Health & Society

Falk Professor Offers Insight about Los Angeles Hosting the 2028 Olympic Games

Wednesday, July 12, 2017, By Ellen Mbuqe

Rick Burton, David B. Falk Endowed Professor of Sport Management and former chief marketing officer for the U.S. Olympic Committee at the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, is available for expert commentary surrounding news that Los Angeles may be home to the summer Olympics in either 2024 or 2028.

Professor Burton offered these remarks about the impending news:

  • “The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) really needs this selection of LA for a variety of reasons, chief among them the revenue that flows from the host Organizing Committee (the OCOG) to the host Olympic Committee. The USOC has long been fortified by funds generated by Los Angeles in 1984, Atlanta in 1996 and Salt Lake City in 2002 but more than two decades is a long thirsty time of waiting for the next cash infusion. Secondly, winning a bid (be it ’24 or ’28) will energize sponsors for both the USOC and International Olympic Committee (IOC). American sponsors have long dominated the IOC’s TOP program (the exclusive global sponsors) but sponsors like McDonald’s have recently pulled away from the IOC and getting a host city like LA should inspire new sponsors to join the Olympic movement,” Burton says.
  • “Paris has said they will not take ’28 while LA has acknowledged they might take ’28 if there were ‘disproportionate benefits’ given to them for waiting the extra four years. If LA wins ’28 in September 2017, it means the city has to keep its Olympic energy up for 11 years. That’s a long time and any number of changes could take place including the name of the mayor, the current LA chairman (Casey Wasserman) and the fiscal mood of the tax base,” Burton says.
  • “If LA wins ’28, it means that the U.S. will not have hosted the Summer Games (which are far bigger than the Winter Games) in 32 years. That is the equivalent of an entire generation that didn’t see the excitement and build-up associated with Olympic sports like swimming, athletics (track and field), gymnastics, wrestling, etc. While many of those sports are sustained by annual NCAA activities, 32 years is a very long time for this ‘shot in the arm’.” Burton says.
  • “Los Angeles hosting for a third time is not unknown (London in 1908, 1948 and 2012 and theoretically Paris in 1900, 1924 and 2024) but it would solidify LA’s position as one of the world’s greatest sport cities. In that case (winning ’28), LA would have hosted in 1932, 1984 and 2028) and would be able to once again use the LA Coliseum as a site for Olympic activity,” Burton says
  • “While there is great excitement about Los Angeles potentially winning a bid (either ’24 or ’28), bear in mind that various IOC members have been displeased with the USOC since the 1996 Games in Atlanta for a variety of reasons (chief among them that the USOC’s broadcast and sponsorship agreements with the IOC have provided the USOC more money than any other country in the world). And while the current USOC leadership (in particular the very brilliant Scott Blackmon) has done a great job, one of the reasons LA will win is because the IOC is finding very few other cities (with countries behind them) willing to bid and assume the crushing debt now associated with hosting the Games. Brazil is a perfect example of what can go wrong (as Montreal was in 1976),” Burton says.

Professor Burton is available to speak with media. Please contact Michele Barrett, director of communications at Falk College at mibarret@syr.edu or 315.443.6172, or Ellen James Mbuqe, director of news and PR, at ejmbuqe@syr.edu or 315.443.1897.

 

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