as plentiful. Home Depot shelled out between $20 million and $40 million to sponsor the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams, as well as the Winter Games. But the company has returned its allotment of 102 hotel rooms to the Salt Lake Organizing Committee and cancelled entertainment contracts. Xerox decided last year to scale back the number of customers it would bring to Salt Lake. But General Motors, a perennial sponsor, uses the Games to keep its dealers happy and motivated to sell vehicles. The company intends to send four “waves” of dealers who will be housed and entertained at a downtown Salt Lake City hotel and has also rented the Kimball Art Center in Park City for parties. SLOC’s decision to eliminate summit lodges at four of five Olympic venues gave sponsors another reason to cut hospitality spending. Michael Way, director of catering for the sports and entertainment division of Restaurant Associates, a unit of Olympic sponsor Compass Group, said SLOC believed sponsor interest in the lodges was too low to justify their cost.
All competitors at next year’s Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City may be tested for banned drugs before the start of the Games. The move, which would strike a major blow in the fight against doping, is unprecedented, since blanket testing has never been carried out before the Olympics. Mitt Romney, head of the Salt Lake Olympic Committee, says the tests are crucial to deter the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports and to create a fair field of play.
Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, head of Athens 2004 organizing committee, promised the IOC executive board that work would be completed by 2004. Greek Premier Costas Simitis said he would travel to Moscow on Sunday to address the IOC general assembly. Work is still behind the original schedule, but Angelopoulos-Daskalaki dismissed speculation that some venues may be built as temporary structures rather than permanent ones. But she said there were contingency plans in the event of unforeseen hurdles. She cited the canoe and slalom kayak course, which was recently shifted by the government to a site near Athens’ old airport. The original venue was on an archaeological site. She refused to specify which further plans might be subject to change.
Olympic organizers and the sports ministry signed an agreement that clears the way for a drug centre at the 2004 Athens Games. Sports Minister George Florides said the centre will cost $3.7 million and be paid for by the government and organizers. Five hundred volunteers will work at the centre during the Olympics and 150 will staff it during the Paralympics, which take place two weeks later.
U.S. District Judge David Sam questioned why federal prosecutors are making a federal case out of the Olympic bribery scandal. The government’s felony case relies almost entirely on a Utah law that makes it a misdemeanor to offer or take bribes or kickbacks in business affairs. Sam said, “why not let the state prosecutors determine that?” The judge even suggested the government had more serious crimes to prosecute. He did not immediately rule on a request to throw out the racketeering charges. At issue was whether the vote-buying scandal was a crime. Lawyers for Welch and Johnson appeared to make some headway with their argument that no law prevented them from paying IOC members for their votes. The defendants’ solicitor Max Wheeler argued that other cities routinely doled out gratuities and the U.S. government had to allege a “new” crime to crack down after the fact. Federal prosecutor Richard Friedman said that the Utah law applies to the bribery scandal and that state authorities did not have the staff or resources to investigate a complex, international scandal and deferred to the federal government.
And finally, the International Olympic Committee unveiled a new ad campaign to get people ready to watch the Salt Lake Winter Olympics. Under the banner “Celebrate Humanity”, the eight spots feature narration by Robin Williams and background music by artists including Bob Marley, Radiohead and Daft Punk. The spots are intended to run as public-service information, not paid advertising. Two of the ads, full of action shots of snowboarders and freestyle skiers, are aimed at the youth market. Other spots include the Jamaican bobsled team from the 1988 Calgary Games, the spectacular crash by Austrian skier Hermann Maier during the 1998 Nagano Games, and montages of ski jumpers, cross-country skiers, hockey players, speed skaters and figure skaters. The ads, seven of them 30 seconds long and the other a minute, are the second such package in a series the IOC launched in the wake of the Salt Lake bribery scandal. The campaign will run from this month onwards, around the world, using public service announcements and media assets provided through the Olympic Movement’s broadcast and marketing partners.
