Temple University Sports in Russia Case Study

CASE 4THE SOCHI WINTER OLYMPIC GAMES AND THEIR SPORTS TOURISM AND EVENTS MANAGEMENT POTENTIAL FOR THE RUSSIAN FEDERATIONROBERT KASPAR AND BENEDIKT WALLNERLEARNING OUTCOMES Upon completion of this case study, the reader should be able to:

?understand the complexity of hosting Olympic Winter Games;

?discuss the infrastructural needs of a global mobile event;

?scope the dimensions of winter sports infrastructure required for an outdoor snow sports and indoor ice sports event;

?reflect the challenges of post-event use of sports events infrastructure;

?preview implications for a wider Russian events and sports tourism strategy.

OVERVIEW OF THE CASE This case study will discuss the elements of the events strategy developed and launched by the Russian Federation in sports as different as snow and ice sports, football, swimming and athletics. While a focus is given to the Olympic Winter Games and both their destination and sports infrastructure, the post-event developments and their wider implications for tourism are also considered

.CASE STUDY

The Russian Federation has decided to launch an integrated events strategy that results in bidding for and hosting a variety of winter and summer sports events. Not many countries around the globe have endeavoured to develop such an events strategy. While tremendous financial resources are needed, there is the advantage of transferring knowledge between the events and also contributing to the development of both sports participation and elite sports in Russia. A key challenge nevertheless remains: the long-term utilization of the created infrastructure for tourism, events and sports training.As a promising start to Russia’s event strategy, the IAAF World Championships in Athletics were hosted in Moscow in 2013. With around 1,970 participants from 206 countries, it was the biggest mobile single sports event of that year worldwide (Kaspar, 2014: 18). Russia topped the medals table for the first time since 2001 with seven gold medals. Furthermore, the IAAF World Championships attracted a total of 261,792 spectators during eight evening sessions. As a sports venue, the vast 1980 Summer Olympic stadium, which normally holds more than 80,000 spectators, was reconfigured to a capacity of 50,000 seats. Moreover, the Luzhniki Stadium was selected as the 2018 FIFA World Cup final venue, and hosted the Champions League final in 2009. Through the reconfiguration of the Stadium to a smaller capacity, it can be demonstrated that the main venue of the 1980 Olympic Summer Games has been in use for 38 years as the nation’s key sports venue.By staging the Formula One Grand Prix as a place event (Kaspar, 2014: 18) in the years 2014 to 2020, Russia is clearly endeavouring to identify the southern Black Sea resort of Sochi as an international sports destination by attracting sport event clientele in the off-peak season. The Sochi circuit is the first purpose-built Formula One facility in Russia and is unquestionably one of the most outstanding circuits in the world. The 55,000-seat venue is integrated into the unique Olympic Park infrastructure and located close to the Olympic railway and Sochi International Airport. After a complex bidding process, Russia was awarded the right to host FIFA’s showpiece event, the World Cup, in 2018, receiving an absolute majority of votes from the FIFA Executive Board. The World Cup 2018 provides opportunities not only in one geographic region, but also across a wide area of the Russian Federation. Hosting the mega-event will be used as a catalyst for modernization; for example, transport links will be upgraded and appropriate infrastructure will be constructed. Therefore, the hosting concept is designed as four major venue clusters: the central region with Moscow, Northern, Volga River and Southern, including the city of Sochi as one of the 11 host cities.The City of Kazan will not only be one of the host cities during the FIFA World Cup 2018, but was also host to the FINA World Swimming Championships in 2015. Kazan has now developed one of the most advanced sporting infrastructures in Russia and has one of the most advanced aquatic facilities in the world. These facilities have already been used for the 2013 Summer Universiade, a multi-sports student event, which was seen as a rehearsal for upcoming large-scale projects. It was hoped that hosting this international event would create an aquatic sports legacy and the opportunity to elevate sport to a higher level of prominence within the nation.The IIHF World Ice Hockey Championships 2016 was staged in state-of-the-art venues in Moscow and St Petersburg, and it is seen as a prestigious international event, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of ice hockey in Russia. It follows the success of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), which was created in 2008 in order to promote and market the successful development of ice hockey, primarily in Russia, in a new format. It currently comprises 28 member clubs based in Belarus, Croatia, Finland, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Russia, Slovenia and Slovakia and it intends to expand to more countries. It is already the premier professional ice hockey league in Eurasia and second in the world behind the National Hockey League of the USA and Canada.Russia also bid for the right to host the World Games 2021 in the city of Ufa. Furthermore, the Zenit Arena in St Petersburg was selected to be one of the 13 host cities for the UEFA European Football Championships 2020.Among a wide range of diverse sports events taking place in the near future, which will reinforce the image of Russia as a capable host nation, the developed event strategy contains similar international cultural events, such as the Manifesta in St Petersburg. For this, the State Hermitage Museum was selected to stage the European Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2014.From the business events perspective, in 2015 Sochi hosted the SportAccord Convention, the world’s premier annual event in the sports service area, bringing together more than 100 international sports federations and other key stakeholders.

