Listen to Episode 4

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;42;24
Mark Conrad
Hello and welcome to the Sports Business Podcast with Mark Conrad; the podcast that explores the world of professional, collegiate, amateur and Olympic sports. I'm Mark Conrad, or Mark Conrad from Fordham University's Gabelli School of Business, where I serve as professor of law and ethics and the director of the Sports Business Initiative. The Olympic movement has seen its share of issues.

00;00;42;26 - 00;01;12;12
Mark Conrad
Human rights, the selection of host cities, doping and climate change, to name a few. The International Olympic Committee is in the process of making important decisions about the future of the century plus movement and has had to deal with its own controversies and those of some international sports federation. Adding to this are the unsettled world events such as the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

00;01;12;15 - 00;01;42;11
Mark Conrad
With me to speak about the present status and the future look of the Olympic movement and international sports scene is Rich Perelman, an expert who has worked in the field for years and now publishes one of the most authoritative online sources about the Olympics and international sports. Rich's involvement in the Olympics goes back to the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, where he served on the organizing committee.

00;01;42;14 - 00;02;19;29
Mark Conrad
Since then, he has used his skills in communications, organization, and project management to help other high profile sports and non-sports projects over four decades. He helped produce many famous sports events, including the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup, the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City and the 2006 , 2009, and 2013 World Baseball Classics. This is in addition to major entertainment and civic events that he has handled as well.

00;02;20;01 - 00;02;52;24
Mark Conrad
A native of Los Angeles, Rich graduated from UCLA with a degree in economics and earned his juris doctor degree from Loyola of Los Angeles Law School. Rich's online publication - TheSportsExaminer.com - is an all in one online resource for commentary, coverage, and results of 40 international sports on the Olympic sports program. Very few have the expertise on this important sports area as Rich Perelman.

00;02;52;26 - 00;02;55;09
Mark Conrad
Rich, welcome to the podcast.

00;02;55;11 - 00;02;58;09
Rich Perelman
Thank you. Thank you for the wonderful introduction.

00;02;58;11 - 00;03;09;09
Mark Conrad
My pleasure. It is well-deserved. To start us off, could you give us a short background on the Olympic movement - its goals, its organization and its funding?

00;03;09;12 - 00;03;37;21
Rich Perelman
The Olympic Games is an ancient Greek religious right, for lack of a better term. That was started in 1776 before the Common Era and continued all the way to about 394 of the Common Era, when it was outlawed by the Roman Emperor Theodosius as a pagan ritual. Took place always in Olympia, and it was essentially a celebration of the famous Greek god Zeus.

00;03;37;23 - 00;04;22;14
Rich Perelman
The games were dormant after being ended by the Romans, and then it was revived in the 1890s, primarily by Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin, who proposed a revitalization of the games in 1894. And it took hold in the first modern games, so to say, was in 1896 and Athens, and except for three cancellations due to World War II and a one year postponement in Tokyo from 2020 to 2021, the Games have taken place every four years from 1896 until today and are scheduled to be in Paris in 2024 from a few hundred athletes in Athens in 1896 to just about 11,000.

00;04;22;14 - 00;04;52;26
Rich Perelman
The quota is 10,500, but I think they'll have about 11,000 athletes all together in Paris next year. The Games has grown enormously and because of the interest primarily from American television, but also European television, and less so in other countries, but still important. The games is a financial behemoth because of the rights fees paid by television networks, primarily the U.S. and Europe, and also a very lively international sponsorship program.

00;04;52;26 - 00;05;21;00
Rich Perelman
And the International Olympic Committee, in their most recent meeting, indicated that they have already signed contracts, signed contracts, committed money for the quadrennial from 2029 to 2032, a 5.4 billion U.S. dollars. That's on top of $7.6 billion U.S. That was for the quadrennial that ended with the Tokyo 2020 Games in 2021. So there's a lot of money in this,

00;05;21;00 - 00;05;31;27
Rich Perelman
and the International Olympic Committee - the IOC - is the one that collects all that money, that owns the games and is ultimately responsible for their organization and staging.

00;05;31;29 - 00;05;37;19
Mark Conrad
And how did you become involved in the Olympic movement and in international sports?

00;05;37;22 - 00;05;59;12
Rich Perelman
Well, I fell in love with the Olympic Games when I was 11 years old, watching the 1968 games in Mexico City on my parents' television in their bedroom because they had a color TV. So I watch the games. I was completely fascinated by the games. I had always been interested in sports as a real youngster, not really athletically gifted,

00;05;59;12 - 00;06;31;20
Rich Perelman
so I didn't play much, but I was very interested in the organization of the games and how this event showed up on television. I still think television is something of a miracle, not to mention the Internet and all the rest of it that we have today. But there it is. And as I got older, I went to track meets at UCLA, which had a new stadium in those days, and I followed it in the newspapers, especially the Los Angeles Times, when newspapers were actually comprehensive coverage of all sports, not just the big four ball sports and a couple of others.

00;06;31;22 - 00;07;03;21
Rich Perelman
And when the opportunity came to be part of a team, I wasn't good enough to be a runner in track - I had some physical problems - I became a student manager and I became the student manager at UCLA. And I worked for the athletic news service. And when I was in law school, the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee had begun, and I sent a note saying, I can really help you because I'm already the press officer for the U.S. track and field team and know a lot about the logistics of press service.

