News - Midlands
As they crouched at the start line of the 60-yard sprint, there's no way the Victorian denizens of a small Midlands town could know they were starting a race whose prize will be calculated in tens of billions of pounds.
Over the few next years expect to see the name Much Wenlock, where the inspiration for the modern Olympics was sparked in 1850, to gain prominence as Britain uses the Shropshire town to lay claim to these being "our games".
The intense rivalry on track and field at London 2012 will be replicated by Midlands businesses trying to get a share of the impossibly large amounts of money spent on the spectacular.
And, despite fears that investment in the games has already been effectively sewn up by the South East, most pundits say there is still all to play for.
Speaking to an audience of hundreds of business leaders in Wolverhampton in May 2006 at a seminar for Olympic business hopefuls, Sport and Culture Minister Tessa Jowell said she wanted "to spread the economic dividend from 2012 nationwide". "I'm determined that London 2012 will actually be UK 2012, reflecting the tremendous opportunities for all parts of our country to benefit from the world's greatest event," she said. "I want all of you across the West Midlands to be part of this." Certainly the amount of money to be spent on the Olympics is vast.
Estimated expenditure on the transport infrastructure alone is £317bn, with 100km of dedicated road, rail and Tube links.
Some £33.5bn is forecast for the construction of "Stratford City', with 2,000 new hotel rooms, 140,000 sq m of shops and almost 5,000 new homes.
And that's before we get to the bill for the actual games.
A predicted £32.38bn will be spent on land reclamation, building nine stadia and a 17,000-bed athletes' village.
The cost of actually running the event will leave little change from £32bn.
And, of course, that £325-odd billion is but a fraction of the expenditure business hopes the games will generate long-term in fields as diverse as software, security, construction and catering. "Some people feel as though the whole thing's been sorted, but there's everything to play for," says Jim Johnston, tourism and leisure cluster manager at Advantage West Midlands (AWM). "Things are unclear at the moment because Britain's two years ahead of where Sydney and Athens were at this stage of their planning.
Admittedly, the big infrastructure developments will go to consortia of national firms.
Where Midlands firms will benefit is at the layer of suppliers and contractors." "It's easy to be anti-London, but the Olympics are a great opportunity for the Midlands," says Malcolm Gloster, senior partner at GVA Grimley in Birmingham. "We're only 100 miles from the world's biggest sporting event.
Not everything can be done in London - training camps, accommodation, other events will have to be outside the capital.
The Midlands' professional services can benefit, as well as services and construction.
Professional work in the UK is increasingly done less in the location from where it comes." Three bodies will handle the direct business generated by the Olympics and Paralympics.
The London Development Agency (LDA) is responsible for clearing and making the site ready for construction; the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) must develop the stadia, village and infrastructure; and the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Locog) will run the event. ODA chairman Jack Lemley told the audience at Wolverhampton's Molineux stadium that the timetable for its part of the project was "two years to prepare the site; four years to design and construct; and one year to commission buildings and run test events".
Although some initial contracts are already out for bids - notably that of the ODA's delivery partner - Lemley says the real tendering process starts next year.
In an effort to create a level playing field the ODA and Locog will advertise using www.london2012.com.
Major contractors will link to the site to help subcontractors win work - and the London Development Agency will use www.lda.gov.uk. "If you aren't in the know about the specifics of how the procurement process works now there's a danger that you'll miss out," says AWM chief executive John Edwards. "This goes for whole swathes of the various spin-out opportunities from the Olympics.
There's a job to be done in ensuring people are made aware of procurement procedures." "There'll only be a certain amount of big contracts given out by Locog and the ODA," says Sue Kirby, planning and communications director at the East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA). "Savvy businesses should be looking at their relationships with big contractors." "It's important that any quality issues should be sorted before you come to us," says Lemley. "We'll have a strict view on quality and Health & Safety issues.
We don't want substandard work from contractors, builders, anyone. I've read ad naseam about the failure to deliver Wembley Stadium on time.
There's no reason why this project can't be delivered on time and budget.
I want to debunk the idea that it's not possible to deliver mega-projects to plan." Naturally, the fact the lion's share of that £325bn will be spent in a small area of the capital has led many business and civic leaders to worry that the public coffers in the rest of the country will be diverted to cover the bill. One commentator admitted that "with the best will in the world, when the Treasury sees the bills, it'll start cutting elsewhere.
