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Can venues earn cash?
BYU team studying how to market sites after the Games
By Brice Wallace
Deseret News business writer
So, just what do you do on a bobsled track, other than bobsled?
One answer: Put wheeled bobsleds on it, allowing members of the public to spend part of their summer whipping down the run made famous during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.
That's one idea cooked up by a group of Brigham Young University Marriott School of Management graduate students. Fifteen students spent a semester studying ways to make three Games venues — Utah Olympic Park, the Utah Olympic Oval and Soldier Hollow — profitable after the Olympics leave town.
"These facilities will continue to be training centers for these sports," Bill Gibbons, director of the field studies program where students studied the post-Olympics venue profitability, said Wednesday. "They will continue to host world-class events there, but the added feature now is the responsibility to break even, financially."
Using the experience of other host and training cities, including Lillehammer, Calgary and Lake Placid, the student teams developed studies and recommendations that resulted in 1,500 to 2,000 pages for each of the three sites.
The goal: Ideas to get everyday folks involved.
"In the past, the access to the public has been limited. Of course, the focus has been preparing for the Games, and there have been world-class events sponsored there, but with very little access to the public at large," Gibbons said.
"Now that changes. Now, while maintaining that mandate to focus on the development of the sport and training of the athletes, they need to bring the public to the facility."
The students received lots of help from former host cities, including Lillehammer, which sent to Utah boxes of written materials and invited student Cody Strong to take a look at its facilities firsthand. Strong took advantage of his fluency in Norwegian to cull information from the venue managers there.
The wheeled bobsled idea came from Lillehammer, where people can ride for about $40 a pop.
The students also recommended and helped design a centralized computer scheduling system for the venue's facilities.
Kurt Hawes, an MBA student at the school and part of the team that analyzed the Utah Olympic Park, said the team tried to balance access for the public and athletes using the facilities for training.
The park's facilities, he said, are costly to maintain but represent something different for visitors: one of only three bobsled tracks in North America.
At Soldier Hollow, the students confronted an obstacle in that the site could be used only in winter. In summer, the facility's operations revert to Wasatch State Park.
But the students envision a site attractive to companies seeking team-building or retreat opportunities. Borrowing an idea from Lake Placid, they see possible ski vacation packages that would allow people to take advantage of skiing, lodging, dining, transportation and evening activities. Also possible is a commercial tubing enterprise.
After studying the Pettit National Ice Center in Wisconsin, home of the U.S. Olympic speedskating team, the students recommended that the oval be used for ice hockey leagues, learn-to-skate programs, equipment rental, concessions and advertising options.
Gibbons noted that being adjacent to a fitness facility gives the oval a unique opportunity. Space used during the Games by the media could be converted for health care, expanding the fitness facility's services to include sports medicine and rehabilitation.
"The students' work helped make this facility a benefit to the community in more ways than one. This isn't going to be just a skating rink," said Nick J. Thometz, director of the oval. "It will house everything from hockey leagues to a Spirit of the Olympics store."
Management of the venues will revert to the Utah Athletic Foundation after the Olympics, but managers of the venues have been poring over the students' recommendations.
"Suffice it to say, at this point, the report was very well-received and will be an important tool for the Olympic committee as they make decisions regarding the future of these venues," said Maurice L. Stocks, assistant dean of corporate development and career services at the school.
Gibbons said each site can be a moneymaker. "In each case, we were confident that at least break-even was clearly attainable," he said.
Although details about the financial expectations are proprietary, Gibbons seemed upbeat about the possibilities.
"I think the facilities, as people have seen them on worldwide television, will bring hosts of people to view these, to participate here," he said. "I think it will have a great impact on tourism in the state. Fiscally, that's left to be determined."
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com
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February 21, 2002
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