The US Olympic Committee has reached a joint marketing deal with the group aiming to bring the 2024 Summer Games to Los Angeles, a move they hope will help the California city’s chances.
In a press conference after their board of directors meeting in Colorado on Friday, USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun said the late execution of such a Joint Marketing Program Agreement, which outlines shared responsibilities and the division of income, may have been a factor in the failed bids of Chicago for the 2016 Games and New York for 2012.
“The JMPA discussion was noteworthy because with respect to New York’s bid and Chicago’s, we came down on the wire there,” Blackmun said. “The fact we didn’t have an agreement with the bid committees about what the terms of the joint agreement would be put us behind in the bid process.
“The fact we have been able to reach an agreement with LA 2024 and that our board signed off today, is very meaningful,” he added. “We feel great about LA.”
Blackmun declined to discuss specifics of the agreement, which is required by the International Olympic Committee to ensure, among other things, that there are no sponsorship conflicts.
“We can’t get into the details until the IOC has a chance to have a look at it and hopefully approve,” Blackmun said.
But he said reaching the agreement a year before the IOC is set to vote on a 2024 host city is “fantastic and noteworthy in terms of the strength of our partnership with LA”.
“We are on the same page on how the entity will be managed, how the revenues of that entity will be shared, we have finalized the terms of our partnership,” he said.
IOC members will vote on the 2024 host at a meeting in Lima, Peru, with the winner to be revealed on September 13, 2017.
Paris is among Los Angeles’ strongest competitors. Budapest remains in the race as does Rome, although the Italian capital’s prospects appear to be in tatters after the city’s mayor, Virginia Raggi, said this week she wouldn’t give her backing to its bid. – Agence France-Presse