If the funding for a project isn't in place by 2008, forget it". "The Olympics hasn't affected spend in other regions yet, but we have to be very careful against the backdrop of a very tight public expenditure environment in the next few years," says Edwards. "If costs do escalate on Olympics projects, then we must ensure that investment is not sucked out of other regions to complete the infrastructure in London.
We have to guard against this." However other commentators are sanguine about the move of money southward. "A lot of infrastructure money will go to the South East, particularly transport," says Gary Taylor, of developer Argent.
It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realise that'll mean the rest of the country fighting for a smaller share.
But London drives the UK economy, and a healthy London is vital for a healthy UK.
If London has a superb transport infrastructure, that's good for the country as a whole. It's annoying if you're stuck in a train outside New Street, but a little pain in this case is a good thing." Most pundits argue the Midlands' proximity to London will actually be a benefit.
To put it in perspective, businesses in New South Wales - an area that would easily cover London and the Midlands - won the equivalent of £3400m-worth of contracts for the 2000 Games in Sydney.
Businesses in the neighbouring state of Victoria made £3140m. "We'd be considered part of Greater Sydney or Athens if we were as close to them as we are to London," says Ken Nettleship, campaign manager at Invest Leicestershire. "We're the first major city from London on the East Coast Line, almost the next stop on the tube. "We're perfectly positioned to take advantage of the games.
I don't foresee us losing out.
In fact, we could benefit from reverse investment.
Prime office space in Leicester is a quarter of what it is in London, even before the games.
We're already getting enquires from businesses thinking of moving out." "There's been a lot of talk, particularly in the construction sector, about skills shortages as the Olympics sucks in work," says Mike Loftus of Locate in Birmingham. "However, that's unlikely to happen.
Compared with the total number of building projects in the rest of Britain, the Olympics isn't that big.
We can benefit from being close to London, but not being part of London." Being in the locale of London has raised hopes the region will be host to a good number of the 200 Olympic and 160 Paralympic teams to be based around the country. Loughborough University - the country's foremost academic sports centre - and the Lilleshall National Sports Centre in Shropshire are among the most likely bases for visiting squads. "Hopes that we might play host to the massive Chinese or American teams have begun to dissipate because there are relatively few of that size," says Simon Starr, of the County Sports Partnership for Nottingham. "We have to look seriously at whether we've the facilities to host them.
Nottinghamshire doesn't have an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Perhaps we should look more at enticing the smaller squads. "However, we'll see a lot of money going into regional support coaching and services over the next few years.
Not just to support Olympic athletes, but to handle the growing interest in sport that'll come as a result." Tourism and culture are among the big potential earners from the Olympics and among those sectors that will enjoy the most long-lasting benefits from the event.
They should start benefiting from the moment the five-ringed flag is lowered at Beijing and the UK begins a four-year cultural programme in anticipation of the London games.
And the benefits won't stop when the Olympic flame goes out in London.
Jowell says the real tourism booms come to each host country after the games have finished, thanks to a raised profile.
The Australian Tourist Commission reckons the Sydney games advanced the country's image as a tourist destination by ten years after reaching an audience of some 3.7 billion people.
To give some idea of the scale of potential tourism benefits to the UK, the Sydney games attracted some 1.6 million tourists, who spent something like £32bn in that year alone.
But though geography may not be a hurdle to Midlands tourism benefiting from the Olympics, government legislation might pose a jump too high. As part of its drive to win the 2012 bid, the government introduced the London Olympics and Paralympic Act, which came into force in March. In conjunction with an act passed a decade earlier, it places severe restrictions on companies using the Olympic brand to boost business.
The law not only stops businesses who are not official sponsors from using the Olympic five-ring logo, but from certain combinations of words like gold, 2012, javelin, summer and London - and even Olympic colours.
And the onus is on the user to prove they have not breached the law, or risk a £320,000 fine.
Declan Cushley, partner with Midlands lawyer Browne Jacobson, says the laws were brought in to protect the investments of sponsors who will be paying some £31bn for the pleasure of being associated with the games.
But he is among many surprised at just how draconian the laws are. "The restricted use of phrases like "Come to London in 2012' or "Summer 2012' could have a serious impact on the travel industry," he says. "The tourism and hospitality industry could be seriously affected.
Hotels won't be able to offer Olympic weekends, because that'd infer some sort of link.
You won't be able to offer tickets as part of a competition or as a reward to staff." Other sages suggest that before Midlands plc starts getting overexcited and views the Olympic and Paralympics as the biggest business opportunity on earth, they should remember they only last a month. "A lot of people are concerned that the scale of building in London will drain skilled people and investment from the regions," says Loftus. "But I've spoken to at least one main developer who says that although the Olympics are important, they're not that big compared with what else is happening in the country.
