UK media prepares itself for the 7-year Olympic race
Billions of pounds and frenetic media activity to be invested
London (pts039/06.07.2005/16:23) With the announcement of its Games bid win only two hours old, the UK media is already preparing itself for the frenetic media activity that awaits it over the next seven years.
By the time the Olympic Games take place in July 2012, the media, marketing, advertising and PR industries will have been totally transformed.
Speaking last week at the company's annual general meeting WPP http://www.wpp.com advertising boss, Sir Martin Sorrell, said that winning the Olympics would have a positive effect on the UK advertising industry.
"It would be great for the UK and great for London. It's highly stimulative, normally we see 1 per cent or 2 per cent pick-up in growth rates in that quadrennial year.
"The impact of the Chinese Olympics will be much greater - the Beijing Olympics is not just a sporting event but a political, social and economic event. China will be the world's second largest advertising market in 2008."
Colin Gibson, head of communications at the England & Wales Cricket Board and a former Daily Mail sports editor, is involved in producing host city newspapers during a Games (he was Olympics editor of The Australian during the 2000 Sydney Games). Gibson warned media groups to start planning immediately.
"When you are running a host city newspaper it's completely different to running a day to day sports pages," Gibson said. "It's like running a newspaper within a newspaper."
The London Olympics is expected to gross more than £1 billion in worldwide TV rights, and will be shown on the BBC, which won the rights in June 2004 as part of a successful collective bid by European public service broadcasters.
The NBC in the US paid £1.2 billion for the American rights to the 2010 winter Olympics and the 2012 games.
On the amount of time until the games, Gibson said: "It is seven years away and that might seem like a long time but it will disappear quickly and the last year will disappear very quickly."
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