The Sochi Olympic Winter Games have so far been the first winter sports mobile mega-event in the Russian Federation that has been hosted to a premium quality. While there were considerable concerns before the event, the Olympic Winter Games were widely described by athletes as very well organized at all levels.For the first time in Winter Olympic history the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics sports venues were divided in two distinct ‘clusters’. With the coastal cluster, located in the Adler city district of Sochi on the shores of the Black Sea, comprising the impressive and futuristic Olympic Park facilities, these Games are seen as the most compact in Olympic history so far. The Olympic Park was designed so that all the completely newly built sports venues, training facilities, the Olympic Village (designed for 3,000 people and divided in 47 buildings) and the international broadcasting centre are accessible, within walking distance of each other and are gathered around the Medal Plaza. The Olympic Park complex included the newly constructed 40,000-seat Fisht Olympic Stadium (scene of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies), the oval-shaped Adler Arena (the speed skating competitions venue), the 3,000 seat Ice Cube curling centre, the 7,000-seat ice hockey competition venue the Shayba Arena (the design of which was based on a snowdrift), the main ice hockey venue the Bolshoi Ice Dome (with its eye-catching construction and a capacity of 12,000) and the Iceberg Skating Palace, which hosted figure skating, short track competitions, with stands for 12,000 spectators. The medal ceremonies were held in the Olympic Park.Nevertheless, it has to be noted that while the ice venues were all in one compact cluster, they were quite far away from downtown Sochi, thus depriving the city centre of its potential Olympic atmosphere.Situated 50 kilometres inland, the mountain village of Krasnaya Polyana formed the Mountain Cluster, including all snow sports venues and an additional Mountain Olympic Village.The newly constructed Rosa Khutor Alpine Centre, which incorporates 20 kilometres of competition tracks with tribunes for 7,000 spectators, hosted all alpine skiing disciplines. In addition, a new resort, including a number of luxury hotels and resembling a ski resort in the central Alps, was designed and built. The adjacent Rosa Khutor Extreme Park was home to freestyle skiing and snowboarding competitions, with spectator capacities ranging from 4,000 to 6,250. The ultra-modern Sanki Sliding Centre hosted all bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events. The 1.5km track features 18 corners, and has a permanent seating of 500 (and during the Olympic Games an extra temporary seating of 500).Situated in the village of Esto-Sadok, the 7,500-seat jumping centre RusSki Gorki, now owned by Russian bank Sberbank, hosted all ski jumping and Nordic combined disciplines. The Laura Cross Country Ski & Biathlon Center, currently owned by Gazprom, is another facility purpose-built for the sport mega-event. The complex is unique on the world circuit as it comprises two separate stadiums and separate sets of tracks for cross-country skiing and biathlon.As well as the construction of all sports venues and facilities, Sochi was undergoing significant and extensive expansion and renovation of its infrastructure, resulting in new accommodation and transport facilities. Electrical infrastructure and sewage treatment facilities were enlarged, and the creation of an advanced technological infrastructure in the form of media centres was necessary. Additionally, an enormous railway network with state-of-the-art rail stations was constructed. One 50-kilometre route connects the Olympic Park beside the Black Sea with the mountain venues and resorts.Nevertheless, the key concern is the use after the Games of the infrastructure created both in Sochi and in the other destinations. While there is general agreement that the infrastructure ranging from the airport to railways and roads will be beneficial, the utilization of hotels in Sochi and Krasnaya Polyana and the sports venues remains a complex challenge.Before hosting the Olympic Winter Games, Russia had already drawn up a legacy plan, comprising a post-event use for Sochi’s array of new venues as well as other long-term benefits for the region. The Olympic Park is already part of the Formula One circuit and hosts a F1 Grand Prix race annually. According to official plans, the Fisht Olympia Stadium will be used as a training centre by the Russian national football team and will host a series of matches before being used during the 2017 Confederations Cup and the 2018 World Cup. The Bolshoi Ice Dome will serve as a multi-purpose sports centre and is the home of the newly formed local ice hockey club HC Sochi, which is participating in the Kontinental Hockey League. The Adler Arena has a designated legacy use as an exhibition centre and has already hosted international tennis matches. Both the Iceberg Skating Palace and the Ice Cube Curling Centre will be used as multifunctional sport and entertainment centres for the local public. Meanwhile, Shayba Arena can be dismantled and it had been thought that it would be moved to Stavropol, but this did not happen. The Mountain Cluster complexes, primarily around Krasnaya Polyana and Rosa Khutor, should attract national as well as international winter sports tourists and turn it into a high standard winter sport destination in the near future. Moreover, it was envisaged that the ski jumping centre RuSki Gorki would be used as a further training centre for national athletes, assuming it is added to the official venues for the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup. The post-use prospects for Sanki Sliding Centre were promising. The venue had already been awarded the right to host both the 2015 FIL European Championships in Luge and the 2017 Bobsleigh and Skeleton World Championships, just for being part of regularly running World Cup events. Nevertheless, both the financial as well as sports management success of all the venues concerned can only be judged from 2020 onwards when sufficient data is available. Finally, the Russian International Olympic University has entered its fourth year of student intake in 2017, offering a Master of Sports Administration (MSA) with international appeal.

