Welcome to this week’s Digital Media Cafe blog, the place where you can find all the links to the topics discussed in this week’s show on iSportconnect TV. With Brazil 2014 entering the knock-out stages, it is unsurprising that this week we have a lot to cover on the FIFA World Cup.

Wimbledon

We start though in the UK, rather than Rio and the other major sporting event currently being contested: Wimbledon. A very traditional tournament with a long heritage but which is incredibly progressive when it comes to helping tennis fans get the most out of the fortnight. Heading up the content and communications management for the All England Lawn Tennis Club in SW19 is Alexandra Willis. Alexandra spoke to the UK Sports Network and explained how despite barriers such as the other sporting contest being played out in South America and how the concentration of their time in the global spotlight is limited to just two weeks, Wimbeldon is aggressive in its uptake of new technology and creating great content.

From careful monitoring of conversations via its IBM Social Media Command Centre to being one of the first European events to embrace the real-time video sharing platform Grabyo to mapping out 52 weeks of content, Wimbledon serve up a variety and depth of digital content to ensure even when they’re head to head with the World Cup. It’s well worth checking out the full interview on The UK Sports Network 

Digital records broken at Brazil 2014

The World Cup this year has been an amazing footballing spectacle. But its digital match day performance has been pretty impressive too. Pretty impressive? Well, record-breaking in fact. Twitter themselves have gone in hard with this tournament and what has emerged is game-changing. The consumption of football and sport more widely is not going to be the same after this. We’ve gathered up a few stats and facts to demonstrate just how important and wide-spread the social and digital aspects of consuming sport has become.

To date the match between Brazil and Chile broke all Twitter records. A total of 16.4 million tweets were sent during the game, making it the most-discussed match of the tournament so far. It became the most tweeted about sports event ever with Gonzalo Jara’s missed penalty generating 389,000 tweets per minute which beat the record previously set by the Super Bowl in the US.

The tournament is now the most tweeted about ever, its 300 million tweets beating the previous title-holder the London Olympics by more that 150 million.

Based on mentions so far, the most talked about players are Lionel Messi, Neymar Jr, Suárez, Christian Ronaldo and England’s Wayne Rooney. While the top five teams in the tournament are Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Croatia and the USA. More of the latter later in the programme. For the fans as well, social has become their way to voicing their opinion during the game with one in three commenting on social while watching.

But perhaps the most interesting social media fact is that Luis Suarez decided to officially apologise to Chiellini for taking a chuck out of his shoulder on, yep spot-on Twitter. There were also some great guerilla marketing and memes to come out of that particular incident as well. Click here and here for more.

Teams Getting It Right

It does seem that football has finally taken off in the United States this year – on an international level at least – helped by some great performances including the narrow defeat by Belgium. And, as you’d expect the national team is getting social right and if you want to see how to execute a slick, engaging, but similarly entertaining social platform then check out @ussoccer. Their manager’s also in on the act with Klinsmann sending out an excellent tweet asking all employers to give workers time off for the Germany match.

Check out this week’s episode of the Digital Media Cafe and past editions on iSportconnect TV and let us know who we should be covering next week through the comment box below or on Twitter @iSportconnectTV

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Having spent eight seasons in Formula One managing the digital channels for world champions Red Bull Racing, David Granger now runs Fact 51, a social and digital content agency.

David’s 

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Floyd Mayweather Jr has parted company with Golden Boy Promotions just hours after close ally Richard Schaefer (pictured left) resigned as the company’s chief executive.

Mayweather has worked with Golden Boy on a fight-by-fight basis for all of his fights since the record breaking 2007 bout against Oscar De La Hoya, Golden Boy President, which drew 2.5 million subscriptions in America – the largest pay-per-view figure in history.

However, Mayweather has struggled to see eye-to-eye with De La Hoya and it is reported that he only worked with the firm because of Schaefer.

When asked if he would work with Golden Boy again without Schaefer, Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe told ESPN: “Absolutely not. We have a great working relationship with Richard Schaefer and that will never change.