00;07;03;21 - 00;07;27;29
Rich Perelman
And I got turned down a couple of times. But finally, in 1981, I got hired and I was vice president, eventually, of the Olympic Organizing Committee in Los Angeles. And that really changed my life. The Olympics has changed my life, and I've been involved in Olympic organization and now in coverage of the Olympics, really since I would say, you know, the mid 1970s.

00;07;27;29 - 00;07;30;22
Rich Perelman
So it's been a lifelong interest of mine.

00;07;30;24 - 00;07;51;07
Mark Conrad
And indeed, my first Olympics was the 1968 Olympics as well, watching it on a black and white television as we didn't have a colored television. And that was a luxury back then for those of you way too young to remember those days. So what do you think are the major challenges for the International Olympic Committee right now?

00;07;51;09 - 00;08;16;01
Rich Perelman
Well, there are short term challenges and there are long term challenges. The short term challenges right now have to do primarily with what is going to happen with Russian and Belarusian athletes at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The Paris organizers, by all accounts, have done a pretty good job of organizing the games. The construction, which is being done.

00;08;16;01 - 00;08;34;19
Rich Perelman
There's not a huge amount of it, but there is some that's being done by the French government. All the reports on that have been that they're on time and they're on budget. So these things are going to get done. The most important is the Olympic Village, and that seems to be coming along well. They're going to do some really interesting things.

00;08;34;19 - 00;09;01;23
Rich Perelman
The opening ceremony will not be in a stadium. This will be the first time. They're actually going to float all these athletes on boats on the River Seine, which to a lot of people comes off as insane, but that is their plan and it appears to be workable. So it's going to be something completely new. It's a six kilometer course along the Seine and it should work that the logistics are doable.

00;09;01;25 - 00;09;28;09
Rich Perelman
But the overshadowing issue is what happens with the Russians. You know, obviously the invasion of Ukraine right after the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games cast a huge shadow over those games, over the Beijing 2022 Paralympics. And it has been a tragedy of enormous proportions in the world ever since. And now joined, unfortunately, by the Hamas attack on Israel.

00;09;28;11 - 00;10;07;07
Rich Perelman
So the question is going to be not will Russia be at the games? The Russian Olympic Committee is suspended and Russia as a team with the flag and the anthem and all that is not going to be at Paris. But the International Olympic Committee, under the leadership of the German Thomas Bach, who was a 1976 Olympic gold medalist in team fencing and foil, has said that they would like to see neutral Russian athletes, whatever they define that to be, and they have not defined it in specificity, to be able to compete in the games because they're not responsible for what their government has done.

00;10;07;10 - 00;10;34;10
Rich Perelman
That is the immediate short term issue that deals primarily with the credibility of the Olympic movement and in our what President Bach calls "our aggressively divisive times," I think that's a great way to put it, the difficulty for the IOC is credibility going forward from 2024 in Paris to 2026 and the Winter Games in Milano and then to Los Angeles again in 2028.

00;10;34;13 - 00;11;02;19
Rich Perelman
That's the short term challenge. The long term challenge comes after 2032. The reason for this is that the NBC contract, which is still the major driver of the IOC's revenue, ends in 2032. And for those who weren't paying attention, and if you look at the Olympic ratings from Tokyo - you weren't - the ratings were the lowest they've ever been in the history of the Olympics in the United States.

00;11;02;22 - 00;11;39;03
Rich Perelman
And NBC, which has done very well with its ad sales, is hoping for a major rebound in Paris. A, because the games will not be impacted by COVID. And two, it's in a much more friendly time zone to the U.S. than anything that's held in Asia or the Middle East. So there is a lot of concern and a lot of chatter among those of us who follow these things pretty closely that NBC may or may not be interested in extending beyond 2032, that there might be a change for those of us who follow the games in 68 and 72 and 76 and so on,

00;11;39;07 - 00;12;06;17
Rich Perelman
NBC was not the U.S. Olympic broadcaster. It was ABC, and Roone Arledge and ABC really owned the games. They were the ones that were closely identified in the U.S. with the games. That really changed in 1992 when NBC took over in Barcelona. And they've been the broadcaster ever since. But that's because they have been willing to make extensions in the billions of dollars for groups of four or six games.

00;12;06;17 - 00;12;31;12
Rich Perelman
And given the financial pressure on the NBC ownership and the parent company Comcast, it's not at all clear what they're going to do, whether they're going to renew. And if they do renew, what is the dollar number going to be? So I think the long term health of the Olympic movement in terms of finances is something that the IOC is concerned about.

00;12;31;12 - 00;12;52;23
Rich Perelman
And those of us who observe the games, watch the games are fans of the games are also very concerned about because the Olympic Games now, as was said at the recent IOC session in India, include a whole bunch of sports which, if not for the largesse of the International Olympic Committee, would essentially fall apart. And that's a concern.

00;12;52;25 - 00;13;02;29
Mark Conrad
And more sports have been added for the 2028 games as well, which are kind of offbeat sports, but do you think some of those were added to attract the younger viewers?

