A New Bidding DNA? – Paul Freudensprung
January 6, 2012
With the Opening Ceremony of the first Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG) just days away it is worthwhile to take a closer look at the confirmed host cities of the Youth Olympic Games.
The foremost goal of the IOC is to connect with teenagers through the Youth Olympics’ sport, culture and education programs, expanding its demographic reach. However, during the early days of this new idea it also had been communicated that this event would give an opportunity to countries that could not afford to host the Olympic Games.
This latter argument has not been used much anymore in the last years. Not unsurprisingly, looking at the first 4 confirmed host cities. Singapore and Nanjing, China represent two economic powerhouses with the political will and financial depth to organize Youth Olympic Games that do not come second in magnitude in comparison to the Olympic Games.
With Innsbruck and Lillehammer even two former host cities of the Olympic Winter Games have been selected to now host the Winter YOG. As the IOC stipulates that no new venues should be built for the YOG, this is a logical choice considering cost and legacy of venues such as Luge and Ski Jumping.
The question is what this means for cities with aspirations bidding for either YOG or Winter YOG, but that do not have pockets that deep or not enough venue infrastructure. At that moment it seems it is rather the Olympic Games reaching new horizons – geographically speaking – rather than the YOG.
Paul Freudensprung : He has over 15 years of experience in the sport industry and specialises in directing and advising multi-stakeholder working groups at major events where different objectives and interests need to be aligned in order to develop effective event operations and functional venue infrastructure.
Paul has been involved in operations of 4 Olympic Games, 2 FIFA World Cups, and was the Games Plan Director of the 2014 Salzburg Olympic Winter Games Bid. In 2006 Paul set up his own consultancy company offering strategic solutions related to the development of integrated event operations programs, appraising contractual issues around venue agreements and supplier contracts and defining infrastructure development concepts and operational venue designs. He also teaches courses on event management for the MBA program at the European University in Barcelona.
Before joining the event management industry Paul spent 3 years conducting environmental and economic impact assessment of European transport infrastructure projects. Paul holds a Masters degree from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Sydney and a Masters degree from the Institute of Geography of the University of Vienna.
Paul Freudensprung‘s 
{jcomments on}