“Richard is a good friend and a great businessman and an excellent promoter. Richard will have an impact in anything that he decides to do, a tremendous impact. He built that company from the ground up and did a phenomenal job. We’ve had a very close relationship for a number of years and worked hand-in-hand on a number of great fights.

“Mayweather Promotions will continue to promote Floyd’s fights and Floyd will continue to put on the biggest fights in boxing. I have a tremendous team and staff and we continue to expand year by year and we’re ready to go.”

De La Hoya also had public problems with Schaefer and whilst the former Swiss banker’s exit from Golden Boy is not a surprise, the timing is, with his resignation coming days before De La Hoya’s induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

“After more than 10 years with Golden Boy, it is time to move on to the next chapter of my career,” Schaefer said in a statement on Monday. “This decision has required a great deal of personal reflection, but ultimately I concluded that I have no choice but to leave. I have succeeded in banking and I have succeeded in boxing, and I look forward to the next opportunity.

“I am proud to remain a shareholder, so I have a strong interest in the continued success of the company. I am proud of what we have accomplished at Golden Boy, but I now look forward to new challenges.”

Schaefer co-founded Golden Boy Promotions with De La Hoya in 2002 and has served as the firm’s only CEO ever since.

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The Clipper Race has reached the half-way point in its 40,000 miles marathon around the world with the end of Race 8 of the 16-race global series into Singapore. It’s been an exciting couple of months that has also generated extensive international media coverage, not least around our participation in the classic Rolex Sydney Hobart, which doubled as Race 6. Media exposure is not only important for the brand exposure of sponsors and telling their stories but also for the profile of the Clipper Race and our crew.

We have just opened a new training base in Sydney to respond to the growing demand for crew places in Australia and South East Asia which meant we also had two of our original Clipper 68 yachts, now based there, also available to enter the Sydney-Hobart. It would have been unfair for me to have joined one of the new Clipper Race fleet, so I secured the role of navigator aboard one of the Clipper 68s. Race on!

 The media had a field day and we hosted Sydney based journalists from the likes of ABC, Sydney Morning Herald, Telegraph and Australian Associated Press aboard some of our yachts during the race. We featured on every TV channel several times and attracted virtually daily features in major newspapers, broadsheet and tabloid. But as you can imagine, I was very focused on the race ahead.

The Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race (RSHYR) is one of the world’s great offshore races and it has earned a well deserved reputation for providing testing conditions for sailors and their boats. Hobart is, after all, in the Roaring Forties. Our boats are not stripped out like most of the racers, they are, after all, racing around the world and carrying a lot of additional food and stores that other boats dump for the race, but we knew that, and thought the experience would more than compensate for struggling against stripped out 100 footers.

The race itself, traditionally starting on Boxing Day from inside Sydney Harbour, attracted 94 boats, including 12 from the 2013-14 edition of the Clipper Race and the two Clipper 68s. I told the Clipper Race skippers that I hoped they wouldn’t be beaten by a 68, while secretly longing to give them a run for their money.

With light winds forecast for the start it would obviously pay to go and search for the south flowing current to compensate for lack of wind. That is what we did aboard our Clipper 68, skippered by Jim Dobie with a crew of largely former Clipper Race veterans. This got us to the Bass Strait in about third overall amongst the Clipper Race boats. At this point the wind came up strongly from the northeast, ideal Clipper 70s weather, and we raced on waiting for the position updates to see how far back we had dropped.   

In fact we held up well, lying fifth as we got to the lee of Flinders Island as the front passed over and the wind rose to a south westerly Force 8, gusting 44 knots in one spike. We headed in towards the Tasmania coast to reduce the fetch and thus the size of the waves and started to reel in the Clipper 70s. Derry~Londonderry~Doire had got away from everyone and was sailing very well, but the others could be targets for us and we hunted them.  