00;13;03;01 - 00;13;27;01
Rich Perelman
Well, I think that it's a mixed bag under Bach, who has done some very interesting things, I think a lot of which are for the positive. He has tried to reign in the expansion of the games. So there was a decrease in the number of sports and the number of events from Tokyo to Paris. It wasn't a huge decrease, but it was a decrease, which in and of itself was amazing.

00;13;27;03 - 00;14;01;21
Rich Perelman
Now along comes the LA '28 Organizing Committee and they have taken the top off this thing because they agreed - before these added sports - they agreed to add as a permanent part of the program sport climbing, skateboarding and surfing. So the 28 core sports that had been approved for Paris now is 31 for Los Angeles in 2028. It's actually 30 right now because boxing is in limbo for reasons having to do with governance and the International Federation for Boxing.

00;14;01;23 - 00;14;32;02
Rich Perelman
But L.A. '28 has blown the roof off of this because they brought in baseball and softball, which are very popular in the U.S. and they'll do very well. That will be a moneymaking exercise for L.A. '28. They brought in cricket, which they feel is going to help bring a important international sport into the U.S.. They brought in lacrosse, which is very popular in the eastern U.S., not as popular in the western U.S., especially at the collegiate level.

00;14;32;10 - 00;14;56;03
Rich Perelman
They brought in squash and they brought in flag football. Now, personally, I don't I don't understand squash. I understand the reason for the others. Baseball, softball, very popular in Los Angeles, the Dodgers, the Angels so on, college softball with UCLA, very popular. So I think those sports will do well. Everyone expected that baseball and softball to come in. Flag football,

00;14;56;03 - 00;15;25;13
Rich Perelman
there has to be a sponsorship deal with the NFL in this somewhere. Has to be. And cricket, there has to be a sponsorship deal or a portion of the television rights addition, which are, according to the International Cricket Council, the television rights for 2028 now in India will go from somewhere in the 14 to $20 million range to 150 million or more because of cricket.

00;15;25;16 - 00;15;56;15
Rich Perelman
And I'm sure the IOC will share some of that with the LA '28 organizers. So if you can get money from cricket and you can get money from the NFL, now you've got essentially two more major sponsors, right? And that's money in the till. And that's good for organizing committees. Organizing committees like money in the till. Lacrosse, I think the LA 28 organizers, and this was mentioned at the IOC meeting, that some of these sports are going to be played outside of California.

00;15;56;15 - 00;16;25;05
Rich Perelman
And so it doesn't take too much imagination to conjure up the image of 20 or 30,000 people who were at the NCAA lacrosse championship at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore about a decade ago, having Olympic lacrosse take place in one or more of these big eastern stadiums, maybe even an NFL type stadium where you could fill it up with people who really enjoy lacrosse.

00;16;25;05 - 00;16;58;00
Rich Perelman
It's something they understand, something they already a fan of, which does not really exist in Los Angeles. There is a pro lacrosse franchise, but it does not draw as the franchises do in the East. So it's very interesting what they've done. But the hard work that Bach did to try and make the games a little bit smaller has been stymied, if you will, by this dramatic expansion to 35 or 36 sports in Los Angeles, which will be the most sports ever held in an Olympic Games.

00;16;58;02 - 00;17;27;12
Mark Conrad
And a lot of food for thought. And certainly money does play a huge role and continues to do so in the whole Olympic system, and all whole sports system for that matter. But let's move on to a more controversial issue. And that has been the issue of human rights and how has the IOC dealt with the issue in its selection of Beijing for the last Winter Games, a kind of unusual location in the best of circumstances, not exactly known as a Winter Games haven.

00;17;27;15 - 00;17;38;14
Mark Conrad
And how successfully do you think the IOC handled the considerably negative press regarding these issues involving the Beijing Games?

00;17;38;16 - 00;18;16;16
Rich Perelman
Well, the choice of Beijing was an extremely important one for a multitude of reasons. The election of Beijing, which people, you know, don't remember, there were three or four European cities, traditional winter sports, host type cities that decided they were not going to bid for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games. They were unhappy. Not so much with the IOC on human rights, but they were very unhappy with the IOC about the cost of the Games, the way the games had to be organized under the IOC's requirements.

00;18;16;18 - 00;18;46;04
Rich Perelman
And Bach, to his credit, got in there. He was elected in 2013. He was the president when the IOC selected Beijing and it was selected over Almaty in Kazakhstan, 44 to 40. And that Kazakhstan could get 40 votes against China shows you how uncomfortable the IOC membership was with going to Beijing for the Olympic Winter Games. But Beijing was elected.

00;18;46;07 - 00;19;19;03
Rich Perelman
They went there and the games were successfully done. From a sporting standpoint, there were a lot of concerns during the Games about Beijing as a choice because of the human rights concerns of what was happening in the Jiu Jiang province with the Muslim population there. And if the IOC had had a better opportunity to go somewhere else, I think they would have they didn't want to go to Almaty because they didn't even know if the games would be competently organized there.

00;19;19;06 - 00;19;48;22
Rich Perelman
But they didn't have a good option. And the IOC, and this is Bach and he deserves the credit on this, he changed the paradigm. And so now the IOC does not go to a winner take all vote where everybody is crowded into a ballroom in some hotel or convention center, and out comes the card that says that Beijing won and everybody else in the room is humiliated and has spent millions of dollars and got nothing for it.

