Analysis of the Sochi Winter Olympics 2014 Event Management Strategies

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Sochi Winter Olympics 2014, examining the event's lifecycle from its formation to its staging. It delves into the bidding process, planning committee's responsibilities, infrastructure creation, and the selection of the mascot. The report explores the growth stage, including invitations, cultural celebrations, budgeting, sponsorships, and power and transport infrastructure. It also covers the marketing and advertising strategies, the staging of the event with the opening ceremony, torch relay, participating nations, sports played, and medal distribution. Furthermore, it analyzes production, broadcasting, and filming aspects, concluding with recommendations for future games, focusing on budgeting, venue usage, and city selection. The report highlights the controversies surrounding the event, particularly concerning the budget overruns and the selection of Sochi as the host city, offering a critical assessment of the event's successes and shortcomings.

Running Head: Sochi winter olympic
Sochi Winter Olympic-2014
Event Management

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Table of Content:
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Event Lifecycle Management....................................................................................................3
Formation of Event....................................................................................................................3
Bidding...................................................................................................................................3
Planning Committee...............................................................................................................3
Infrastructure creation............................................................................................................4
Mascot....................................................................................................................................4
Growth stage of the event..........................................................................................................4
Invitation.................................................................................................................................4
Cultural Celebration...............................................................................................................4
Budgeting...............................................................................................................................4
Sponsers..................................................................................................................................4
Power & Transport Infrastructure..........................................................................................4
Marketing/Advertising:..........................................................................................................5
Staging of Event/During the event:............................................................................................5
Opening Ceremony.................................................................................................................5
Torch Relay............................................................................................................................5
Participating Nations..............................................................................................................5
Sports Played..........................................................................................................................5
Medals....................................................................................................................................5

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Production/Broadcating/Filming............................................................................................6
Recommendation for Next Games.............................................................................................6
Budgeting...............................................................................................................................6
Venue Usage...........................................................................................................................6
City Selection:........................................................................................................................6
Referencing:...............................................................................................................................7

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Introduction:
History of Olympic can be traced back to 777 BC, when the games were played on the plains
of Olympia and dedicated to Olympian gods. Winter Olympic 2014 were held in Russia from
7th till 23rd February. The event in itself was special as it was the first time Olympic was
happening in Russia after separation from Soviet Union in 1991. A total of 98 events took
place in 7 sports and 15 disciplines and for the first time a public vote was taken to decide the
mascot (Polar bear, snow hare & a snow leopard). The game has gone down in the history as
the most expensive sporting event with an expenditure of $51 Bn. This essay will focus and
investigate on the formation, planning & the growth stage of Sochi winter Olympics 2014.
Event Lifecycle Management:
It can be understood as the ability to identify, track, and take certain action on an event at the
right time and in the right sequence. Planning, Execution & control form the back bone of
event life cycle. The event has to be seen in 3 phases to understand the responsibilities in a
coherent manner, the stages are: Before the event, during the event & after the event. In the
light of this theory let’s understand the formation, growth and staging of the Sochi winter
Olympics
Formation of Event (Before the event)
Bidding: Russia has not hosted Olympic Games since 1980 and was preparing itself to
participate in 2014 winter Olympics, on July 4 2007, IOC committee choose Sochi (Russia)
over 6 other countries, defending Austria & South Korea in the process. Organisers wanted
Sochi olymics to be the greenest and most environmentally aware games to be staged; the
responsibility was taken by the event organizing committee in absolute unison (Forbes,
2016).
Planning Committee: The duty of the organizing/planning committee is:
 To oversee that all sports are being given equal treatment and importance and also
ensure that the events are reld in compliance with the rules of International Sports
Federation.
 Arrange/construct required installations: competition venues, stadiums, training halls
and to also arrange for required equipment.