By the turning point off Tasman Island we were within a couple of miles of four Clipper 70s and had everything to race for. The wind was lighter, not necessarily good for us, but you sail to your strengths not your weaknesses. As we entered the River Derwent, with ten miles to go, we discovered to our delight that there were four Clipper 70s in sight astern and only one, Derry~Londonderry~Doire, ahead. That was satisfying. What was more was to discover we had beaten the legendary Ragamuffin on IRC Handicap. 

The Clipper 70s came in very close together, both on time and on handicap. At about 37 tons we did not expect them to beat the stripped out racers, but we did expect them to put up a good performance and all of them did. For the crews, well, they now have bragging rights. They have done one of the great iconic races and it was not an easy one. Well done to them all.

Now in Singapore, the yachts have put over 5000 miles between them and Hobart and the media interest continues unabated here and in China, the final destination of this leg. Television, press and digital media have taken full advantage of the video, photography and stories flowing from the boats and our in-port PR team. In fact provisional valuations indicate media coverage is 30 percent up on the previous race so far, delivering huge global audiences that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to reach through conventional advertising channels.

Fox Sports, Channel News Asia and Star Hub’s Super Sports channel, The Straits Times and BBC are among the media featuring the race here and there’s also great interest from Chinese journalists in our next destination, Qingdao in China. Their stories extend from the human adventure to the unique business model which creates a platform for consumer brand building, promotes international trade and tourism, and even extends to social and community engagement.

There continues to be major activation by sponsors, such as the GREAT campaign promoting Britain and Northern Ireland here extensively, with ministerial support, city promotion with the mayor of Derry-Londonderry looking for business and investment with Singapore and China. Plus UK brands such as Land Rover and premium scotch malt whisky Old Pulteney.

I look forward to telling you more about this aspect of the race from China in my next installment on the 2013-14 edition of the Clipper Race for iSportconnect.

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It is 45 years since Sir Robin Knox-Johnston set off on his record breaking solo, non-stop circumnavigation in 1968-69. In 1995, he established the Clipper Race, to give everyone, regardless of sailing experience, the opportunity to discover the exhilaration of ocean racing.

Now the world’s longest ocean race, 670 amateur sailors representing more than 40 nations will compete in the Clipper 2013-14 Race. They set sail from London on September 1 and will travel 40,000 miles on twelve Clipper 70’s in 15 races across all six continents, not returning to London till July 2014.

Youcan follow the Clipper 2013-14 Race at www.clipperroundtheworld.com and on Twitter via @ClipperRace. Follow Sir Robin on Twitter @SirRKJ.

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There are many projects underway in Australia and globally to raise the level and quality of engagement in sport – fan engagement and sport participation project and experiments are being implemented across sports codes, events, event owners and venue operators who in turn compete for their venues to achieve top ranking public approval. Most fan engagement strategies involve significant application of new digital technologies and integration of social media. These in turn rely in various ways on smart ideas, clever marketing and extended reach via a range of channels, usually negotiated rather than owned – a veritable minefield.

Each has its potential in a rapidly changing arena with much competition for leisure time and disposable income. We strive to establish and enhance our own reputations. An interesting example of a sports start-up success is the Western Sydney Wanderers club, hastily formed just over a year ago by the Football Federation of Australia and already attracting international interest from potential buyers. How this club has built a solid and fervent fan base is quite remarkable.

Yet, in this market environment, one silly action can turn the dial back dramatically. Just as working hard to build a brand can be so easily undone by one unfortunate move. A recent scandal in Australia’s AFL over the administration of a performance enhancing program which involved banned supplements has loomed as one of those potential brand destroying actions.

The club at the centre of the AFL controversy is Melbourne-based Essendon, a team that has enjoyed exceptional loyalty from its 56,000 members. For many of these members, the club is the centre-piece of their lives. They demonstrate exceptional, deep support, loyalty and adulation for Essendon players and its senior executives, including those now disgraced over administering banned supplements. Among many, even now, all is forgiven; the carpet is already out welcoming the return of those who have been punished. Yet, these are crucial times for fan identity. It is a real crisis that goes to the roots and circles of association of those fans, members.

