Terrence Burns Interview
A very special episode of Off The Podium is coming your way today as we sit down with Olympic Marketing Expert Terrence Burns to learn a little bit more about marketing an Olympic Games as well as the process involved in successfully marketing a bid to help bring an Olympics to a city. Terrence discusses just how him wanting to become a dentist lead to his incredible career and how then working for an airline company helped him along this journey even further. He also goes over just what it takes to help create a successful Olympic bid and why so many cities aren’t able to quite get the message across when it comes to gaining the votes needed to host an Olympics. Added to this some incredible stories around going out to dinner with some very important Russians and why Sydney was his favourite Olympics to attend, it’s one chat you simply won’t want to miss!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note this is an automated transcript that may contain errors.
BEN WATERWORTH: It is Off The Podium, an Olympics podcast coming to you for another brand spanking new episode and another brand spanking new interview. And I am so excited to bring you today's guests on the show. We have spoken to journalists. We have spoken to broadcasters. We have never spoken to somebody about the marketing side of the Olympic Games until today, because we're about to speak to American Olympic marketing expert and one of the biggest names when it comes to Olympic marketing in the world, Terrence Burns. Now, this is such a fascinating chat. If you want to learn a little bit more about not only marketing behind the Olympics, but marketing behind an Olympic bid and a lot of discussion around this, Terrence has worked on numerous Olympic bids over the years, successful and unsuccessful. And it's such a fascinating insight into what it takes for a city to win an Olympic Games. And this involves so many different aspects that you probably have never thought about. And Terrence really goes into the nitty gritty of this. He's also worked on World Cup bids. He's worked on Asian game bids. He's even worked on bids for sports to be re-included into the Olympic Games, which he talks about at length in this interview to really get into what it takes for a sport to be included in the Olympic Games. This really is one of the most interesting, in-depth and fascinating interviews that we have ever brought you here on Off The Podium. And I know you are going to love every single second of it. So, I'm going to shut up and I'm going to hand it over to myself. And you're going to hear, right now, from Olympic marketing expert, Terrence Burns.
BEN WATERWORTH: So excited to be able to welcome our next guest here to Off The Podium. Obviously, we talked to a lot of athletes on this show, learn a lot about their journeys, and we have, of course, in the past branched out a little bit. We've talked to journalists, we've talked to broadcasters to learn a little bit more about their Olympic journey. And today, we're going to cover the marketing side of things for the Olympic Games. Obviously, you can't put on an event like the Olympics without a bit of marketing involved. And our next guest has had an esteemed career, working on all sides of the marketing spectrum. He's worked for the IOC, he's worked for sponsors, he's worked for other major international sporting events to help them come to fruition and to learn about exactly what he's been involved in, what it takes to market an Olympics, market a bid, everything else in between. We are thrilled to welcome Mr. Terrence Burns to Off The Podium today. Terrence, first of all, welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to speak with you today.
TERRENCE BURNS: Well, thank you so much for having me, Ben. It's a pleasure to talk to you.
BEN WATERWORTH: Now, I've got to ask you one question before we get into all the great things about your career and how you got involved in everything. Was the Olympics something as a kid that you discovered, got obsessed with? Was this something that you thought, I want to go to a competing? I mean, kind of where did this desire and this passion for the Olympics start?
TERRENCE BURNS: I think as a child at my age, the Olympics were a way you marked time, at least in America. We had a presidential election every four years, and we had the summer and the winter games together back in those days, in the same year, every four years. I think my first memory of the Olympic Games was probably when I was 10, in 1968. I remember Jean-Claude Keeley in Grenoble. And then my first vivid memory of the games and how important they were were probably in 72 when I was in 9th grade, riding my bicycle to school. We got to school and we heard about the Israeli athletes in Munich, the massacre there. I wanted to be a dentist, to be honest with you. I never imagined myself in this business, but I was not good at organic chemistry, and I was told I had been weeded from the future bank of medical professionals. While I was in university and undergraduate school, went to business school. Long story short, 15 years at Delta Airlines, and my last three years there, I managed the Delta Airlines sponsorship of the Atlanta Games. And that's when I really fell in love with the Olympics as an idea and something more than a fan. I was able to understand the brand's values and what they meant to the world. And we did a good job at Delta. We had a fantastic team of people supporting me and good leadership. And the IOC took notice of what we did and asked a small group of people. I was fortunate to be in that group to create a new marketing agency for them in 1996. It's called Meridian. The IOC owned 25% of us and the principal's owned the other 75%. And we were the IOC's marketing agency for two cycles from 1996 to 2004. I left in 2001, just wanted to go out on my own and be a consultant. And that's been my ride. So kind of a securitist way to get to the world of sport and specifically get to the Olympics. But it was a decision I made in 1996 to follow that and to leave Delta, and it's the best decision I've ever made. I just enjoy every day waking up and working on this incredible brand.
BEN WATERWORTH: I've got to ask a quick tangent question here, Terrence, because you've kind of opened up a can of worms for me here, which I've always wanted to ask. What makes you want to be a dentist? It's literally one of these professions that I swear I've never met someone who said, I want to grow up and be a dentist, you're the first. Like, I need to ask, why did you want to be a dentist?
TERRENCE BURNS: According to my organic chemistry professor, he told me, you want to be a dentist because you don't have the balls to be a doctor. And that's about the only thing I can remember. I made a 12 on the final in organic chemistry, and I was happy to be in the double digits, to be honest with you, with a 12 out of 100. And he gave me a D in the course, and he said it was a gift because you're a nice kid and you've worked really hard, but you should go to the business school. So that's about all I can tell you. Maybe I had a nice dentist as a kid, it was a nice guy, I don't remember why, to be honest with you. And I had very few of the attributes that one needs to be a dentist or a doctor. But that was my idea at 18, which was brushed aside at 20, around 20, 21, whenever that was.
BEN WATERWORTH: Wow. Wow, it's just no disrespect to any dentist listening to the show today. It's not something that you often come across, like I'm going to grow up and be a dentist. And good on you if you do.
TERRENCE BURNS: I wish I had a more reasonable story, but I don't. And that's the truth. Yeah, who knows why we want to do what we want to do when we're 18? I think that's a little unfair to ask an 18-year-old to pick a profession for the rest of his or her life.
BEN WATERWORTH: When it came to that journey working with Delta and kind of switching when you went into the lead up for Atlanta, what was that period like when it came to the marketing of the games? I mean, this was 12 years after LA, extremely successful and profitable games. And obviously Atlanta was very well marketed, very well sort of covered on that angle. I mean, was it their pressure kind of from that side of things to kind of live up to what LA had done for the Olympics and given the US at that point hadn't hosted an Olympics since LA kind of, you know, living up to everything that that legacy of those games had?
TERRENCE BURNS: There was intense pressure on me and our team at Delta. I can't speak for the organising committee, ACOG, although the head of sponsorship for ACOG was a guy named Chris Welton, who eventually became my boss at Meridian and eventually became my business partner for my company, Helios, that I founded in the early 2000s. We had incredible pressure on us. Think about it this way. Our sponsorship fees in those days were about 30 million to be an ACOG sponsor. So about 20 of that was in VAT, 10 was in cash. And in those days, Delta, as all US carriers were recovering from the first Gulf War, Delta had lost money for the first time in its 60-year history. So there was immense pressure to make sure this made sense financially, even though we had to do it. Atlanta was Delta's hometown, 24,000 people were employed there. Yet we're paying $30 million for an event in the city in which we have 90 percent of the market share. So we had a very aggressive board of directors. There was a gentleman named Ed Arts, who was the chairman of P&G in those days. And he did not understand airlines, he did not understand the Olympics. And he was pretty visiferous every quarter when I had to meet and explain, here's where we are, here's what we're doing, here's what we spent. So that type of pressure and necessity typically forces you to focus only on the things that matter. So what I've seen over the years is new sponsors tend to get confused and tend to try to do everything within their rights and benefits as opposed to really making the sponsorship fit the existing corporate objectives and strategy. Many new sponsors create a standalone Olympic sponsorship strategy, which sits out there by itself and doesn't have a lot of relevance to the rest of the company, what it's doing. So we somehow figured out not to do that. I mean, I had a lot of great advisors who advised me, external consultants who had no idea what I was doing. But we tied it to what Delta was trying to do. So we just had three very simple objectives. One was a revenue objective. One was a brand objective. And in those days, brand was a misunderstood word. It was really more about awareness than anything else. And we all know that awareness is a bit of a hollow void. But in those days, we had to do something. And then the third one I was pretty proud of was an internal employee strategy. Delta is a service company. So honestly, like any airline or a bank, your brand ambassadors are the people who interact with the customers, right? So it doesn't matter how slick or cool or nice your advertising campaign is. If you have a bad experience with a reservation agent or a ticketing agent or a gate agent or a flight attendant, that colours your view of that brand. So we decided, let's energise our employee base by offering incentives, everything from running with the Olympic torch to tchotchkes to attending the games as with the other guests. It was a really fulsome program, we thought. Looking back on it now, almost 30 years later, if I could do it again, I'd probably treble the investment I made in it because the people really make the brand. So the pressure was amazing from that perspective. We didn't feel any pressure from LA, but I'm sure the people at ACOG did. I will say this about games in the United States, for your international listeners, they tend to be more aggressive and more innovative, not because Americans are different or special or smarter, it's because games in the United States get zero federal funding, other than the security budget, which exploded after 9-11. So Olympic and Paralympic Games in the United States are left to their own devices. They have to raise their own money, they have to do it through private sponsorship, through broadcast, through ticketing, through merchandise, etc. So right now, LA's got to raise $2.5 billion. There's not going to be a magic check coming from the Ministry of Sport, because there is no Ministry of Sport in the United States. There's no cabinet position of sport in the United States. There's no Minister of Sport in the United States. And honestly, the games in the United States tend to be a local city and or regional effort because of the size and scope of the country, the competitive nature of the marketplace. I'll say this, and I don't want it to be pejorative, but often, like the games in LA, it's going to be hard for that to be relevant for people in Tampa or Miami because of the size and the scope of the United States and the sport and entertainment options that exist in places like Tampa and Miami and Nashville and New York and go down the list. As opposed, juxtaposed to, look at the games we were having, the Paralympic Games we were having in Tokyo right now, and the Olympic Games two weeks ago. That's a national effort. That is a national imperative. It doesn't happen like that in the US. So typically, you see US-based games be very innovative and aggressive in their marketing, and you're going to see that with LA. No question about it. They're going to do things, I think, and hope that will expand the brand and make engagement with Olympic fans take it to a whole new level.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which it's something that I weirdly enjoy whenever the US puts in a bid for the Olympics. There's just that process of which city's going to... There's a bid for the bid, basically. We've seen that in the past, like sort of what happened with Boston's bid, and then kind of that fell through, and then LA comes about. But in sort of the past 20 or 30 years, like when New York bid and Chicago bid, it's entertaining as an outsider to kind of see these cities fight for it, because in Australia, it's kind of, OK, well, Melbourne had it, great. Sydney had it, great. Well, it's Brisbane's turn now, so let's put Brisbane up, and it's kind of just a universal decision. So it's a unique way of sort of doing it, but it's weirdly entertaining.
TERRENCE BURNS: Well, it may be indicative of the hypercompetitive nature. I honestly think the USOC in those days and now the USOPC, there was a process that mimicked the IOC's process in many ways, certainly when they chose Chicago and they chose New York. Chicago had a great technical bid. It had a lot of issues with the soft side of the bid, frankly, the messaging, the leadership, et cetera. Timing is everything as well, and we know that in the Olympic movement. I did work with Boston for a few months. My company was tied to a company back in 2015 who was doing a lot of political work. And to be honest, the pressure was put on me to work on a US bid during a timeframe that would coincide with the US presidential elections. They didn't really want me working for Rome or Hamburg or Paris. They wanted me working for a US bid because the company with whom I was tethered was probably going to do a lot of work for one of the US presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton. So I really didn't want to work for a US bid because I had seen two bids in my bidding career fail miserably for a lot of different reasons. I felt that there were some systemic issues with the USOC at the time. I spent 20, 30, almost 25 years working outside of the United States. I'd never worked with a client in the US. I've only spent two years in the US in the last 20 something because that's what I do. And those two years were eventually with LA. So the Boston bid, it was pretty clear when I got involved in April of 15 and it died in July of 15, it was very clear that they had not covered the basis locally. They had not engineered buy-in with the local constituents, local politicians, the IOC. I think the USOC was under pressure to pick a city that wasn't LA because LA had it a few times before, two times before, I think. Excuse me. And they chose Boston. And Boston could have been a beautiful city to host the Games because it is a pretty city on the water. It had a nascent technical bid that they were working on. But for whatever reason, for a lot of reasons, it just died an ugly death. And then I was asked by my colleagues to consider LA. And for the same reason, I said, look, there's the proof point of why I don't want to work for you as bid. You saw what happened to Boston. Well, you know, we really would love for you to talk to Casey Wasserman, who's going to run that bid. And I didn't know Casey personally. I mean, he's in my business. I knew of him, you know, reputationally, but I didn't know him personally. I did agree to a member. It was a Saturday morning call. And I said, OK, I have 10 questions for for him. Phil, answer them. Then I might work for him, might. So we actually had a very good call. And he said, fantastic. And here's this and here's this. How much does it cost? I said, it's this. He said, great. No problem. No pushback. He said, let's do it. I said, well, first, first, you know, I want to meet you because this is a highly working on an Olympic bid is two years of intense emotional commitment on both sides. I have to believe in the city, fall in love with the city and become an advocate of that city. Or I can't do my job well. And so let's meet before we agree because I still was just not convinced. So I flew out there and met Casey and he was charming and funny and in love with his city and genuine and focused on what why he wanted to do it. So I said, OK, so that that's how that happened. And we purposely been my job amongst many in a bid. My first job is to help them define the reason why the reason how is not too important anymore, especially for LA. They have more venues than they needed. Unlike many bids, I've worked on where you had to create a city like Russia and Sochi. So my job is to help them create the brand itself, the proposition, create an architecture, write the key messages, make sure that what we're saying is completely differentiated from the other four cities, yet it is something that the IOC needs, and that's the trick in bidding. It's easy to differentiate the functional differences in these cities. It's even easy to differentiate the emotional value proposition for each of these cities. The trick is, does that emotional differentiation have any relevance to the voters? And you have to understand when you're working on the Olympic bid, I'm not trying to convince 7 billion human beings on the planet to vote for LA. I'm trying to convince 100 IOC members, a majority of them, to vote for LA. And that's a very, very different dynamic. It's a tough one for cities and mayors to understand that it's not a contest for the world. It's a contest within the Olympic movement to answer some very pressing questions. What does the movement need in a potential host city? And how can we best deliver that, differentiated from our competitors? So it's a high-wire act. There's no net. You don't get a bronze. You don't get a silver. You win or lose. And it's one of the most pure exercises in marketing that a marketer can do, because you really do get to create a brand from nothing, an Olympic brand, and you have two years to sell it, and you win or lose. So that was one of the things I loved about bidding was the competitive nature of it and the finality of it, that you could move on to another city, another culture, another set of dreamers who frankly would always invigorate me. You know, by the end of a bid, you're tired, you're jaded, you're over it. And then you meet a new group of people from a community or a culture who want to interpret the Olympic ideals in their own way. And it is fantastic, and it's intoxicating, and they always rejuvenated me in the most positive ways and reminded me why I'm in this business to begin with.
BEN WATERWORTH: And it's that unique aspect of it, too, that you're talking about that journey to sort of get the bid up and then get them to win it. But then seven years later, in the traditional cycle, how it worked, then the games come along and you can be like, well, I was part of that from the beginning, and here they are now. He's the opening ceremony of Beijing, Vancouver, you know, and you kind of you've seen that from the beginning to the finished product. It must be a sense of pride to kind of see the games finally start.
TERRENCE BURNS: It is. I think the loneliest profession are the people who work on bids after a bid wins. You suddenly become invisible and it doesn't matter anymore. And that's part of it. And I get it and understand it. The organising committee has a very different objective and mission than a bid committee. Bid committees spend two years as dreamers, very emotional. It's an exercise in supplication, for lack of a better word, for two years. And then suddenly you get it. And then it becomes a fairly structured roadmap, which is difficult. You go from 30 employees to 5,000 employees at games time or whatever it is. It's a very different ride. But the pride, yes, you're correct. I guess the last opportunity I had to experience that soup-to-nuts feeling was Pyeongchang. I worked on Pyeongchang 2018. I worked on Vancouver 2010, and we defeated Pyeongchang. I worked on Sochi 2014, we defeated Pyeongchang. And then they finally hired me in 2009.
BEN WATERWORTH: There was something going on there. They thought, well, okay, let's get somebody who's losing all the time. Who's the key aspect to that?
TERRENCE BURNS: Well, they were stuck on a message that had no relevance to the Olympic movement, and they were stubborn and wouldn't move off of it. And that was the reunification of the Olympic Peninsula, which is a noble cause, and it's an important cause geopolitically. Is it a must have for the Olympic movement?
BEN WATERWORTH: No.
TERRENCE BURNS: But they were stuck on that emotionally, and they wouldn't move off of it. So it really wasn't too hard to manoeuvre around their positioning with either Vancouver or Sochi. So when 2018 came around, I got hired, and they let me redo it all. We came up with something called New Horizons, and it was about taking winter sport to Asia. We could clearly demonstrate that within two-hour flight of Pyeongchang, there were more people under the age of 30 than in all of Europe. And if you need to grow winter sport in federations, here's back to the question, what's best for the Olympic movement? Federations, they wanted to hear that message. We want to take winter sport to places it's never been to new markets and new consumers. In Munich, who was our main competitor, by the way, who had by far the best technical bid, by far the most winter games, perfect bid. But the messaging that we had with Gung Chung was a different message, and it was about growing winter sports. So I got to do that for two years, and it was a grueling bid. It was the last time they did the bid campaign. We had 11 presentations around the world over a two-year period. And one of the things I also do is I write all of the speeches, direct all the design, help work on the movies, train the speaker. So everything you see on stage in an Olympic bid that I've ever worked on, I controlled it because it's all about staying on message and branding. So we finished it, and they won. And then during those games, I was invited back. And I typically go to all the games, and I'm fortunate that the IOC always invites me, and I go as one of their guests. I mean, I pay my way, but I go as an IOC credential. But the head of the bid committee was a gentleman named YH. Cho, who is now deceased. He also owned Korean Airlines and the Hanjin Chai Bowl in Korea. And YH and I spent the final day of the Gyeongchang Games together. And he was very proud of his country and very proud of that bid. And it was very, very special because I could tell he was ill. I didn't know exactly what was wrong with him, but it was obvious that he was ill. I didn't realise he didn't have long to live, but we spent the last day together of the Gyeongchang Games, reminiscing about just two years or, excuse me, seven years prior, the bid itself and all the things we went through. And it was lovely. So, yes, that from the beginning of a bid to opening and or closing ceremony, it's quite emotional and powerful. And sometimes people do remember you and remember the role you played, and sometimes they don't. It's just the way life is.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which how challenging is that then to go to such diverse cultures and having to really tap in and using your expertise? Because you worked on Beijing 2008, Vancouver, Sochi, Pyeongchang, as you mentioned, then LA, outside of the Olympics, World Cups in Russia, the Doha Asian Games. I mean, these are diverse cultures that you've obviously got to tap into that marketing side of things. I mean, how is that to kind of adapt your skills and abilities to such diverse places on the planet?
TERRENCE BURNS: It's difficult. And it may be more difficult for an American than it might be for another nationality. We come with perceptions and baggage sometimes that other nationalities do not. At the end of the day, they're hiring me for a set of expertise that they don't have. And my job is to help them waste as little time as possible during a very limited scope of work over a specific timeframe. And you have to understand that you're in a different culture, that you're their guest, and even though you're right, sometimes you have to couch that being right in a way that's digestible for them. I will say, interesting, because I've been asked this question a hundred times, but I guess the bit where I had the biggest culture shock and I wouldn't say challenge, but ongoing, not struggle either, but adjustments was LA. I had not worked in the United States in many years for a period of time with a US client, based in the United States, but always working abroad. So working with a group of Americans for two years was completely different than Koreans or Russians or Qataris or Canadians or Azerbaijanis or just go down the list, all the places I've worked. Americans, very specific way of doing business and going about it. And I think often when I work abroad, a lot of cultures are very gracious and hospitable, and you are a guest in their nation, and they take that seriously, and they treat you as a guest with great hospitality and kindness. So I've honestly, I've not struggled in any of these cultures. The first get to know you a few months, or sometimes a little rocky. The Koreans and I had a really hard time at the beginning. They are wonderful people, but they're stubborn and aggressive. And I don't mind that. I like it up front. I like the conflict to get through it. I don't like passive aggressive stuff, and I don't like buried conflict. So the Koreans, for example, first few months were difficult as hell. They insisted on doing it their way, and I just kept saying, your way has lost this thing twice. To me, that's the only marker. I'm not here to be liked. I'm not here to make you feel good. I'm here to help you win an Olympic Games. And if that's what you want to do, then here's what I think we should do. And more often than not, that works if it's pitched the right way. But I will say this as well. Having that experience, Ben, and working in all of those cultures has been, to me, one of the greatest joys of my life. You know, I've got a wonderful wife, I have a wonderful daughter, I have a grandson, and those are life milestones and events that I'm grateful for, and they're beautiful. Nothing compares to those. However, a lot of people have a job that's a job. I have a job that's an absolute joy. And I've never been happier than when I'm on a plane going to somewhere that I've never been before, in a language I can't speak, with money I can't even discern what the value is, and landing and trying to figure out how the hell to get to the air, you know, to the hotel, excuse me. And I have found that most people around the world will treat you with respect and dignity that you treat them.
BEN WATERWORTH: 100%. We're a co-Canadian-Australian sort of production here on Off The Podium, and you worked on the Vancouver bid back in 2010. I mean, anything particular about that bid that sort of stood out working there to kind of bring the winter games? I mean, the thing that's sort of unique about Canadian bids, it's always, I guess, tainted with Montreal in 1976, but they had Calgary, of course, in 88. I mean, were there any challenges kind of to overcome? And is that something that always kind of stains any legacy that a Canadian city has when they bid for an Olympics based on the whole Montreal 1976 situation?
TERRENCE BURNS: I don't recall that being an issue at all, honestly. They were a great bid to work for. They were the second Olympic bid that I worked for. I had my business partner in those days, a guy named George Herfler, and George and I did Beijing, right when I left the IOC, Beijing 2008 hired us for the last six months to kind of help their international messaging. And I would say that Beijing 2022 could use that same amount of help right now, but they don't seem to think they need it. But this is 20 years ago. So it was 20 years ago I started working for, we started working for Vancouver right after Beijing won. You know, they were, A, you know, very familiar for us as Americans and Canadians, yet also similar to the Brits, a wide gulf culturally, even though we share the same language. And with the Canadians, we share the same continent, obviously. So we, you know, our job is to bring objectivity to it. And sometimes when you're dealing with bid committees, all of them, you know, drink their own bath water, or they're stuck in their own vortex, and they don't have out. So our job is to come in and say, here's the perception of your bid or your nation or your culture, because we do the research from 70 or 80 people within the Olympic movement. We don't care about the other 7 billion, just the people in the movement and the influencers on these ISE members. Here's what the other cities are positioning themselves as. Here's why you're different, why this makes sense. And I vividly remember one of the first meetings, and they had a very sophisticated marketing group already there, nice people, smart people. I mean, Vancouver is a great city. I just adore it. And they were trying to figure out a tagline. And I remember it was George and me and several of their marketing people in a room and PR people. And one of the most enchanting things about that city and that bid was, you can do the, and they did, you can do the ice competitions down in the city on the shore, and then you go to Whistler and you've got the mountain and the skiing, and they had that sea to sky highway, is what it used to be called. And in those days, it was a death trap, it was a very dangerous road, and people got hurt on it and killed. And we were trying to think, what makes you different? There's never been an Olympic, Sochi was the second one, but until then, there had never been an Olympic Games where you had that diversity of geography. So we said, let's just make this easy. And George actually got up on a board, and I remember writing, he said, you should call this the sea to sky games. And they're all like, oh, no, you know, that's too kitsch, it's touristy. And we just said, look, our job is to tell you what the perception is from the outside. And it's unique. And it's not unique and different to you because you're on that highway every day. But competing against Salzburg and Pyeongchang, and I can't remember whoever the hell's we were competing against in those in that bit. But I know with Salzburg and Pyeongchang, for sure, this is so different. So helping them to rally around a very key differentiator that was so interesting to the rest of the world, yet to them seemed unimaginative and impendentic, it worked. And they were the see this guy bid, and the logo reflected that. So it was fun doing that type of work. I found the Canadian bid very gracious, very hospitable. We had no issues with the classic American-Canadian friction that sometimes exists. They just wanted to win a bid, and they were led by great people. And I hope that they bid again. You know, Vancouver, there are fewer and fewer cities that can host a Winter Games because of the climate change. So I think they'll come back. You'll see another Vancouver Winter Games, maybe in your lifetime. Not in my lifetime, but maybe yours.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, they're obviously considering 2030, aren't they? They are. Is there much of a difference when it comes to marketing winter bids and summer bids? Is sort of one more challenging than the other?
TERRENCE BURNS: Oh, yeah. The winter bids are much more challenging because you have a sub, you know, there's 206 national Olympic committees in the Olympic movement, right? 206 countries in the Olympic movement. How many of those actually participate in the winter games?
BEN WATERWORTH: About 80 or 90 or something, isn't it? There you go.
TERRENCE BURNS: Around 80. So the other countries, I don't want to say don't, you know, it's just not a priority for them the way the summer games are. The teams aren't. So you've got... Now, all of those nationalities are not reflected in IOC membership. As you know, there's not all 206 nationalities, but there are a lot of IOC members who come from countries that either don't have teams participating in the winter Olympic games or, you know, marginally so. So it's really hard to... If you got 45 minutes to make a final presentation for the International Olympic Committee to sell, you're not going to do that on technical abilities. You're not going to do that on, here's how great our mountains are, here's how great our venues are, here's how nice this is. You've got to tell a story, and I think that that's one of the things that I learned early on and was able to bring to my niche practice in bidding was the how is irrelevant almost, if it's good enough. If you can tell a story that captivates people, with people on stage, with passionate emotional stories and positioning, even somebody who's not even remotely interested in the games will listen to you. And Pyeongchang probably is the best example of one that won. And then Almaty, I did, we competed against Pyeongchang. And to me, that may be the best Olympic final presentation I've ever participated in. And I still hear that from IOC members. It was in Kuala Lumpur in 2015. I was told by a very good friend who's a member of the IOC executive board going in. He goes, Terrence, you only have 26 votes, my friend. And I'm sorry, I know you're passionate about Kazakhstan, but none of us know where it is or what it is. And you started too late and blah, blah, blah. I said, give me 45 minutes on stage. Give our team 45 minutes on stage. And we came out of that 45 minutes with a virtual tie. And then, of course, apparently, the electronic voting system, something was wrong with it, and they voted again. And then we lost by three votes. That's how it works. But you really can captivate those voters if you have the right message, if you're sincere, if you listen to their needs, and understand what buttons to push, to be honest with you. So, yeah, the winter bids are always more difficult just because the lack of relevancy for a lot of the voters, to be honest with you, and a lot of the world.
BEN WATERWORTH: Two-part question. Of all the successful bids that you've worked on, was there one that maybe looking back on day one, you were thinking, this might be a bit of a challenge. I don't know how they're going to get there. And on the flip side, any of the ones that you've worked on that didn't ultimately win, was it maybe the opposite? You thought, well, these guys are in with a great shot, and a bit surprised that they ultimately didn't get the games.
TERRENCE BURNS: Good question. The first question has to be so cheap. I worked on Moscow 2012. Most people don't even know that Moscow bid on the 2012 games that London eventually won. That was, and I've said it publicly, and I'll keep saying it, that was the worst probably professional experience of my life in the Olympics. Not because of the people or the place. I mean, I've lived and worked in Russia as early as 1992 with Delta Airlines. So I'm very familiar with it. I've been there over 100 times. That was a bid that was, interestingly enough, probably a priority for somebody in the Moscow city sports department, but not even for the mayor, not even for Putin at the time. And it was reflected as such working there. But I worked my rear end off for them. And the Russians are unique. They appreciated that effort. And when we lost, it was in 2005, they said, we know we didn't lose because of you, which was nice to hear.
BEN WATERWORTH: I bet that's an odd thing to hear.
TERRENCE BURNS: But we want to host the winter. We want to host an Olympic game. So we're just going to keep bidding until we win one. So the next one is winter. So we're going to do this place called Sochi. Hell, I didn't even know where Sochi was. I don't think anyone did until the Olympics, right? August of 2005, I flew to Sochi, met with the mayor, who at that time didn't even know who I was or why I was there. He asked me to go back to my hotel room. I could understand a little bit of Russian, and what he said was not nice. But the translator said, oh, the mayor is so pleased to meet you, Mr. Burns. Thank you for coming. And so an hour and a half or so later, I go back. He'd gotten a message from Moscow. Suddenly his bear hugs, kisses, vodka. And we started planning on that day. I had a gentleman with me named Bob Stiles, who's now deceased. Bob was a technical guy, very smart man, nice man. And we literally sat down that first day with a map of Sochi and said, what is this area? This is the American, I can't remember the name, the American Ski or something. It was a big flat area right on the shore. And Bob said, what if we had the first ever Winter Olympic Park right there? Get up all of the ice stuff right there. And it's Russia. So the mayor says, there's no problem. Well, what about all of the, what is there? Oh, it's just houses and people. And it's Russia. So they moved them. Anyway, that was a long shot of long shots. And it was one that I got a fair amount of humour and consternation from friends and colleagues in my business about, why are you doing that one? Why don't you work for one of the other cities? And I saw it as a challenge then, to be honest with you. And I am, at the end of the day, I'm a believer. I'm an Olympic idealist, and I think that the Olympic Games can make a difference. I spent a lot of time in Russia. I thought that Russia was desperately trying to become a more respected member of the family of nations. That's the whole premise of how we wrote that bid, mimicking a little bit of the Beijing 2008 mythology that we wrote into that bid. Looking back on it, was I right? I don't know. Probably not in the short term, to be honest with you. Long term, maybe. Who knows? I do know that the Games in 1980 in Moscow probably kicked off what eventually became Glasnost and Perestroika. Eleven years later, the Soviet Union falls. Did the Olympics cause it? No. Did having the Olympics there open some of the Soviet people's eyes on the reality of the broader world? I was told by a member of the Russian Duma that he was a volunteer in those Games. And he said, we saw foreigners who had better shoes than we did, better clothes than we did, better teeth, better glasses. And we realised maybe we've been lied to. This guy is a member of the Russian government today. So the Olympics can make a difference. So the Soviet one was really surprising. People think that Russia was behind it from the beginning. The BID committee, I worked four and a half, five months just with the team of people that I'd hired. And we wrote there in those days, you had a mini BID book and a BID BID book. It's called an application file, and you had to write the mini BID book and then go through a process to see if you made it into the next phase. We wrote the mini BID book. I took architects. I took venue planners. We did everything, designed it in French and English, printed it. There wasn't a BID committee. I didn't have a contract. I wasn't getting paid, but I trusted the Russians because they told me this will happen. This will happen in Russia. It never happens the way you think it's going to happen. And then when it came time to print the real BID books, that's almost a half million dollar expense in those days, printing a thousand coffee table books, et cetera. And we used a US printer, and the printer wanted a down payment, and the BID committee didn't have any money. So my company is called Helios. We wrote a check to the printer. We loaned the Russian government money so they could get their BID books printed. So it was a long haul. And it was an interesting ride. And certainly geopolitics had a great deal to do with their victory. So that was one that I struggled with. I wanted it to win. And when it did win, it set up a whole new set of challenges with the money that Russia spent, et cetera. And we can see the fallout of that, sadly, today. Which ones did I work on that I wish it won or I think should have won? I have to still say a couple. Madrid, 2020, I worked on for the last six months of that bid. For some reason, Spain just cannot win an Olympic Games, summer games since Barcelona. Madrid's bid was Agenda 2020 before Agenda 2020 was cool. It was a great bid. It's a great city. It's a great sporting nation. They had over 90% of the venues existed. I mean, it was just a great, great bid. The Spanish were just not able to do the behind-the-scenes politicking as well as other countries do and did, like the Japanese, who won it. And then Almaty, I'm still heartbroken about Almaty. We could be going to Almaty, Kazakhstan in February instead of China. And the Kazakh people are lovely people, and that city, Almaty, is a gem. I mean, the ski jumping venue is in the city.
BEN WATERWORTH: We learned this recently. We had Robert Livingston on from Gamespids, and he was telling the great story. I was devastated that we don't get to see ski jumping downtown. That would be incredible to watch.
TERRENCE BURNS: Well, if you ever have an hour to kill, you can watch that final presentation on YouTube. The IOC has all that stuff. The Almaty 22 presentation in Kuala Lumpur, I had a tagline I created for them called Keeping It Real because we knew everything in the Beijing bid was virtual. It was nothing real. It was all made up. Everything they showed was CGI and created. Everything we showed was here's the real mountain, here's the real snow, and the people are just lovely and warm and wonderful. So the Keeping It Real tagline, I still keep up with all my Kazakh friends. We talk a lot on social media, and they love keeping it real. They always sign everything off. Keep it real, TV or whatever. That was one that was also a bid that we gave that final presentation. I think in July or September, I can't remember, to be honest with you, Ben, but we didn't start that bid until the previous December. So we had less than half a year to put an Olympic bid together. And you need two years. And a lot of the ISU members said, when we saw that presentation, we were blown away, but we also vote. This is true. We vote for people we know, and for people we built a rapport and trust. As much as anything else up there on the stage, if we know that bid leader, if we know that foreign minister, if we know those athletes, if we've seen them and heard from them and develop really a level of trust, if we haven't done that, it's hard to vote for them. And I always say that to new bids. No matter how good this bid is, if they don't know you, like you, and trust you, they will not vote for you. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what we do. And the Kazakhs got started too late. It was very political internally. Kazakhstan is still a young, young country. There was some consternation about their stability, since it's a petro economy, et cetera. I pray, and I think that you'll see a Winter Games in Kazakhstan, though, at some point, in Almaty. It's a glorious city, a perfect city.
BEN WATERWORTH: Fantastic. One city that I would like to know if maybe you've been approached to work, to work for or you have worked for, because I kind of feel sorry for them. They just, they bid and they lose all the time. Istanbul, what's going on there? They put their hat in the ring every single bloody Olympiad. They just never get the damn games.