00;19;48;22 - 00;20;15;24
Rich Perelman
It's a winner take all kind of system. So he eliminated this system into more of a discussion system, and the IOC select who it wants to run the games and be the host. And so out of this process has come Paris for 2024, Milan-Cortina for 2026, Los Angeles for 2028. Either France, Sweden or Switzerland for 2030.

00;20;15;24 - 00;20;50;19
Rich Perelman
That has not been selected yet. Brisbane in Australia for 2032 and certainly it will be Salt Lake City for 2034. Those are not Beijing and they're not Almaty. Those are all in first world democracies. So and the whole way that bidding has been arranged is different. The IOC for decades demanded that new facilities be built and the international sports federations all demanded that new facilities be built.

00;20;50;19 - 00;21;15;14
Rich Perelman
The IOC has finally, after all these decades, arrived where the Los Angeles 1984 bid was, that existing facilities should be used wherever possible. Buildings should be kept to a minimum. And if you can do a temporary facility, that's the best way to do it. So that's where the IOC is now. They don't want to build anything, and that's good.

00;21;15;19 - 00;21;55;16
Rich Perelman
This means you don't have a series of white elephants as the legacy of the games, which is what you had in Athens in 2004. And that's still a significant problem for Athens today. They're still struggling with all these venues. So this has to do with the structure of the way the Olympics are selected and the structure of the way the IOC goes to countries to put on games and I think to some extent by relocating these games now, at least for the next decade, in first world democracies, you're going to alleviate a lot of the issues about local human rights concerns.

00;21;55;18 - 00;22;22;10
Rich Perelman
They're going to be not ended, but the questions are going to be different in a Democratic host country than you would have from a totalitarian host country. Now, the IOC just made at this last session in India, just incorporated into the Olympic charter, which is their rules and regulations, a mention of internationally recognized human rights, whatever those are.

00;22;22;12 - 00;22;54;12
Rich Perelman
But Bach has been very, very strong on referencing United Nations documents and United Nations regulations, relative to all series of things, including human rights. So it is something which is of more interest now to the IOC, but to some extent, as long as the IOC, as long as the Olympic Games are very popular and people tune in and watch and sponsors want to pay to be part of it and television companies want to pay hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to be part of it.

00;22;54;15 - 00;23;10;10
Rich Perelman
The human rights criticisms of the IOC are something of a tempest in a teapot because most people don't pay attention to the politics of the IOC and of the Olympic Games. They want to know how their country did, and that's what's important to them.

00;23;10;12 - 00;23;33;24
Mark Conrad
Although couldn't you argue that is a little bit political, too, because during the Cold War era, one of the reasons why the Olympics became so popular in the U.S. was, of course, you know, we wanted to see U.S. athletes play the Soviets and beat the Soviets. And it added another backdrop, you know, to the nature of the competition, like the 1972 basketball game, for example, infamous result.

00;23;33;26 - 00;23;47;06
Mark Conrad
So in the background, wasn't there something that, yes, a certain amount of regional rivalry or Cold War rivalry certainly helped the interest for fans to watch the Olympic Games, at least in the U.S.?

00;23;47;08 - 00;24;08;11
Rich Perelman
I think that's certainly true in the U.S. I think it was true to some extent in Europe because there was the West versus east question actually playing out on the ground there. But I think people are generally, from the Olympic standpoint, interested in how is their country doing? Not so much, I think, today. Yeah. Is the U.S. beating Russia?

00;24;08;17 - 00;24;30;28
Rich Perelman
But how is the U.S. doing? Is the U.S. going to win 100 medals? Is the U.S. going to have the the most gold medals or the most medals overall? I think the overall question of, you know, who are our heroes? Who are the athletes in our country, whether it be Jamaica or Ethiopia or Japan or anywhere else, how is our country doing?

00;24;30;28 - 00;24;53;24
Rich Perelman
How are the young men and young women who have our country's name on their chests doing in the games? And so I think the the games, to some extent, although it's a worldwide spectacle, is really hyper local. People in Jamaica want to know how our our Jamaican athletes doing in Spain, they want to know how are our Spanish athletes doing and so on.

00;24;53;26 - 00;25;23;15
Rich Perelman
And then you have regional areas. There is a tremendous I want to say, resurgence, but tremendous interest. Now, the politics of the global South are emerging and in Africa there is a tremendous amount of pride, not just in Moroccan athletes or athletes from the Congo or athletes from South Africa, but how are African athletes doing as against American athletes, European athletes, Asian athletes?

00;25;23;15 - 00;25;45;18
Rich Perelman
There are some of this in Asia also, although now it's a little different because is dominated by China. So I think the rivalry question is still there, but it isn't East versus west, democracy versus communism, I think it is more regionally based. How is Africa doing? How is Europe doing? How is Asia doing? How is South America doing?

00;25;45;18 - 00;26;03;18
Rich Perelman
How are Caribbean athletes doing? The U.S. is so big that the question is how are the American athletes doing? And I think that's the real focus of the television viewing today versus where it was when the Soviet Union still existed.