There will be the inevitable loss of support, ie: members, falls in games attendances…who knows what the long term impact will be. This is uncharted territory for Aussie football and clubs. Essendon has lost six of its top management team in six months as well as being hit with this major scandal which was dealt with by a heavily negotiated settlement. There have been disqualifications. All this risks fracturing the bonds between the club and its members. The actions just reinforce the notion of no transparency and ‘lots to hide’ and fans don’t want to live with that.

In Asia, recent surveys demonstrate about 50 percent of consumers are unhappy with the level of service they receive when they go shopping. While it is the converted who attend sports fixtures and venues, it may well be that even among those converted a similar ratio of satisfaction and enjoyment prevails. This is not good news and adds strongly to the impetus for fans to look for alternative ways in which to share the fortunes of their teams and athletes, take in the excitement and engage with their clubs. In that equation, new technology, new ideas, new forms of entertainment and communicating one-to-one will be exceptionally important but surely there is more than that.

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Ericc is the CEO at New Millennium Business, based in Sydney.

Ericc specialises in the business of events, embracing many facets of events planning and business. He brings meaning, magic and memory to the global events arena. Ericc works with event owners, organisers, host governments and sponsors and with companies which are engaged in events delivery. He is recognised as a ‘go-to’ person in Australia and internationally and has a strong track-record – he previously represented government in the arena of international sporting events. His expertise spans events ‘ideation’, business planning, marketing, branding, showcasing, negotiating, managing risk, legacy development – applying strategic foresight and decoding emerging trends.

Ericc has impressive local and international networks. His “Back on the Block” newsletter on the business of events is widely read. He is a contributing writer to various journals, has been featured in newspapers and has spoken by invitation at international conferences and universities.

Ericc is CEO at New Millennium Business, based in Sydney;  @ericwinton

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It has been a fantastic and busy past few months for everyone at Clipper Race HQ and for the crews who are now on their way to Rio de Janeiro on Leg 1.

It was extremely exciting to see the Clipper Race start on the River Thames for the first time. The river is London’s greatest asset but is vastly underused in my opinion. Seeing the new fleet of twelve Clipper 70’s parading down with all the crews on the deck was a very proud moment as tens of thousands of people lined the river banks to cheer them on, and spectator vessels of all kinds came to wave them farewell on their round the world voyage.

The brand new fleet of twelve Clipper 70 yachts are proving to be faster than our previous fleet already and have set new race speed records sooner than expected, which is exciting for myself, the race team and of course the crews racing them.

In a similar way to the crew taking part in this epic challenge, we are always looking to develop, grow, push ourselves forward and most importantly, improve.

We always have to evolve as a business and the new fleet shows our latest developments.   The build and debut of the new fleet indicates our intentions moving forward and our pedigree at a time of global, financial uncertainty.

There are many new elements included in the Clipper 70’s which will mean they go a lot quicker. These improvements include a bigger sail area, an additional coffee grinder and also two helms and twin rudders for better control.

We had a very warm reception for our first race stop in Brest, Brittany, last week. It is a real French maritime city and legendary home for sailors as well as the Tonneres de Brest, one of the biggest international sailing festivals in the world. I have attended the festival several times with my yacht Suhaili, on which I sailed in my first circumnavigation in 1968/9, meeting up with many French sailing friends and competitors too.

I was also honoured to have my handprints cast for a new sailing Hollywood-style ‘walk of fame for record breakers’ after I won the Trophee Jules Verne there in 1994 with the late Sir Peter Blake. The walk by the Marina du Chateau will feature the handprints of France’s most famous circumnavigators and some of my biggest Francophile rivals.

The boats are now in some very good winds off Portugal and are surfing along nicely on their way down past Africa, to Brazil. Eric Holden and the Henri Lloyd crew achieved a new race record speed of 30.7 knots in some fantastic conditions earlier this week, producing some big surfs. We expected the Clipper 70’s to set faster racing speeds but didn’t realistically think we would see speeds like this till the Southern Ocean. To achieve this so early on in the race, makes me very excited for the possibilities as we progress.