TERRENCE BURNS: Yeah. I have pitched to Istanbul for 2020, and I made the decision to work for Rome instead. And the honest truth is I had just finished two years with Korea, literally 10 days a month, every month for two years in Korea. And as much as I love Korea and Korean people, it's a very different culture. Any Asian culture is a different culture, very different. And I was exhausted. I was just exhausted after that one. And Rome called me. That happens to be one of my three favourite big cities on the planet, Rome. I love Rome, I love London, and I love Tokyo. I pitched Tokyo, too. I don't know what happened with Tokyo, to be honest with you. There were some there were some consultants already helping them. Everything's political. So I pitched Istanbul. I liked them. I thought that they needed to have it. I thought the Olympic movement needed to have the games in a Muslim predominant country. And I liked Hassan. I like the NOC people. I remember it was snowing the day we pitched Istanbul, believe it or not, snowing in Istanbul. And I thought we had a great shot. And but Rome came after us hard. And I said, this is the truth. Sometimes it's like this, Ben. I said, if I got to spend 10 days every month somewhere for the next two years, I want some good pasta. I want to be able to walk down to the Coliseum and just look at it. I want to walk through. It's true. And I also thought Rome had a fantastic bid. And there's a great sporting nation. And they're just so fun and great to be around. Not that the Turks are not. I just thought it'd be easier on me physically and emotionally to do Rome. And I did it. And then as you may or may not remember, Berlusconi got thrown out. They brought in Professor Monte. This would be in 2012. February 2012. It's the day we're handing in the application file that we printed. It was beautiful. My tagline for that bid was A Time For History, which was beautiful. And we used all the iconic photography, La Dolce Vita. It was a stunning, still a great little bid book. And it was due to the IOC that day. And as we were delivering it, Professor Monte, the new Prime Minister of Italy for all of two or three weeks, said, oh, and by the way, we're going to kill the Olympic bid. We're not going to do it. Italy's in a mess. We can't afford it. That's true. And then Baku called me immediately. Would you help us? I said, yeah. That lasted six weeks. They got whacked. And then Madrid called me. So that was one that I had, I don't know, three or four cities in one bid cycle. So back to Istanbul. Why? I don't know why. I think it always comes down to personal relationships and more than a little politics in the Olympic movement to win the games. There are geopolitical issues with Turkey, as you know, as it pertains to the EU that may have been at play. You know, good bids win and good bids lose, et cetera. I think when it comes down to Istanbul regarding the IOC, it could have been a function of risk at the end of the day. As it always is. I remember that final presentation where Istanbul going up against Tokyo, and I was with Madrid, and that was in 2013. And I remember Tokyo right at the very end, because Tokyo couldn't find its voice for the whole two years. And it honestly wasn't even considered a frontrunner in that bid. You know who was considered a frontrunner? It was Istanbul, through that entire bid. It was their time, to your point. They had been bidding, they had been patient, they had done it again and again and again. They had a good bid, they had a great bid leader, Hassan, a very elegant man, nice man, international man. And the Japanese came up with this tagline right at the very end, a safe pair of hands. And it was at a time where they were having, like that last few months in Istanbul, you may not remember, there were riots in the streets. There was a lot of internal strife going on in Turkey. And the Japanese seized upon that. The political instability, seeming political instability, it was going on in the summer of 2013, the spring of 13 in Turkey. And they came up with this safe pair of hands. And suddenly everything in their positioning and messaging changed to that. And they hit it right at the right time. And let's be honest, Dentsu was the driving engine behind, excuse me, behind that bit and behind the games. So there was a hell of a lot of money and a hell of a lot of political heft and power and leverage that the Japanese brought to bear. I think the Turks didn't really understand that part of the game either.
BEN WATERWORTH: When it comes to what we've just seen earlier this year with Brisbane sort of being selected as the preferred candidate and then get to water the gains, how does your role even work now? If this is kind of how an Olympics is going to be awarded, I mean, does it become redundant? Can you do something a little bit differently? Or is it a case of just seeing how this plays out? Because we're sort of in this phase now where the seven year period's kind of gone seemingly, and we don't sort of know when the IOC is going to announce a bid for Olympics.
TERRENCE BURNS: Yeah, I think it's the best thing that's happened to the Olympic movement in the last 30 years, the change of the bid process. I have written innumerable documents, white papers, on what I thought the IOC should be doing in its host city selection process. I have had those presented in Lausanne. I've had those used by IOC members and or people. And this sounds self-serving, and it's not meant to be. But they're doing it. Years ago, my point of view was one of the things I got to do when I worked for the IOC, one of my jobs was we sold and serviced all the top sponsor agreements. We were IOC TMS. And my role as the SVP of marketing in that construct was working with sponsors, purely taking care of those relationships, trying to help them and their marketing endeavours, etc. And in 1996, when I went to Lausanne for the first time, I said, I've never been a consultant in my life. Don't have any idea what I'm doing. May I see your marketing plan? And Michael Payne, who was the marketing director at the time, Michael said, well, Terrence, that's your job. We don't have a marketing plan. You need to write it. And I said, great, I can do that. Let's start with the brand. Let's drill down into the brand and take it apart. What are you talking about? We have a logo. I said, no, I'm not talking about the logo. I'm talking about the brand. Who are you? How do you express it? Why does that matter? That's what a brand is. It's not a logo. Well, it took me a year and a half, 18 months, to convince the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee and Samaraj that they were a brand and that we were dealing with people like Coca-Cola and Visa and IBM, etc. And when I go meet their CMOs and they take me through their brand construct and how they bring it to life in marketing, I had nothing. So we did global research for the first time ever in 98 and 99, and we positioned that brand. We created marketing materials. We did research in 10 countries, qualitative, quantitative. It had never been done, but it's what every normal real brand does. But for the ICA, it seemed like we were giving everybody acid. So the brand, to me, is why the Olympics are so different from anything else, because nothing else is as universal and compelling as the Olympics. I always tell people, and it makes people uncomfortable sometimes, depending on the audience. I give a presentation at the Olympic brand, and I say, how many