They're a bonus, but don't radically change things." "I think we need a bit of a reality check," says Kirby. "For most businesses this will be a four-week contract - nice, but not dramatic in terms of income. In fact, I know one builder who is not bidding for any Olympic work - he reckons he can clean up while everyone else is down in East London. "But it will be important long-term in another way.
The Olympics are a sexy piece of business and a good one to have on your credits.
But companies can also use it as a way of raising their game.
A lot of the companies now working at the Beijing Games cut their teeth in Athens and Sydney and now think internationally.
We should do the same." Wordplay As well as the usual plethora of Intellectual Property (IP) rights and regulations, the use of branding around the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics will be restricted by two further pieces of legislation - the Olympic Symbol Act (1995) and the London Olympics Act (2006).
The first controls the use of the famous five-ringed symbol, as well as words such as Olympic, Olympiad, Olympians and corresponding Paralympic words. These protected words and symbols, called "controlled representations", cannot be used by a business if they wrongly suggest an association with the Olympic movement.
The second act goes much further and creates a new, very specific and very effective form of IP right for official Olympic sponsors. Described as draconian, the Act presumes an infringement - that is, it is assumed a business using controlled representations has infringed the Act unless it can prove otherwise.
So, if businesses use a word from one list - games, 2012, Two Thousand and Twelve, Twenty Twelve - in association with one from a second list - gold, silver, bronze, London, medals, sponsor, summer - it could be deemed to have infringed the Olympic IP rights. The Act also creates new civil offences, with fines of up to £320,000 or unlimited fines in the most serious cases.
And it places restrictions on ads, street trading and ticket touting around Olympic events. In addition, the words Locog and Javelin are being registered as trademarks, as are the symbols for London 2012, the British Olympic Association, Paralympics GB and - perhaps most controversially - Team GB. Other designs, like the official Games emblems, mascots and pictograms depicting individual sports will also be registered as trademarks.
And, if all that were not restrictive enough, all films, music, artistic works and posters created by official Olympic and Paralympic bodies will be protected by copyright.
Corporate gaming
As they crouched at the start line of the 60-yard sprint, there's no way the Victorian denizens of a small Midlands town could know they were starting a race whose prize will be calculated in tens of billions of pounds.
Over the few next years expect to see the name Much Wenlock, where the inspiration for the modern Olympics was sparked in 1850, to gain prominence as Britain uses the Shropshire town to lay claim to these being "our games".
The intense rivalry on track and field at London 2012 will be replicated by Midlands businesses trying to get a share of the impossibly large amounts of money spent on the spectacular.
And, despite fears that investment in the games has already been effectively sewn up by the South East, most pundits say there is still all to play for.
Speaking to an audience of hundreds of business leaders in Wolverhampton in May 2006 at a seminar for Olympic business hopefuls, Sport and Culture Minister Tessa Jowell said she wanted "to spread the economic dividend from 2012 nationwide". "I'm determined that London 2012 will actually be UK 2012, reflecting the tremendous opportunities for all parts of our country to benefit from the world's greatest event," she said. "I want all of you across the West Midlands to be part of this." Certainly the amount of money to be spent on the Olympics is vast.
Estimated expenditure on the transport infrastructure alone is £317bn, with 100km of dedicated road, rail and Tube links.
Some £33.5bn is forecast for the construction of "Stratford City', with 2,000 new hotel rooms, 140,000 sq m of shops and almost 5,000 new homes.
And that's before we get to the bill for the actual games.
A predicted £32.38bn will be spent on land reclamation, building nine stadia and a 17,000-bed athletes' village.
The cost of actually running the event will leave little change from £32bn.
And, of course, that £325-odd billion is but a fraction of the expenditure business hopes the games will generate long-term in fields as diverse as software, security, construction and catering. "Some people feel as though the whole thing's been sorted, but there's everything to play for," says Jim Johnston, tourism and leisure cluster manager at Advantage West Midlands (AWM). "Things are unclear at the moment because Britain's two years ahead of where Sydney and Athens were at this stage of their planning.
Admittedly, the big infrastructure developments will go to consortia of national firms.
Where Midlands firms will benefit is at the layer of suppliers and contractors." "It's easy to be anti-London, but the Olympics are a great opportunity for the Midlands," says Malcolm Gloster, senior partner at GVA Grimley in Birmingham. "We're only 100 miles from the world's biggest sporting event.