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 To lodge the athletes, their entourage, the officials and also organise medical services.
 Organisaing cultural shows in the opening & closing ceremony celebrating the theme
of Olympics and also representing the culture of host country,
 Taking care of media relation to provide mass ewith the correct information on the
event.
 Taking care of transportation services. (Olympic, 2017)
Infrastructure creation: Special infrastructures were created to accommodate the winter
Olympics at it was the first time in the history of olympic that players had to play in high
temperature. Olympic park had to be constructed, construction was started in the year 2007
and most of the venues and related infra was created before 2013 by state of the art
architecture.
Mascot: Mascots are privy to any Olympic game, a lot of thought process goes into selecting
a particular mascot, and in the history of Olympic it was first time that the mascot was
selected through online polling, paving the way for snow hare, snow leopard & polar bear.
Growth stage of the event: It is the stage where the event has been formed and now has
entered into the growth stage or can be understood as during the event stage in event
lifecycle.
Invitation: It is customary that the event invitations are to be sent by post from IOC
headquarters. A year before the actual game commencement, during an event, President of
Olympic committee sent out personal notes to all the participating countires and fellow
athletes.
Cultural Celebration: As mentioned earlier, opening ceremony or the kick start of Olympic
has to be phenomenal, in 2014. The theme of the ceremony was Russian history and arts,
which also included traditional ballet, classical dance, Russian revolution etc (Youtube, 2014)
Budgeting: The original budget for the event was US $12Bn which was further elevated to
50Bn, inflating the budget by 400%, making it the costliest Olympic game (Business Insider,
2014)
Sponsers: Success of any event is based on the sponsers associated with it, this is kind of
win-win situation for the event organisers and the sponsers , as event organisers get money

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from sponsers and the sponsers in turn get an opportunity to advertise their
product/brand/services in OLYMPIC. Some of the main title sponsers and partners were:
Samsung, VISA, GE, coca cola were some of the big names among dozen of others
(Sponsers, 2014)
Power & Transport Infrastructure: To accommodate the games, a five year strategy to
generate more power was proposed in the year 2009 by Russian energy experts, according to
the said strategy the power capacity for the venues would be increased by 2.5 times of the
present capacity, ensuring a smooth run during the event. In the bid Sochi built 49 major
electric projects and increased the energy capacity by 800 %( National Geographic, 2014). To
further improve the infrastructure of Sochi, the govt built more than 360 Km of road, 321 km
of railroad and 22 tunnels, thus showcasing their strength in modernisation of transport
facilities.Certain funds were also spent on construction of hotels and on sewage treatment
plan (Olympic news, 2014).
Marketing/Advertising:
The embelem for winter Olympics 2014 was unveiled in Dec 2009; the organisers carefully
selected a futuristic and minimalistic design where they can place both Sochi and 2014 facing
each other. The game’s official slogan HOT.COOL.YOURS was unveiled in Dec 2012; the
slogan represented the passion and heated competition among the atheletes, the hot climate of
Sochi and a feeling of belonging & inclusion (CNN News, 2017)
Staging of Event/during the event:
Opening Ceremony: It was a colourful celebration of Russian heritage, history, arts & its
culture, which was witnessed by more than .4 Mn people. For the ceremony alone 37000
police officers were recruited to take control of the security and keep and help in keeping
peace all around the city and prevent any criminal activities during the ceremony (CNN,
2014)
Torch Relay:
The torch was lit off by Russian president Mr. Vladimir Putin, post which the torch bearers
relayed across 65000Km covering 83 regions of Russia in a span of 123 days. This is touted
to be the longest relay in the history of Olympics (Bleach Report, 2014)

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Participating Nations:
A total of 88 nations participated in the event with more than thousands of athletes proving
their strength in the sports arena.
Sports Played:
As discussed earlier , total of 98 events , spanning over 15 disciplines in 7 sports were held
at 2014 winter Olympics, some of them were: alpine, skiing,snow-boarding,curling, ice-
hockey, luge etc.
Medals:
The design is intended to resemble sochi’s landscape and was unveiled in May 2013, Russia,
Canada, Norway & US were the top four countries with highest number of medals with a
count of 33, 26,25 & 28 respectively(ESPN, 2014).
Production/Broadcating/Filming:
It is one of the most important part of any sporting event , and with Olympic at the centre
stage, the stakes were really high, hence the domestic broadcasting rights were sold by
sportfive to the market leader channel one ,NTV plus & VGTRK, this helped the organisers
earn a lot of money. At the same time adveritisers tied up with the broadcasters and used the
platform to do trial for their 4k HDTV
Recommendation for Next Games:
A lot has been already said about the amount of money spent on this extravaganza event,
having said that, there are a few things which should be kept in mind with respect to the
stakeholders before organising the event:
Budgeting:
As mentioned earlier, the budget allocated for the winter Olympics was supposed to be $12
bn, which rose to $51bn, almost 400 % rise in the budget, shows carelessness on the part of
organisers and also points out at corruption in the system. Efforts should be made that a
committee should be formed independent of the organising committee, keeping a tab on the