We are very much looking forward to arriving in Rio in the first week of October. There is a fitting link here between the London 2012 Olympics and the 2016 host destination as our fleet will be berthing in the Olympic sailing venue, Marina da Gloria.

We are planning some engaging activations for our sponsors and crews in Rio. One in particular will be a rugby and sailing session with the Brazilian Sevens team and former England Rugby Sevens captain Ollie Phillips. Ollie is a Clipper Race crew member of GREAT Britain and plans to return to Rio in 2016 to represent Great Britain in the first Olympic Rugby Sevens event.  We are planning similarly engaging rugby activations in further stopover ports with Ollie as his is a very unique sports story and one we aim to utilise to boost the Clipper Race appeal within a wider sports audience.

Team sponsor and learning and development partner, Mission Performance will also be offering coaching sessions with skippers and crew members, inspiring them to evolve as leaders and build on the skills they gain as they go round the world. OneDLL plan to hold sailing days in Rio for their corporate clients; Invest Africa are hosting a dinner for their South American network and Garmin will host a media sailing day.

The beauty of the Clipper Race is that as well as giving people a life-changing experience, it also offers access to new global markets as well as unrivalled media exposure as the high seas are used to maximise trade and tourism opportunities in growing markets for sponsors.

In the current economic climate, businesses around the world need a global outlook. This is precisely what the Clipper Race offers, both to businesses and crew alike. It is a very unique event and one that is constantly growing, evolving and improving to stay current and desirable to all. Our 2013-14 edition, the ninth Clipper Race, is off to a flying start and I look forward to talking you through its successes over the next eleven months.

All the best,

Robin

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It is 45 years since Sir Robin Knox-Johnston set off on his record breaking solo, non-stop circumnavigation in 1968-69. In 1995, he established the Clipper Race, to give everyone, regardless of sailing experience, the opportunity to discover the exhilaration of ocean racing.

Now the world’s longest ocean race, 670 amateur sailors representing more than 40 nations will compete in the Clipper 2013-14 Race. They set sail from London on September 1 and will travel 40,000 miles on twelve Clipper 70’s in 15 races across all six continents, not returning to London till July 2014.

You can follow the Clipper 2013-14 Race at www.clipperroundtheworld.com and on Twitter via @ClipperRace.

Sir Robin’s

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Unlike most other national and international sport governing bodies, England and Wales Cricket Board has taken a great leap forward in providing high levels of transparency and accountability. By making a broad range of governance measures publicly available on its website, the sport governing body is not only building high levels of trust with key stakeholders of cricket. It is also building the foundation for future performance and participation and revenue growth.

This fifth contribution of mine for iSportconnect’s expert column on sport governance offers perspectives on noteworthy transparency and accountability measures of England and Wales Cricket Board. It also offers some challenging questions about transparency and accountability for sport leaders to consider, as they start modernizing their governance standards for the future.

My next contribution will be published in the middle of September. It is going to offer perspectives on collective action as a means of addressing governance challenges related to hosting big sporting events. The contribution will focus on the case of the Brazilian project ‘Clean Games Inside and Outside of the Stadium’. Under the leadership of Ethos Institute, the project is centered on the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

Many sport governing bodies fail to get full credit for their governance standards

Since they were established in the early days of amateur sport, many national and international sport governing bodies have traditionally considered transparency and accountability as a responsibility to their members only. Accordingly, even today, the transparency and accountability measures available on public websites of many sport governing bodies are limited to statutes and lists of board members.

Transparently accounting for only a fraction of governance measures in place comprises a missed opportunity to sport governing bodies, especially at a time that is characterized by extraordinary technological possibilities and ever growing stakeholder expectations to all societal players. Not only do many sport governing bodies miss out on getting full stakeholder credit for all governance measures in place. They also miss out on building high levels of trust in and around their sports through transparent and accountable engagement with all their key stakeholders.

New standards for transparency and accountability in sport governance as defined by England and Wales Cricket Board

England and Wales Cricket Board transparently accounts for a large number of internal, athletic, event and ‘sport in society’ governance measures on its website. The information, which includes measures of prevention, detection and sanctioning of wrongdoings, is easily accessible on a series of pages under the heading ‘About ECB’.

Particularly noteworthy internal governance measures transparently accounted for on England and Wales Cricket Board’s website include comprehensive bios of board members and information about how independent board members are appointed. Such measures also include a four-year strategic plan with specific and measurable targets as well as annual reports for the last five years with detailed information about identified risks and financial and organizational results. Furthermore, it is particularly noteworthy too that the sport governing body transparently accounts for the nature of the relationship with all its specific sponsors and media broadcasters.

Beyond the rules of the game for cricket, particularly noteworthy athletic governance measures transparently accounted for on the sport governing body’s website include a code of conduct for players and player support personnel. Such measures also include policies related to equality, social inclusion, anti-racism, anti-corruption, players’ agents, doping and child protection. Policies and information available related to anti-corruption and doping are especially detailed. Furthermore, it is particularly noteworthy too that England and Wales Cricket Board transparently accounts for detection and sanctioning measures in place – such as a new seven-strong team of anti-corruption officials, which monitors matches in professional competitions and reinforces a wider program of player education. That is also the case for detailed information about decisions of the sport governing body’s disciplinary panel to impose life bans on specific professional cricket players for breaches of its anti-corruption policy. Last not least, it is particularly noteworthy too that detection measures available include a secure e-mail and hotline, which make it possible for all stakeholders to report any suspicion of unfair play in confidence.

As far as event governance measures transparently accounted for on England and Wales Cricket Board’s website are concerned, it is particularly noteworthy that the sport governing body makes available detailed rules that outline rights and responsibilities for hosts of sporting events. Particularly noteworthy ‘sport in society’ governance measures available include detailed information regarding England and Wales Cricket Board’s foundation and other charity projects that the sport governing body manages or supports, i.e. a detailed account for where the funding comes from and how it is spent.

The only way to build the trust of your key stakeholders is by earning it

Inspired by the example of England and Wales Cricket Board, critical questions for sport leaders to ask themselves are: who trusts you, and who stands up for you in a time of crisis? Trust is not about how you perceive yourself, but rather how key stakeholders of your game perceive your organization, your sport, your events, your ‘sport in society’ projects and not least you personally. To earn the trust of your key stakeholders, everyone in your organization, and you in particular, must behave with integrity – transparently and consistently.

Other critical questions include:

  What do key stakeholders of your game expect you to transparently account for on your website as far as internal, athletic, event and ‘sport in society’ governance standards are concerned?

 Which governance measures do you have in place that you currently do not get full credit for, because you are not transparently accounting for them on our website?

 Which are the pros and cons in making your strategy available on your website?

 How to best account for measures in place to detect and sanction wrongdoings, inside and outside of the stadium?

 Which are the pros and cons in making minutes of board meetings available on your website?

 How to best account for conflicts of interest and how they are handled, especially in the boardroom?

 How could you best offer all your key stakeholders a credible channel to raise any concerns in confidence about how people in your sport conduct their business, inside and outside of the stadium? – And how could you best account for concerns raised and how they are being dealt with, transparently and consistently?

Links to my previous contributions for iSportconnect’s expert column on sport governance:

Badminton World Federation: A Winning Model for Democratizing Sport in the 21st Century?

Governance in Netball New Zealand: A Winning Model for Professionalizing the Boardroom and for Handling Conflicts of Interest?

The Business Case for Good Governance in Sport

Sport Governance – What Are We Actually Talking About?

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Michael Pedersen, Founder of M INC., is an internationally recognized expert and leader in good governance, transparency, ethics and integrity.

Michael is the former Head of the World Economic Forum’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative, an international good governance partnership with over 175 multinational companies and their CEOs. He holds three MSc degrees; an MSc in Global Leadership; an MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice; and an MSc in International Relations.

