‘Legacy’ as Managerial/Magical Discourse in Contemporary Olympic Affairs

Abstract

This article critically explores the semantics and pragmatics of legacy discourse among central administrative players in today's ‘Olympic Family’. Through an ethnography of Olympic speech focused on the IOC administration, candidate city committees, and transnational consultants, I show how legacy discourse generates a perception of common and laudable purpose while flattening standards of expertise and reinforcing the IOC administration's preferred model of franchiser/franchisee relations with other Olympic bodies. This case study indicates the significance of discursive routines in furthering the transnational managerial revolution in Olympic affairs, sometimes at the expense of the Olympic movement.

Notes

[1] Landry and Yerlès, The International Olympic Committee, Vol. III. The previous volumes appeared in 1994 and 1995. Though officially sanctioned by the IOC, these books were prepared by independent scholars, and the negotiations with IOC officials over final texts were frequently vexed. Since their volume edged onto the ground of current Olympic structures, personalities, and affairs, Fernand Landry and Magdeleine Yerlès faced a particularly vexatious struggle to defend the values of scholarly research and to teach fearful bureaucrats of the IOC old school that the reputation of the organization and its leaders was better served by transparency than by censorship. In my judgement, the heroic success of our two Laval University colleagues and the IOC leadership's discovery that the sky did not fall upon them when this text was published already had paved the way for the changes in IOC culture that would soon be greatly accelerated by the Salt Lake City scandal.

[2] The present author served as a member of the Executive Committee of the IOC 2000 Reform Commission.

[3] On the contemporary penetration of Olympic ritual practice by IOC ‘world's best practices’ orientation, see MacAloon, Bearing Light.

[4] Chappelet, ‘Governance of the IOC’. Chappelet's work in this area is distinctive because it combines scholarly expertise in public administration and management, knowledge of the Swiss and European legal contexts, and extensive ethnographic experience with the IOC.

[5] For example, Pound, Inside the Olympics. Payne, Olympic Turn Around. It is interesting to note that the IOC has not proved kind to those who have claimed in such ways to have ‘saved it’ through their commercial activities. Dick Pound, for many years the IOC's chief negotiator on television and sponsorship contracts, was humiliated in the 2001 elections for IOC president, garnering barely more than a score of votes. Michael Payne, long-time IOC marketing director, had to leave his position shortly after Jacques Rogge assumed the presidency. Neither fate was remotely that of another IOC officer who had earlier (and with infinitely less credibility) claimed in a memoir (Kim Un-yong, The Greatest Olympics) to have personally saved the Olympics through his commercial prowess. Kim Un-young, another candidate for the IOC presidency in 2001, was later expelled from the organization and ended up in a South Korean prison after conviction on corruption charges.

[6] This is not at all to say that inspection and analysis of IOC and other Olympic publications containing legacy talk would not be a worthwhile endeavour. Indeed, just entering ‘legacy’ into the IOC website search engine will give the researcher evidence of just how widespread and institutionally marked this discourse has become. In this paper, I largely limit my evidence to the ethnography few others have managed to conduct.

[7] I also happen to live with the chief communications officer and brand manager of a leading disability services charity. The shape of my conversations with her on the issue is quite identical to those I have in Lausanne, illustrating the transnational professional hegemony of this speech.

The IOC has held various ownership stakes in Meridian over the years, while the company has maintained its chief purpose of managing TOP and other Olympic sponsorships and supporting their activation. The company has served as a professional go-between and mediator for the IOC administration and its global corporate partners. In his book, Payne notes the commissioning of a second such study ‘of 10,000 people across nine countries and five continents [that] found that the Olympic rings enjoyed recognition levels of over 90% (99% in Japan) – compared with Shell 88%; McDonald's 88%; Mercedes 74%; Christian Cross 54%; United Nations 36%; World Wildlife Fund 28%’. Payne, Olympic Turn Around, 132.

[9] I am grateful to Michael Payne for our conversations on this matter. While more bemused by my concerns than anything else (once joking to his staff in my hearing, ‘No brand management today, Prof. MacAloon's here’), he and Meridian colleagues like Terence Burns did sincerely try to overcome my reservations. I shall discuss their tactics further below.

[10] The restraint against open criticism, in my experience, derives from a recognition by these key IOC directors that some bid committees and OCOGs now fiscally rely on such seconded consultants and managers to keep their own labour costs down. This is in tune with general policy commitments concerning cost control recommended by the IOC 2000 Reform Commission and strongly pushed by the Rogge administration. Sensitivity to other IOC directors and managers who have consultant firm experience on their résumés probably also plays a role.

[11] Bruce Kidd, personal communication, May 2008.

[12] Jean-Loup Chappelet, ‘Olympic Environmental Concerns as a Legacy of the Winter Games’, 1898–916.

[13] See MacAloon, This Great Symbol.

[14] See www.legacylives.com/04ConfSpeakers.php for the prose and sample résumés of this occupational group. Though marketed as an opportunity for decision-makers and potential clients to meet legacy services providers, the former show up in very small numbers (some three in Barbados) at these ‘Legacy Lives' meetings, leaving them a convention and trade show for the consultants themselves. Top IOC officials have repeatedly expressed how extremely concerned they are about this proliferating tribe of transnational consultants, particularly with respect to Olympic bid committees. As one IOC administrator put it to me, ‘We have not worked so hard to cut costs for Olympic applicant cities only to see them turn around and spend so much money on so-called experts.’ But the IOC itself bears responsibility for setting the conditions of escalation in which candidate cities fear being outgunned by their rivals' roster of international consultants. The consultants themselves have become masterful at playing bid cities off against one another, and it is further testimony to the magical properties of legacy discourse that it is under this beneficent rubric that this occupational group chooses to meet to plot and scheme as to how the next set of commissions will be distributed. Once hired, consultants frequently team up with bid officers, especially those so new to the process as to be mesmerized by the legacy concept – like the fellow in my vignette. By driving a bid or organizing committee to obsess about this topic, consultants build their own résumés as ‘international legacy experts' preparing in the future to make exaggerated claims about their own role in the successes of organizations that will not outlive the events they seek or manage.

[15] Personal communication, Lausanne, Dec., 2007.

[16] The series, including the particular spot I mention, is readily reviewable on YouTube.

[17] Payne, Olympic Turn Around, 114, 122.

[18] For a classic discussion, see Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason.