TOP TEAM TY SPEER
DEPUTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE
Could you describe your career so far and your journey to Glasgow 2014? I started as an intern at Octagon, a sports marketing agency outside Washington DC. I spent many years in the agency business before being transferred to Octagon’s Sydney office in Australia, where I worked on major events. The Olympics were a big chunk of
Octagon’s work and that’s why I went to Australia, to build up an Olympic-based major events business in that market. I then transferred down to Melbourne
and ran the commercial programme for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne for three years. I then had an oppor- tunity to come to the UK and become director of client services for London 2012. I spent five years overseeing all of the sponsorship delivery at the London Olympics – before joining the Glasgow 2014 team shortly after the 2012 Games.
What are your responsibilities as deputy CEO at Glasgow 2014? My role has two or three fixed pieces and quite a lot of variable pieces. The core responsibility is to oversee the
commercial side of the Games, so private sector fundraising through sponsorship, ticketing and taking care of our prod- ucts and merchandise are all in my patch. I also oversee our ceremonial portfolio; the opening and closing ceremonies, our festival programme delivery and the Queen’s Baton Relay. The rest of it is a somewhat loose
brief. As my title suggests, I deputise for David [Grevemberg, CEO] on pretty much anything he needs me to. Also in the mix there’s some planning work that I support, there’s quite a lot of stakeholder work, with the government in particular, and I also do some work with the various forms of media.
Could you describe how the organising committee works? The complexity of what an organising committee of an event this size and scale has to do is significant and it’s certainly in excess to the time we have! Normally, if you listed out the work
that needs doing, you’d give it more time, so we’re constantly trying to com- press work into a tight time and space. It puts enormous value on creating a busi- ness that’s good at talking to itself and has good internal communication. As part of that, for better or for worse,
we’re a very meeting-rich business. We’re intensely interdependent, meaning that there are very few things that we do
where a single team is entirely respon- sible for an outcome. There’s a lot of “have you talked to them” and “what are you doing to complement that”. Trust comes to it a lot too, because you have to trust that somebody else in the business is thinking about your needs, just like you’re thinking about your needs and you’re thinking about theirs. A successful organising committee has
clear planning targets, clear outcomes, it communicates well and all of its teams/ components trust that nobody is in it for their own little outcome, but that every part of it is in it to deliver a great final product – a successful Games.
How strong is the Commonwealth Games as a brand? Rather than being brand-driven, I think our sponsors and commercial partners see the Commonwealth Games as event- driven and location-driven. In fact, there are very few one-time sports events which come to a market and say they are absolutely a brand-led, commercial property – I think the Olympics and Wimbledon are the only ones. So rather than companies wanting
to have the Olympic rings on their marketing, our sponsors and partners want to join us because they want to be part of a major happening. I think they are more interested in capturing people’s attention over a long period of time.
A total of 50,811 people applied to volunteer for Glasgow 2014 – a new Games record
34 Read Sports Management online
sportsmanagement.co.uk/digital
Issue 4 2013 © cybertrek 2013
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84