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expenses and raise an alarm to the committee if the expense head is going over the budget,
accordingly take necessary action to prevent the same.
Venue Usage:
Olympic park was specially buit for the event, causing millions of dollars to the committee.
Post event usage of the park was not thought of, resulting in waste of the infrastructure
created, hence, post usage of the park/ground/stadium should be thought of before spending a
lot of money, also it makes sense for the stakeholders.
City Selection:
Winter Olympics 2014 is the most controversial Olympic in the history of events, and one of
the primary reason of the same is selection of Sochi as the venue. A lot of controversies were
in and around the sochi city, the primary one being, sochi being of great importance to
circassian people, who suffered genocide at the hands of Russian army, hence conducting
games of such a large stature was considered insensitive.All such incidents has to be well
thought of before choosing the city in order to keep the spirit of game alive and the place
filled with positivity.

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Referencing:
Bleach Report, 2014, ‘Olympic Torch Relay 2014: Full Route for Historic Flame's Journey to
Sochi’, http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1801703-olympic-torch-relay-2014-full-route-for-
historic-flames-journey-to-sochi, viewed on 10 September, 2017.
Business Insider, 2014, ‘Why Sochi is by far the most expensive Olympics ever’,
http://www.businessinsider.in/Why-Sochi-Is-By-Far-The-Most-Expensive-Olympics-Ever/
articleshow/28977834.cms, viewed on 10 September, 2017.
CNN News, 2017, ‘2014 Sochi winter Olympics fast facts’,
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/14/world/2014-sochi-winter-olympics-fast-facts/index.html,
viewed on 10 September, 2017.
CNN, 2014, ‘Sochi 2014 begins with teams, classical music and a flying girl’,
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/07/world/europe/russia-sochi-winter-olympics/index.html,
viewed on 10 September, 2017.
ESPN, 2014, ‘Medal Tracker’, http://www.espn.com/olympics/winter/2014/medals, viewed
on 10 September, 2017.
Forbes, 2016, ‘Recent concerns over the Olympic bidding process are not justified’,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leighsteinberg/2016/09/13/recent-concerns-over-the-olympic-
bidding-process-are-not-justified/#4f3afd81124c, viewed on 10 September, 2017.
National Geographic, 2014, ‘Sochi Powers Up: Bringing Energy to Site an Olympic Feat’,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/02/140207-sochi-olympics-energy-
projects/, viewed on 10 September, 2017.
Olympic News, 2014, ‘SOCHI’S NEW TRANSPORT NETWORK KEEPING THE GAMES
RUNNING’, https://www.olympic.org/news/sochi-s-new-transport-network-keeping-the-
games-running, viewed on 10 September, 2017.
Olympic, 2017, ’Organizing committee for the Olympic Games’,
https://www.olympic.org/ioc-governance-organising-committees, viewed on 9 September,
2017.

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Sponsorship, 2014, ‘Sochi 2014 Olympic Sponsorships’, http://www.sponsorship.com/Latest-
Thinking/Sochi-2014-Olympic-Sponsorship-Insights.aspx, viewed on 10 September, 2017.
The Guardian, 2013, ‘Russia to monitor all communications at winter Olympics in Sochi’,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/06/russia-monitor-communications-sochi-
winter-olympics, viewed on 10 September, 2017.
YouTube, 2014, ‘The complete Sochi 2014 opening ceremony’,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKhuvril8Rs, viewed on 10 September, 2017.