00;26;03;20 - 00;26;26;13
Mark Conrad
And let's actually move on to climate and the Winter Olympics, because the Winter Olympics, although much smaller, you know, has to take place in cold weather climates. And many have said that many past cities that hosted the Winter Games would not really be able to do it today, say Nagano. Japan was actually one of the more southern areas.

00;26;26;16 - 00;26;55;01
Mark Conrad
The host of the 1998 Games. You know, Kochi is even further south than that. So do you think that eventually there will be a system for the Winter Games of, say, three locations that will alternate, that will be sufficiently cold, you know, given the increases in temperatures worldwide as a better model then outside bids, you know, by different cities, you know, with the risk of increasingly warm temperatures.

00;26;55;03 - 00;27;22;15
Rich Perelman
Well, the short answer is yes. And in fact, this is already happening. So the IOC has set up a system where these discussions about future hosts is not done with the IOC management, it's not done with the president, it's done with a commission. And there is a future host commission for summer games and there is a future host commission for Winter Games and the Winter Games Federation.

00;27;22;15 - 00;27;52;18
Rich Perelman
Sorry, the Winter Games Commission has been tasked and made a report at the last IOC session that just concluded India trying to get their arms around the issue of how many previous host cities for Olympic Winter Games could host them today and how many will be able to host them in 2040. Given certain models about climate change and how many would be able to host in 2050.

00;27;52;21 - 00;28;20;24
Rich Perelman
The last report that was given in India is that in the 2040, 2050 timeframe, there are probably only about ten countries in Olympic parlance, national Olympic committees. There are only about ten countries that really would have a site or more than one site which would be reliably cold enough to actually allow snow. Sports to take place on natural snow, not manmade snow.

00;28;20;26 - 00;28;48;02
Rich Perelman
Beijing, for example, which had their mountain events, they use almost completely artificial snow. There was not enough natural snow. So the question that they are wrestling with is, do we go to a rotation of four cities or three cities that would have the Winter Games on a rotating basis? Do we do three? And then we come up with a fourth one that could come from somewhere else?

00;28;48;04 - 00;29;18;15
Rich Perelman
They're trying to figure this out. I think the idea of a rotation, which no doubt would include Salt Lake City, which is very cold because it's way up there in elevation and has lots of snow. So the U.S. would be a beneficiary of that. It would certainly Salt Lake City would be a choice. They just approved a double allocation for 2030, which will be in either France, which is not likely, but most likely Sweden or Switzerland, and then to go to Salt Lake for 2034.

00;29;18;17 - 00;30;07;01
Rich Perelman
And the stated reason for doing this is that by giving an allocation for 2030 and for 2034, it will give the future host commission and the IOC at large enough time to come up with how this rotation system is going to work if they adopted and which places would be part of that rotation. And if you want to telescope a little bit, I think it would certainly not be beyond the realm of even probability that the rotation, if you have a rotation of four different places, that the first stop of the first rotation of the Winter Games would be in Salt Lake City in 2034, which means that if you go 2038, 2040 to 2046,

00;30;07;04 - 00;30;12;15
Rich Perelman
you could see the Winter Games back in Salt Lake City in 2050.

00;30;12;17 - 00;30;34;05
Mark Conrad
And let's actually talk about Sweden for a second, because Sweden was thought to make an earlier bid for those 20, 30 games. But there was popular opposition to that and then they shelved it and somehow they got back in the picture and most likely maybe the holder of the 2030 Olympics because Sapporo bowed out for a number of reasons.

00;30;34;05 - 00;30;58;12
Mark Conrad
Sapporo, Japan bowed out. And then the question is for these potential locations. What about the role of quote unquote, the taxpayers, you know, the people that live in these areas and in some areas, it has been controversial and there's been objections. So the how does the IOC take that or their new committee take that in consideration in choosing their locations for future games?

00;30;58;15 - 00;31;25;00
Rich Perelman
Well, one of the rules, having worked with five Olympic organizing committees and actually being a staff member on a couple, one of the things that goes on within organizing committee, which is of great import, obviously, is finance. How do you bring in enough money to be able to do the games from whatever source, whether it be government or anywhere else, sponsors tickets.

00;31;25;02 - 00;31;45;17
Rich Perelman
They don't own the television rights. The IOC owns those. But about a little more than a third of all the TV rights money, I actually more than about 40% of all the TV rights money actually goes to organizing committees to put on the games. So you get a share from the IOC That's fixed. You know what that is before you, you jump in.

00;31;45;19 - 00;32;20;20
Rich Perelman
The real change came with Bach and his program of Olympic Agenda 2020 that was approved in 2014. And what the Olympic Agenda 2020 did in specific relative to future games is it declared that existing venues should be used whenever possible. And if you're a veteran of Olympic organizing committees, you will know, as a rule of thumb that Olympic organizing committees make money on operations.

00;32;20;22 - 00;32;50;29
Rich Perelman
No Olympic organizing committee that I'm aware of has lost money on operations. Where they lose money is on construction and venue retrofit. And so if you're not building anything, for example, we built very little in 1984 and we ended up with a 232 and a half million dollar surplus, the most financially successful games in history. Salt Lake built very little and they ended up with a large surplus.