Not everything can be done in London - training camps, accommodation, other events will have to be outside the capital.
The Midlands' professional services can benefit, as well as services and construction.
Professional work in the UK is increasingly done less in the location from where it comes." Three bodies will handle the direct business generated by the Olympics and Paralympics.
The London Development Agency (LDA) is responsible for clearing and making the site ready for construction; the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) must develop the stadia, village and infrastructure; and the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Locog) will run the event. ODA chairman Jack Lemley told the audience at Wolverhampton's Molineux stadium that the timetable for its part of the project was "two years to prepare the site; four years to design and construct; and one year to commission buildings and run test events".
Although some initial contracts are already out for bids - notably that of the ODA's delivery partner - Lemley says the real tendering process starts next year.
In an effort to create a level playing field the ODA and Locog will advertise using www.london2012.com.
Major contractors will link to the site to help subcontractors win work - and the London Development Agency will use www.lda.gov.uk. "If you aren't in the know about the specifics of how the procurement process works now there's a danger that you'll miss out," says AWM chief executive John Edwards. "This goes for whole swathes of the various spin-out opportunities from the Olympics.
There's a job to be done in ensuring people are made aware of procurement procedures." "There'll only be a certain amount of big contracts given out by Locog and the ODA," says Sue Kirby, planning and communications director at the East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA). "Savvy businesses should be looking at their relationships with big contractors." "It's important that any quality issues should be sorted before you come to us," says Lemley. "We'll have a strict view on quality and Health & Safety issues.
We don't want substandard work from contractors, builders, anyone. I've read ad naseam about the failure to deliver Wembley Stadium on time.
There's no reason why this project can't be delivered on time and budget.
I want to debunk the idea that it's not possible to deliver mega-projects to plan." Naturally, the fact the lion's share of that £325bn will be spent in a small area of the capital has led many business and civic leaders to worry that the public coffers in the rest of the country will be diverted to cover the bill. One commentator admitted that "with the best will in the world, when the Treasury sees the bills, it'll start cutting elsewhere.
If the funding for a project isn't in place by 2008, forget it". "The Olympics hasn't affected spend in other regions yet, but we have to be very careful against the backdrop of a very tight public expenditure environment in the next few years," says Edwards. "If costs do escalate on Olympics projects, then we must ensure that investment is not sucked out of other regions to complete the infrastructure in London.
We have to guard against this." However other commentators are sanguine about the move of money southward. "A lot of infrastructure money will go to the South East, particularly transport," says Gary Taylor, of developer Argent.
It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realise that'll mean the rest of the country fighting for a smaller share.
But London drives the UK economy, and a healthy London is vital for a healthy UK.
If London has a superb transport infrastructure, that's good for the country as a whole. It's annoying if you're stuck in a train outside New Street, but a little pain in this case is a good thing." Most pundits argue the Midlands' proximity to London will actually be a benefit.
To put it in perspective, businesses in New South Wales - an area that would easily cover London and the Midlands - won the equivalent of £3400m-worth of contracts for the 2000 Games in Sydney.
Businesses in the neighbouring state of Victoria made £3140m. "We'd be considered part of Greater Sydney or Athens if we were as close to them as we are to London," says Ken Nettleship, campaign manager at Invest Leicestershire. "We're the first major city from London on the East Coast Line, almost the next stop on the tube. "We're perfectly positioned to take advantage of the games.
I don't foresee us losing out.
In fact, we could benefit from reverse investment.
Prime office space in Leicester is a quarter of what it is in London, even before the games.
We're already getting enquires from businesses thinking of moving out." "There's been a lot of talk, particularly in the construction sector, about skills shortages as the Olympics sucks in work," says Mike Loftus of Locate in Birmingham. "However, that's unlikely to happen.
Compared with the total number of building projects in the rest of Britain, the Olympics isn't that big.
We can benefit from being close to London, but not being part of London." Being in the locale of London has raised hopes the region will be host to a good number of the 200 Olympic and 160 Paralympic teams to be based around the country. Loughborough University - the country's foremost academic sports centre - and the Lilleshall National Sports Centre in Shropshire are among the most likely bases for visiting squads. "Hopes that we might play host to the massive Chinese or American teams have begun to dissipate because there are relatively few of that size," says Simon Starr, of the County Sports Partnership for Nottingham. "We have to look seriously at whether we've the facilities to host them.
