The summer of 2016 is still nearly a decade away and Los Angeles hasn’t even been chosen to compete with the world’s great cities for the right to host the Olympics.
But it’s clear several of the city’s major businesses are already carrying the torch, according to Barry Sanders, chairman of the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games.
His group is spearheading the effort to bring L.A. its third Summer Games and recently submitted its formal bid to host the Games to the U.S. Olympic Committee. On April 14, that group will announce whether Chicago or L.A. will be given the go-ahead to pitch the International Olympic Committee. The IOC will make its final decision on the host city in 2009.
“We’ve never seen anything like the efforts of this consortium of Los Angeles companies,” Sanders said of the firms, which chipped in to help with the materials and manpower for the bid and presentation.
They include Pasadena-based Parsons Corp., Latham & Watkins, Burbank-based Walt Disney Co., and local talent agencies Century City-based Creative Artists Agency and Beverly Hills-based William Morris Agency.
“Parsons put a top project manager in charge of compiling the bid book,” said Sanders. “Burson-Marsteller made a prototype ad campaign and Disney already produced a video and now they are working with Jerry Bruckheimer.”
If Sanders and the committee were looking for a gauge of the business community’s interest in the Games, they had to be encouraged.
“We spent almost no cash,” he said. “No one has told me no.”
The bid will point out that L.A. would be able to take advantage of mostly existing structures and be able to keep a rein on construction costs. Several facilities, including the Staples Center and USC’s Galen Center, have been added since L.A. last hosted the Games in 1984.
The bad news for the committee is that L.A.’s track record of hosting successful and self-supporting Games that year and in 1932 might actually work against it with the USOC.
That organization is said to be giving serious consideration to the fact that Chicago has never hosted an Olympics. While building new facilities would raise Chicago’s construction costs, it would also leave that city with a lasting Olympic legacy, a selling point for the USOC.
Drive Time
NASCAR racing returns to Southern California on Sunday, Feb. 25, with the Auto Club 500 at California Speedway in Fontana and the sport’s backers making the most of the opportunity.
NASCAR racing recently has made huge strides in terms of building its audience, both live and on TV over the past decade. The key element of the broadcast package is an eight-year $4.5 billion deal with Fox, which kicks in this year. On top of that, NASCAR has aggressively sought out links with the movie studios, landing in the winner’s circle last year with Sony Pictures Entertainment’s “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.”
“NASCAR blends sports, entertainment and corporate America in a very unique way and people are starting to take notice of it,” said David Carter, executive director of the Sports Business Institute. Carter says that unlike most sports leagues, “NASCAR is able to leverage its entertainment value by housing an office in Century City with a full complement of personnel.”
NASCAR Digital Entertainment’s office employs about 25 workers, most of whom have backgrounds in film, TV or racing.
In conjunction with the Nextel Cup event, Nascar is sponsoring California Speedway Day in L.A. at Hollywood and Highland on Tuesday, Feb. 21.
NASCAR Chairman Brian France will speak on Wednesday, Feb. 22, at the USC Sports Business Institute as part of its Commisioners Speakers Series.
Big Wheels
Two El Segundo-based technology companies announced racing related sponsorship agreements last week. Computer Sciences Corp. became a “founding partner” of cycling’s Amgen Tour of California while software firm iRise will be the official business software simulation supplier to the auto racing’s Champ Car World Series.
Computer Sciences will serve as the 650-mile bike race’s official information technology sponsor, which is operated by AEG. The technology company will use the race, which began in San Francisco and ends Sunday, Feb. 25, in Long Beach, to debut a new global position system called OmniLocation. The software will be placed on select riders and pace cars and will be linked to online maps of the race. It will allow viewers to track the speed positioning and elevation of the riders throughout the race and is compatible with both Google and Yahoo Maps software.
“The race gives us an opportunity to demonstrate the technology’s application to business,” said Daniel Munyan, chief technologist for CSC identity labs. Currently, the technology runs with a ten second delay, but Munyan expects that time to be cut to less than two seconds when the technology appears at the Tour de France.
Software firm iRise signed an agreement to be the official business software simulation supplier to the Champ Car World Series.
Staff reporter David Nusbaum can be reached at
[email protected]
or at (323) 549-5225 ext. 236.