00;32;51;01 - 00;33;24;03
Rich Perelman
They were only the second Winter Games to do it. Oslo also did it in Norway in 1952. So the IOC is trying as much as possible to eliminate construction and to say don't build anything. And if you need a venue that you don't have, cut it out temporarily or go to another country. So, for example, with Sweden, they did not have a bob luge and skeleton facility, a sliding center which is artificially refrigerated, is incredibly expensive.

00;33;24;06 - 00;33;53;05
Rich Perelman
So their bid for 2026, they were going to do the sliding sports right across the Baltic Sea in Latvia in a place called Sigulda, which has a world class sliding center. And the Latvians have been very, very good ever since they emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union. And by taking the construction aspects out of this, the financial issue is much more palatable to people.

00;33;53;07 - 00;34;20;27
Rich Perelman
And you don't have to go to government funding in the billions in order to do this. So in Milan-Cortina they were trying to build the Italian government was trying to build this part of an amusement district, a new sliding center in Cortina, D'ampezzo, which hosted the 1956 Winter Games, but its track had fallen into disrepair and has been demolished and there were no bidder.

00;34;21;00 - 00;34;56;25
Rich Perelman
Believe it or not, no construction company wanted to bid on building a new sliding center. So just within the last couple of weeks, the Italian government has thrown up its hands and said, okay, we're not going to build this sliding center. We're going to save tens of millions of dollars and will go to Innsbruck in Austria or San Moritz in Switzerland or Coningsby in Germany, and we'll hold the Olympic Winter Games, Milano, Cortina in Austria, in Germany or in Switzerland just for these events.

00;34;56;28 - 00;35;20;07
Rich Perelman
So by changing this paradigm and this has been Bach, you have to give Bach credit for this by changing the way that the games are organized. They're not requiring this construction and trying to save money, trying to not have countries embarrass themselves by spending millions of dollars on a bid and then losing and getting nothing. The financial options are much more palatable.

00;35;20;07 - 00;35;42;19
Rich Perelman
And I think in Switzerland, they are talking about a national games in 2034 Winter Games building nothing because across the entire country of Switzerland. They have all the winter sports facilities. This is largely true in Sweden, but they would do again a national bid. But they would do the sliding sports in Latvia. I don't know what the French are going to do.

00;35;42;22 - 00;36;09;05
Rich Perelman
They're still talking about it. But the idea of not having to build anything generally means that with sponsorships, the IOC contribution of television rights and some sponsorships, tickets, merchandizing COIN program stamp programs, things like that, you'll be able to do the Winter Games, the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games, which are attached now within the amount of money that those activities will generate.

00;36;09;05 - 00;36;39;15
Rich Perelman
And you don't need federal, national or regional governmental dollars with the exception of security. However, if you look at the business deal, the amount of tax money that the countries take in is pretty substantial over the run up period and during the games because of all the people who attend and the infrastructure, the temporary infrastructures that are built, all the spending that goes on for people and things, it comes out of the Warsaw a little better than a wash.

00;36;39;18 - 00;37;00;03
Mark Conrad
And do you think that would be an interesting idea to think of that idea of all nation Olympics as you stole? My next point, because instead of just cities, do you foresee the possibility of becoming a more national games like the World Cup and soccer is in the country or countries? Do you see, especially for a small country, to be a viable option?

00;37;00;03 - 00;37;11;25
Mark Conrad
So Winter Olympics will be in Switzerland or the Summer Olympics would be in France or a region of Spain or whatever it would be. Do you think that that seems to be evolving as a paradigm?

00;37;11;27 - 00;37;37;03
Rich Perelman
Yes, it's clearly happening. The Swiss actually came out yesterday and presented the outlines of a plan that would literally take the 2030 Olympic Winter Games and make it a national games in Switzerland. Now, Switzerland also happens to be the arm of the IOC in Lausanne, but they would take advantage of all the existing facilities, all the winter sports facilities that they have.

00;37;37;06 - 00;38;00;05
Rich Perelman
And remember, we're talking about snow facilities. You can do everything else, the ice facilities you can put in any hockey hall, you can put it in a center. That technology exists. It's not difficult to get and not difficult to implement. So that is no problem. But clearly you're going to see national games and I think the LA 28 organizers have the opportunity to do it, do this.

00;38;00;05 - 00;38;21;29
Rich Perelman
Imagine, if you will, that the baseball competitions and I have no inside information that this is what they're going to do. But it's an option and it's been talked about. Imagine if the Dodger Stadium was not involved in the LA 28 Olympic Games. All the games were held in Yankee Stadium not far from where you are. That is something which under the rules now is possible.

00;38;21;29 - 00;38;46;13
Rich Perelman
And what it would do, for example, in 2028, if you baseball at Yankee Stadium in New York and you had the lacrosse at M.A. Bank Stadium in Baltimore and you put the canoe slalom in Oklahoma City, which has a world class canoe slalom facility, a rapids facility. And you also took a softball and put it in Oklahoma City, which is where the women's college world Series is played.

00;38;46;19 - 00;39;06;13
Rich Perelman
Now you're nationalizing the games. This is not just something that's happening in Los Angeles. It's now happening all over the U.S. that I think is going to be a positive for the Olympic movement in the United States. And I think the L.A. 28 organizers have probably already thought about this and are talking about it as we speak.