Michael is passionate about sport. Sport has and continues to play an important role in his life. He is of Danish origin and currently lives in Lima, Peru and in Barcelona, Spain.

He also publishes a leadership series on good governance in sport that is available for free download at: http://minc.ch/sport-practice.html

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Events in places as disparate as London, Istanbul and the holiday island of Mauritius over the past 10 days have pointed up the indivisibility of sport and politics.

The sporting fall-out of protest demonstrations in all three centres have illustrated the significantly central role played by high-profile professional sport in modern society.

In London the annual congress of the European football federation took place to the accompaniment of modest protests, out on the street, by two causes: one was a pro-Palestinian demo objecting to the staging of the UEFA under-21 finals in Israel, the second was a workers rights demo objecting to staging of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Gate crashers

Both street protests went off peacefully though two anti-Israeli activists were arrested and detained briefly later after gate-crashing the official UEFA dinner.

Subsequently a further anti-Qatar 2022 protest was staged outside FIFA Congress in Port Louis on Friday.

The protesters, eight in number, set up three banners near a side entrance to the SVI Convention Centre at least quarter of a mile from the main gate through which the FIFA delegates were bussed.

In a ridiculously over-the-top response, they were all arrested by local police and held, without charge, in Port Louis police station before being released after seven hours.

The issue of workers’ rights in not only Qatar but the Gulf states in general is one which has been exercising the International Trade Union Convention for some years.

The Mauritius police action provided the campaign with extra publicity and profile through the subsequent international media coverage of the arrests.

Olympic outreach

Simultaneous events in Istanbul did not concern sport directly.

However, a day after Istanbul sports leaders had told the Olympic movement [in St Petersburg] of its potential delights as a host to the 2020 summer Games, reports of riot police rampaging through peaceful demonstrators were ill-timed, to say the least.

What began as an environmental protest over plans to build a shopping centre on the site of a city-centre park aggregated concerns over curbs on alcohol sale and even a row about kissing in public. One local report assessed them as the worst riots in a decade.

Sport has a unique ability to cut through differences of race, religion, culture and politics. This is because although it is a common denominator, it is inclusive . . . not exclusive.

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Keir Radnedge has been covering football worldwide for more than 40 years, writing 33 books, from tournament guides to comprehensive encyclopedias, aimed at all ages.

His journalism career included The Daily Mail for 20 years as well as The Guardian and other national newspapers and magazines in the UK and around the world. He is a former editor, and remains a lead columnist, with World Soccer, generally recognised as the premier English language magazine on global football.

In addition to his writing, Keir has been a regular analyst for BBC radio and television, Sky Sports, Sky News, Aljazeera and CNN.

Keir Radnedge’s Twitter: @KeirRadnedge

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The citizens of two western European cities have recently voted against bidding for the Olympic Games. The Canton of Graubünden rejected a bid for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games with a close margin of votes, while 72% of all votes casted in a referendum in Vienna were against bidding for the 2028 Olympic Games. The reason for rejecting Olympic bids by the populations of both regions has been reported as the same:  The main concern was related with the high costs of staging the Games. People seemed to perceive that the benefits associated with hosting the Games do not warrant such an expense. Furthermore significant cost overruns in most editions of past Games added to concerns.

The IOC has recognized the issue of the costs of staging Olympic Games years ago and has been pursuing the objective of reducing the cost of Olympic, but little has changed. Most bids have been presenting budgets with very similar overall costs in the past.  And the IOC in the end decided to introduce the Youth Olympic Games with a much lower price tag, which at least in the beginning also were touted as an option for countries that could not afford to host Olympic Games. Furthermore, in their host city decisions the IOC members more often than not have leaned towards investment heavy bids that allowed opening new sport markets in developing countries the recent past.

So, are we observing a trend of small, developed western economies dropping out as potential bidders? For the Olympic Winter Games 2022, the next bid process coming up, Munich, Barcelona and Oslo have been named as considering or preparing a bid. A planned referendum in Oslo about the project in September may tell us if there is something for the IOC to be worried about. At the moment the IOC is still attracting more than sufficient interest in bidding for Olympic Games.