Nottinghamshire doesn't have an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Perhaps we should look more at enticing the smaller squads. "However, we'll see a lot of money going into regional support coaching and services over the next few years.
Not just to support Olympic athletes, but to handle the growing interest in sport that'll come as a result." Tourism and culture are among the big potential earners from the Olympics and among those sectors that will enjoy the most long-lasting benefits from the event.
They should start benefiting from the moment the five-ringed flag is lowered at Beijing and the UK begins a four-year cultural programme in anticipation of the London games.
And the benefits won't stop when the Olympic flame goes out in London.
Jowell says the real tourism booms come to each host country after the games have finished, thanks to a raised profile.
The Australian Tourist Commission reckons the Sydney games advanced the country's image as a tourist destination by ten years after reaching an audience of some 3.7 billion people.
To give some idea of the scale of potential tourism benefits to the UK, the Sydney games attracted some 1.6 million tourists, who spent something like £32bn in that year alone.
But though geography may not be a hurdle to Midlands tourism benefiting from the Olympics, government legislation might pose a jump too high. As part of its drive to win the 2012 bid, the government introduced the London Olympics and Paralympic Act, which came into force in March. In conjunction with an act passed a decade earlier, it places severe restrictions on companies using the Olympic brand to boost business.
The law not only stops businesses who are not official sponsors from using the Olympic five-ring logo, but from certain combinations of words like gold, 2012, javelin, summer and London - and even Olympic colours.
And the onus is on the user to prove they have not breached the law, or risk a £320,000 fine.
Declan Cushley, partner with Midlands lawyer Browne Jacobson, says the laws were brought in to protect the investments of sponsors who will be paying some £31bn for the pleasure of being associated with the games.
But he is among many surprised at just how draconian the laws are. "The restricted use of phrases like "Come to London in 2012' or "Summer 2012' could have a serious impact on the travel industry," he says. "The tourism and hospitality industry could be seriously affected.
Hotels won't be able to offer Olympic weekends, because that'd infer some sort of link.
You won't be able to offer tickets as part of a competition or as a reward to staff." Other sages suggest that before Midlands plc starts getting overexcited and views the Olympic and Paralympics as the biggest business opportunity on earth, they should remember they only last a month. "A lot of people are concerned that the scale of building in London will drain skilled people and investment from the regions," says Loftus. "But I've spoken to at least one main developer who says that although the Olympics are important, they're not that big compared with what else is happening in the country.
They're a bonus, but don't radically change things." "I think we need a bit of a reality check," says Kirby. "For most businesses this will be a four-week contract - nice, but not dramatic in terms of income. In fact, I know one builder who is not bidding for any Olympic work - he reckons he can clean up while everyone else is down in East London. "But it will be important long-term in another way.
The Olympics are a sexy piece of business and a good one to have on your credits.
But companies can also use it as a way of raising their game.
A lot of the companies now working at the Beijing Games cut their teeth in Athens and Sydney and now think internationally.
We should do the same." Wordplay As well as the usual plethora of Intellectual Property (IP) rights and regulations, the use of branding around the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics will be restricted by two further pieces of legislation - the Olympic Symbol Act (1995) and the London Olympics Act (2006).
The first controls the use of the famous five-ringed symbol, as well as words such as Olympic, Olympiad, Olympians and corresponding Paralympic words. These protected words and symbols, called "controlled representations", cannot be used by a business if they wrongly suggest an association with the Olympic movement.
The second act goes much further and creates a new, very specific and very effective form of IP right for official Olympic sponsors. Described as draconian, the Act presumes an infringement - that is, it is assumed a business using controlled representations has infringed the Act unless it can prove otherwise.
So, if businesses use a word from one list - games, 2012, Two Thousand and Twelve, Twenty Twelve - in association with one from a second list - gold, silver, bronze, London, medals, sponsor, summer - it could be deemed to have infringed the Olympic IP rights. The Act also creates new civil offences, with fines of up to £320,000 or unlimited fines in the most serious cases.
And it places restrictions on ads, street trading and ticket touting around Olympic events. In addition, the words Locog and Javelin are being registered as trademarks, as are the symbols for London 2012, the British Olympic Association, Paralympics GB and - perhaps most controversially - Team GB. Other designs, like the official Games emblems, mascots and pictograms depicting individual sports will also be registered as trademarks.
And, if all that were not restrictive enough, all films, music, artistic works and posters created by official Olympic and Paralympic bodies will be protected by copyright.