00;39;06;16 - 00;39;45;17
Mark Conrad
And as Yankee Stadium is about maybe four miles south of where we are. It would be something quite relevant for certainly the community up here and for baseball fans in general in this area. I do want to turn to an issue regarding athletes and the scandals of sports federations, particularly in the U.S., some of the U.S. governing bodies, certainly not all, but USA Gymnastics has been the prime example of a system where athletes have suffered two highly publicized scandals involving sexual abuse and maybe other abuse as well, like doping.

00;39;45;20 - 00;40;06;18
Mark Conrad
What lessons do you think that the national and international sports governing bodies should heed from these events, which, by the way, are not limited to the United states? Because we've been hearing issues in Canada and the UK about these sexual abuse issues and of course, with doping, that is been something that has been discussed as well.

00;40;06;20 - 00;40;27;25
Rich Perelman
Well, it's clearly an issue and people have been abusing each other throughout history. You don't have to go more than a couple of chapters into Genesis to reach the Cain and Abel story, right. I mean, this has been with us since the beginning of time. And animals have been eating each other all the way back before the dinosaurs.

00;40;27;28 - 00;40;50;28
Rich Perelman
So, you know, violence between people, violence between species. This is something which has been going on for a long, long time. What is happening now is that societies are rebelling against this and they're unhappy about it, and they don't want it to happen. And they especially do not want it to happen to children and to young people who have no leverage in these situations.

00;40;51;01 - 00;41;15;25
Rich Perelman
So what you are seeing is the development of groups like the U.S. Center for Safe Sport, which is now primarily funded by a congressionally mandated $20 million a year payment that goes from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee to the US Center for Safe Sport. And then Safe Sport tries to get sponsors and donations and foundation funds and whatever else they can cobble together.

00;41;16;02 - 00;41;41;24
Rich Perelman
And they are a kind of a one stop shop that you can call them with whistleblower complaints and they have the authority to go in and to investigate and they can put sanctions in. Now, there are a lot of critics of the U.S. Center for Safe Sport, but it is becoming a model for other countries. And whether that's good or whether that's bad, that's the way that it's working.

00;41;41;24 - 00;42;12;11
Rich Perelman
The difficulty is these are national solutions and you don't need a national solution. You need a local solution that the inside the local gymnasium where the abuse is actually taking place. This is not the Larry Nassar story that had to do with U.S. national teams and his being a doctor at Michigan State and not having any supervision. But it has to be local at the level of the club where the athletes are.

00;42;12;11 - 00;42;40;25
Rich Perelman
And this is something which most of these gyms, most of these places, we don't have an organized system of clubs like they do in Europe, where you can layer this on. The closest thing that we have would be high school athletic departments, which increasingly have had athletic trainers and more administration. But how many high schools really are set up to deal with a coach abusing an athlete?

00;42;40;27 - 00;43;07;25
Rich Perelman
It's very difficult at that level and it's also very difficult that the Little League level, the Pony League level, the air Seoul level, you know, you're getting down essentially to the point where you're going to have to have a monitor at every practice and every game that every team in every city and every country plays. And that kind of policing is something that no one has the money for, no one.

00;43;07;28 - 00;43;52;18
Rich Perelman
So the difficulty is local the IOC, the National Olympic committees, the international federations, the national federations are all trying to deal with this primarily through the lens of if you're abused, call this number, use this app, say something. But that tends to be a problem of cleaning up the mess after it took place rather than preventing it. On the prevention side, there is an increasingly large and this will expand dramat actually exponentially of education, telling young athletes, telling parents of young athletes, telling coaches, watch out for this.

00;43;52;18 - 00;44;16;17
Rich Perelman
If you see it, don't be silent. Let us know. Let us investigate hypothetically. It works, but it is not going to stop the problem every time. Everywhere. This is a problem. It's been going on since the beginning of time. It is not going to be solved completely, but I think the most gross abuses are going to be curbed as they have been in doping.

00;44;16;17 - 00;44;40;18
Rich Perelman
By the way, we don't see that kind of a state sponsored doping that we saw in East Germany, in the Soviet Union, and Russia's program, which from 2011 to 2015 was exposed and a lot of Russian athletes have lost their medals and have been ashamed and people have been given medals that they didn't win on the field because of the doping.

00;44;40;18 - 00;45;02;00
Rich Perelman
So it does come out inevitably now and it does come out and this is a positive of the Internet, of better communications, of social media. These things do come out. There's a lot of other stuff that's floating around out there. But these kinds of things tend to come out because someone talks to somebody else. Nothing is ever perfectly secret.

00;45;02;02 - 00;45;28;02
Mark Conrad
Let's move on just for a short word on the status of the value of arbitration. Speaking of doping and many remember the events at the Beijing Games with Russian figure skater who apparently may have tested positive in a delayed result. And there was the question of whether the Russian team would keep their gold medal in the team skate.

00;45;28;04 - 00;45;37;07
Mark Conrad
But is one many people are wondering, why has there been such a delay in making a final determination by the international sports arbitration body?

00;45;37;09 - 00;45;56;28
Rich Perelman
Well, everything takes time, when you're in a judicial process, which is what we're in, everything takes time. Valley Eva did test positive. There was no question about this. She tested positive for Azzedine, which is a prohibited substance. If you use it over a period of time, it can give you some increased energy for training and things like that.