However, attracting solid bids for the Olympic Games is only one aspect of this issue. The other aspect is the people and their connection and regard for the Olympic Movement as such. Detailed understanding is required about why people on the street have voted in two occasions against Olympic Games in their own home town. TV viewership of the London 2012 Olympic Games reached new record highs, and it seems that also at least in Vienna and Graubünden people prefer to enjoy the Games at a distance. The IOC surely will be interested in knowing whether these were isolated cases or if this is a sentiment shared by people in other potential host cities.

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About 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.

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The Wimbledon chief executive, medstore Richard Lewis, anabolics has reiterated his wish for Wimbledon to be put back by a week. “Only having two weeks between Paris and Wimbledon is recognised by most people to be too short,” he told iSportconnect. “Having an extra week allows the players more rest and recuperation. It allows more buildup, publicity and profile building for the Championships. Having three weeks between grand slams, basically a 50% increase in grass-court play, is a very good thing for the public who will be able to see more grass-court tennis.”  Read More >

 

With the U-23 Slalom World Championships in Wausau, Wisc and the Olympics this month, plus other Paddlesport Disciplines’ World championships this upcoming autumn, I believe it would be most appropriate to open up the dialog with all of the iSportconnect readers on who USA Canoe/Kayak is and how USA Canoe/Kayak plans on expanding its Global Presence and Influence.

As you would expect, this topic is one of our enduring strategic goals and we consider it critical to our overall success as an enterprise. To my international partners, we need your assistance; but, the paddle is in our canoe. USA Canoe/Kayak must act now, achieve, sustain ourselves and most importantly, be recognized as a strong partner to you – the international paddlesports’ community. In my view, the pillars that will support our enduring strong relationships are the values and ideals we all hold dearest. The values and ideals that immediately come to the forefront are upholding each other to the highest ethical standards, honesty, compliant, and trustworthy.

To gain the respect and build strong partnerships we seek and desire, USA Canoe/Kayak will act on, achieve and sustain efforts in the following areas:

• We will begin the process of strategically increasing our involvement and representation in the International Canoe Federation and Pan American Canoe Federation.

• To ensure the United States is speaking as one voice, we will align all of our international relations efforts with the United States Olympic Committee.

• We desire to expand USA Canoe/Kayak’s opportunities to host international events on our waters. We want to partner with the paddlesports’ industry to further and deepen international relationships – I believe there is no better partner than a trading partner.

• We will start coordinating and collaborating with our international partners to enhance paddle programs, training, and competitive opportunities to benefit all teams and athletes.

• And we will look to increase our participation in any and all global broadcast initiatives.

What we have jump-started and are doing here at USA Canoe/Kayak is real and exciting. As we roll up our sleeves, we are without question determined; we will succeed and we will put Paddlesports on the map equal to the most recognized Olympic sports.

Straight up, it is a privilege and honor to be the President of the USA Canoe/Kayak Board of Directors. As an enterprise, we are 100% committed to ensure success, we will be transparent in all our deliberations, our door is always open and we are available. Speaking on the behalf of USA Canoe/Kayak, I believe we can all make a difference as we journey together, make the tough calls, right decisions and enjoy each other’s partnerships and friendship.

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About Bob Lally

Bob Lally currently serves as Colorado Technical University’s President for the Doctoral Studies and Dean for all security programs as it relates to Homeland, Cyber, Critical Infrastructure, Public Safety and Health.

Bob’s active duty Naval Aviation career spanned 28 years and he commanded in combat at multiple levels. His background includes a full spectrum of senior leadership and management from unit level organizations of some 200 people to 4000 Task Force level where readiness was essential to mission success. His military awards include the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit (2), Bronze Star, Air Medal (2 Strike/Flight), and Navy Commendation Medals with two Combat Distinguishing devices.

Bob and his wife Katie have two children, Elizabeth (25) and Bobby (23).

Bob Lally’s

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