QUESTIONS

1.Which events should Russia host on an annual basis?

2.Has Russia bid for the right events and thus selected an ideal portfolio?

3.Which future events should Russia bid for?

4.Do you believe that Sochi can be a successful winter sports destination?

5.What are the infrastructural implications of the 2018 FIFA World Cup?

CONCLUSIONS It will take time to assess the acceptance of Sochi as a winter sports tourism destination and training centre and/or an international congress destination. In any case, the development of Sochi has added to the knowledge bank needed for future developments of this type.For the Russian Federation, sports events are a key strategic element in the development of the nation’s sports potential. Nevertheless, the long-term benefits to Russian sporting organisations, athletes and the citizens of the destinations concerned remain to be critically assessed.RECOMMENDED READING Students first of all need an understanding of events management from a broader perspective.

Common text books on events management include The Business of Events Management (Beech et al., 2014, Bowdin et al., 2012). Thereafter, students should consider looking at more specific texts on sports events management, for example Strategic Sport Event Management (Masterman, 2014).

The Russian International Olympic University in Sochi, as one of the key legacy projects, has a sound archive of works on the Sochi Olympic Winter Games.REFERENCESBowdin, G. et al. (2012).

Events Management. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.Kaspar, Robert (2014).

The dimensions of events management. In: J. Beech, S. Kaiser, R. Kaspar (eds), The Business of Events Management. Harlow: Pearson, pp. 15–29.Masterman, G. (2014).

Strategic Sports Event Management: An International Approach. Amsterdam: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann.RECOMMENDED WEBSITES2018 FIFA World Cup Russia: www.fifa.com/worldcup/russia2018FINA World Championships Kazan Russia 2015: www.kazan2015.comInternational Biathlon Union: www.biathlonworld.comInternational Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation: www.ibsf.comInternational Ice Hockey Federation: www.iihf.comInternational Luge Federation: www.fil-luge.orgInternational Ski Federation: www.fis-ski.comInternational Swimming Federation: www.fina.orgKontinental Hockey League: en.khl.ruRussian International Olympic University: www.olympicuniversity.ruOlympic Games: www.olympic.org