00;45;57;01 - 00;46;33;03
Rich Perelman
She definitely tested positive on Christmas Day 25 December of 2021, she was allowed to compete by not by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, which by the way, gave her a four year ban right away. But there is an independent, separate appeals panel within the Rusada Russian Anti-Doping Agency structure valid above who was 15 years old at the time, appeal to the independent group and the independent group, the anti the disciplinary Anti-Doping Committee gave her essentially a pass and allowed her to compete in Beijing.

00;46;33;05 - 00;46;56;08
Rich Perelman
She competed in the team event. She was part of a gold medal winning team. Then the thing broke and literally an hour after the team event was over. And what ended up happening is that the pressure on her was so great from the international media that was there that she performed very poorly and finished fourth off the podium in the women's competition in which she was the overwhelming favorite.

00;46;56;10 - 00;47;20;04
Rich Perelman
So after the games, the way that it works in terms of process, Rusada had to go through its own investigative process. They did. It took a long time, never completely finished. The World Anti-Doping Agency said, We've had it with this. They filed with the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which remember, is an arbitration court, not a public law court.

00;47;20;11 - 00;47;49;05
Rich Perelman
And that's very important to remember. So this has gone on and on and on and on. And finally, there was a few weeks ago a three day hearing that took place in-person in Lausanne and was online from Russia. Vasilyeva not come to Lausanne. She appeared by video link from Russia. And now there is a panel of three arbitrators that has all the data and they're asking additional questions.

00;47;49;07 - 00;48;13;28
Rich Perelman
So there is now going to be an additional two days of hearing in November. So it may never end, but I think the additional hearing will end up with the arbitrators coming to a decision somewhere either right near the end of the year or at the very beginning of 2024. So the justice wheels are grinding very slowly, but they are grinding.

00;48;14;00 - 00;48;23;27
Rich Perelman
And it, as Yogi Berra famously said, it ain't over until it's over. And so this is not over yet, but it is moving toward being over.

00;48;24;00 - 00;48;56;07
Mark Conrad
You write and publish one of the very few outlets online and offline devoted to the Olympics and international sport. And for those interested, it is found on the sport's examiner dot com. That's one word the sports examiner dot com. It is free of charge, although voluntary contributions are accepted. And this leads to my final question, why do you think there is such little interest in international sports from the sports media in the United States?

00;48;56;10 - 00;49;20;10
Rich Perelman
I think the short answer is the collapse of newspapers. There was for more than 100 years in the United States, a very vibrant newspaper industry which tried to cover more things to appeal to more readers. Now, there are very few newspapers because of the online opportunity and people are not stupid. If they can get something for free, which is a quality, they'll pick it up.

00;49;20;13 - 00;49;55;29
Rich Perelman
And so that's why I depend on contributions. I tried to be a subscription site. It didn't work. People are very devoted today because of the availability of all kinds of content about the ball sports, baseball, football, hockey, basketball. And now soccer has come up tremendously. And so with the amount of content that is devoted and the number of hours which is devoted to these ball sports for which advertising can be sold, the Olympics is only something that comes once every four years, right?

00;49;55;29 - 00;50;21;14
Rich Perelman
So it's once every four years for the summer sports and once every four years for the winter sports. And the winter sports, with the exception of ice hockey, are even more invisible, a lot of the summer sports. So I think the fact that there is not a year round, 365 days a year Olympic content train, if you will, in terms of competitions and continuity on a 24 seven 365 basis makes it very difficult.

00;50;21;14 - 00;50;50;09
Rich Perelman
So I do this obviously not to be rich and famous because I take donations and we get in a little bit of money and we appreciate every one of our donors, one of whom we have a recurring donor who gives us five bucks a month and we're very happy to have it. So thank you, Phil, But it's not something which is end of interest when you have very, very small resources and very, very small news holes that you can fill on a daily basis in a newspaper that didn't used to be the case.

00;50;50;09 - 00;51;10;21
Rich Perelman
It used to be that there was lots of space to fill and you could do a lot with it, but you can't do that anymore. So I do it because I think it should be done and I can afford essentially to take that, take that time and do it. But I think as the Games come back to Los Angeles in 2028, I think you will start seeing more interest.

00;51;10;23 - 00;51;33;17
Rich Perelman
And I think the general interest in the U.S. will increase because the newspapers and the other news media are going to say, okay, the games are coming to L.A., it's going to be a big deal. Who is it that we should know about? Yeah, we know Simone Biles. We know Katie Ledecky. Who else should we know about? And I think that's going to help tremendously.

00;51;33;19 - 00;52;01;29
Mark Conrad
And again, that website, TheSportsExaminer.com, one word, TheSportsExaminer. Unfortunately, our time is up and we could probably go for another hour. But on behalf of Fordham University, the Gabelli School of Business and the Gabelli School Sports Business Initiative. I wish to thank Rich Perelman for taking the time and discussing the Olympics and international sports in this un very certain period.

00;52;02;01 - 00;52;36;29
Mark Conrad
Rich, it's been a great pleasure. I also want to thank my producer, Victoria Ilano for her great work in putting this podcast together. And thanks to all of you for listening in. For the Sports Business podcast with Mark Conrad at Fordham's Gabelli School of Business, I'm Mark Conrad and have great day.