SPORTS—Valley Could Benefit From Possible 2006 Gay Olympics

Los Angeles is one of four contenders hoping to secure a bid to host the Gay Games VII and Cultural Festival in August 2006. Several venues in and around the San Fernando Valley are being targeted as possibilities for competitive sporting events and related festivities, including Balboa Park, the Sepulveda Dam, Griffith Park and locations in the Burbank area. Organizers and supporters of the games say the event, should the city win the bid, would generate significant revenue opportunities for local businesses, tourism and municipal services. “We are anticipating the games to have anywhere from a $400 million to a $500 million fiscal impact on the local economy, based on previous games and projections for growth,” said Shamey Cramer, founder and executive director of Los Angeles 2006 Inc. His committee is responsible for submitting the bid for the city. Cramer has set a preliminary operating budget of $23 million and is projecting between $100 million and $150 million in direct spending. The games are expected to draw an estimated 24,000 participants and some 250,000 visitors. If those numbers hold up, they would represent a significant, but not surprising, increase over 1994, the last time the games were held on U.S. soil, in New York City. “In 1994, they had 11,000 participants and that’s pretty consistent, because every time they’ve held the games, it’s basically doubled in size,” Cramer said. Other cities vying for the games are Montreal, Atlanta and Chicago. The 1998 games were held in Amsterdam. According to Cramer, organizers in New York produced the event with a $10 million budget and a fiscal impact for the city of roughly $250 million. Kathryn Schloessman, president of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, a subsidiary of the Los Angeles Convention Visitor’s Bureau, said those numbers, do indeed, appear to be on target. “The reason we are so much in favor of hosting the games is it’s a huge potential for tourism and that’s what we do,” said Schloessman. “Those are key numbers for us. Our mission is to bring major sporting and entertainment events to Los Angeles that positively impact tourism and the Valley benefits directly from anything we do.” Good time to be in L.A. Schloessman said it’s too early to predict the city’s chances of securing the bid, but added that the timing of the event puts the city on solid footing. “The games are held during the summer time and this is a place people want to be in the summer,” Schloessman said. While Schloessman said it’s premature to say how many local vendors would take part, the cultural festival linked to the games is also expected to offer significant revenue opportunities for Valley businesses. “That’s more spending and more enjoying,” Schloessman said. “The organizers are big on the whole inclusion of as many vendors in Los Angeles as they can secure.” Schloessman said the bureau and her commission have worked in tandem to help back organizers with everything from locating potential venues, lining up cash and in-kind sponsorships, to soliciting political support from elected officials. “This is the kind of business that we want,” she said. “They have a lot of sponsorship revenue lined up and I was very impressed with them when they told us what they had already managed to accomplish.” According to Michael Jimenez, vice president, public affairs for the bureau, there are no firm estimates yet on how many hotel rooms the games could secure for the area. However, he said, roughly 40,000 room-nights were sold in connection with the New York games and, if that figure were to merely double, the impact would still be a huge boon for local hotels. “If you did 40,000 room-nights in Los Angeles, the direct spending impact would be $16 million,” Jimenez said. “Now we don’t think for one second that will be what Los Angeles would do. By 2006, the attendance would have quadrupled and, with the projection of 250,000 visitors, that’s a huge amount of people coming into Los Angeles.” “The reason we are so excited about this is that even if it’s just double, that’s over $30 million of economic impact, and that’s a huge thing,” Jimenez said. “It’s such a tremendous event to land that we aren’t concerned about overestimating the upside. We know that on the conservative side, it would be the largest event to come to Los Angeles over the five-year period.” The first Gay Games were held in San Francisco in 1982. The event was founded by Tom Waddell, a former U.S. Olympian who placed sixth in the decathlon at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. The 2002 Gay Games VI will be held in Sydney, Australia, using most of the same venues used for the 2000 Olympic Games. Organizers there are planning on an operating budget of $15 million and expect roughly 18,000 participants, Cramer said. The host city is required to offer 22 core sporting events, ranging from aquatics to volleyball. But they also have the option of adding as many as eight more events for a total of 30, which Cramer’s committee has chosen to do. “We are going for the full 30 because we think, with North America being the strongest base, we will see the draw for those events,” he said. Ticket prices should range from $10 to $20, with higher attendance figures projected for final events. West Hollywood has been selected to serve as the Gay Games Center, or a primary hub for the event, with others located at UCLA and USC where athletes will also be housed. Cramer said plans are also in the works to construct a pavilion at the Pacific Design Center to house an exposition site showcasing the achievements of California-based industries. His organization is hoping to secure interest from local space and engineering companies, such as Boeing and JPL.