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Advice from Atlanta to Beijing on the importance of what comes after the Olympic Games
When Gary Stokan, president of the Atlanta Sports
Council, met with the committee organizing the
Beijing games, the most impor tant thing he told
them was, “Not only do you have to concentrate
on putting on the Games, but at the same time,
you have to plan for the future.”
 While the Centennial Olympic Games themselves
brought $3 billion into the Atlanta economy, the
city has continued to gain momentum these almost
12 years later. According to a formula developed
by the Atlanta Sports Council and Georgia State
University, sporting events (from the Olympics to
the Super Bowl to the Final Four) alone have
generated another $1.5 billion for Atlanta’s economy
since the games.
Spurgeon Richardson, CEO of the Atlanta Convention
and Visitors Bureau, agrees that “the Olympics not
only put Atlanta on the map, but also it changed
the face of the city.”
Lasting Legacies
Richardson points to Centennial Olympic Park as
one of the lasting legacies of the Atlanta games. The
World of Coke and the Georgia Aquarium are among
the newest tourist attractions surrounding the park.
Development has spread beyond the immediate
park to include new housing options such as the
Metropolitan and the William Oliver buildings in
downtown. “That might never have happened
without the Olympics,” says Ken Bernhardt, Taylor
E. Little, Jr. Professor of Marketing and assistant
dean for Corporate Relations at Robinson College,
who did the key research behind some of the
Atlanta Olympics’ most successful products.
Among other studies, Bernhardt’s team looked at the
pricing of license plates, which were unpopular at
the 1984 Los Angeles games. Atlanta, however, priced
their plates lower and sold more than 100,000 of them.
Likewise with the popular Paralympics mascot, Blaze.
A character based on marketing research, Blaze
dramatically outstripped the Olympics official mascot,
Izzy, in sales. “Izzy is the poster child of what can
go wrong” when decisions are made without
marketing input, says Bernhardt.
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