people think the Olympics are about sport? Raise your hand. Well, everybody's hand goes up. I said, well, you're wrong. Give me one hour, and I'll ask the question again. An hour later, I ask the question, nobody raises their hand. Sport happens to be the vehicle that takes us on this path to these universal values that everybody loves and understands. Irrespective if you are from Senegal or China or Russia or the United States or Brazil or male, female, young, old, it is astounding the consistency of what people think about the Olympics. So I began to think, as I was in this big work, that the first real step in brand management for the Olympics should be the cities that they choose to host the Games. Those cities, those cultures, those nations should mirror or espouse or be able to amplify the Olympic ideal and values. And it shouldn't be a beauty contest with people like me who can go in it and know how to market and brand and create stories and sell something that may or may not be really in the long-term benefit of the Olympic movement. So my suggestion was you should look one to two to three cycles out. You should decide where do you think you should hold the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games now. You should ask yourself the questions. Look at the Olympic Charter and the fundamental principles of the Olympic Charter, which are very clear. You should ask yourself the question, where can we best place the Games for the benefit of mankind? That doesn't mean, Ben, that they should place the Olympic Games in places that you and I like or that are regarded as ideal Western liberal democracy. So I'm not saying that at all, but I'm saying they should put the Games in areas and places that need them, in areas and places that represent less risk to the brand. And these cities can be partners for a longer period of time. So they should be looking 10 years out. And areas where you want to have the Games in a certain part of the world, will find cities now, three or four of them, start telling them what they need in 10 or 15 years, help them get there. So when they do bid, if there is a bid, they're ready for it. It's not going to be virtual bullshit. So I think what they're doing and the way they did it with Brisbane is exactly the way they should be doing it. Finding cities that are going to benefit all the stakeholders of the Olympic movement that represent minimal risk, that understand the values of Olympism and how that works, and a place, frankly, where they actually will be proud to host the Games, and I hate to put it so crassly, they're not going to endure a seven-year shit show of bad PR because they chose this place. So what does that mean for me? It means that the business I used to have and do is not there anymore, and honestly, I could care less. You know, I'm a sponsor person. That's the work I like to do is working with sponsors. I just did a lot of bidding because it was fun and interesting, and I could do it well somehow. But I think the IOC's new process is exactly what they should be doing. They may not think of it the way I am articulating it, but it is the very first and most important part of managing their brand, is picking host cities and nations, frankly, where they help each other.
BEN WATERWORTH: Two quick things I'd like to hear about, too. Not only have you worked on bids for games themselves, but you've actually worked as a brand strategist for sports, coming back into the Olympic golf, being included back into the Olympics, and wrestling, of course, which was controversially removed and then kind of brought back in. I mean, what's it like to work on a sporting bid to kind of get back into the Olympic Games?
TERRENCE BURNS: Fascinating. Just fascinating. The first one I worked on was golf, and I met the guys, Tai Bo Ta, who's with the PGA Tour, and Peter, I'm sorry, I can't remember Peter's last name. Met him in Beijing in 2008. They were there trying to talk to people to see who could help them with their bid to return to the Olympics. And I remember asking, why do you want to be in the Olympics? I wasn't sure that golf needed to be in the Olympics, and I was wondering why they thought it needed to be in the Olympics. And it is a very different dynamic than cities wanting to host the Games. So it was fascinating. It's a much more technical process, too, for there's a lengthy set of documents that these hopeful sports have to fill out and give to the IOC to explain everything. How big is this field of play? Do you have world championships? Who's in them? What's the gender mix? Et cetera, et cetera. It's very, very complicated. But at the end of the day, it comes down to telling a story. And the golf one was quite interesting. Our final presentation was in Copenhagen on the day that Rio won the games. So that was in, what, 09? And, you know, we had present... I had Annika Sorensen, Michelle Wee as athlete speakers. Ty spoke. We had videos. We had BJ Singh, and then the last person in the video was Tiger. And, you know, the whole room's going, Tiger, Tiger can be in the Olympic Games. Okay, we're going to vote for golf. You know, and I knew that would be a big emotional... We all did. It wasn't just me. Big emotional sell. And they got in. And then two weeks later, Tiger's life fell apart. Two weeks later, in November of that year, he blew up, remember?
BEN WATERWORTH: Kind of some timing there around that then, that it was like it was two weeks before, not two weeks after.
TERRENCE BURNS: That's my point. That's my point. Would golf have been successful had Tiger blew up? You know, would we have gotten in the Olympics without using him in a video? I don't know. Maybe. Wrestling was much more fascinating. And that was a real example of IOC bare knuckle politics at its best. To be honest, the IOC didn't want wrestling out of the Olympic Games, but they had an international federation that was out of control and wouldn't do the bare minimums to stay in, because they thought, we're wrestling. We don't have to fill out that paperwork. We don't have to do this. We don't have to do that. We don't have to have transparency. We don't have to follow the new rules that the IOC is trying to do, because we're wrestling. They're not going to do anything to us. Well, they did do something to them. And we got involved probably in January or February of 2013. It was a multi-group effort. I think we talked to Jim Shear here in the States, who was on that, trying to save Olympic wrestling. Nenad Lalevich was board member, and they put him in charge of the bid and made him interim head of the IF. I don't think he ever thought that would happen. He was just there. Eventually became an IOC member. Lovely man, articulate, worldly, loved working with that dude. But what we had to do with wrestling was first and foremost, a functional thing. And that was make sure that wrestling did everything it should have been doing technically and administratively to get into IOC's good graces. And Nenad had to restructure the entire federation. He had to change. We also had to make the sport more exciting, change the rules, more television friendly, a lot of functional things. And then to tell the story about wrestling, which wasn't a hard story to tell, to be honest with you. And I had two or three great athletes also speaking. Wrestling, I always say, is the one sport that we all know how to do when we come out of a boom. You don't need anybody to teach you how to wrestle. It's endemic to the Olympics, one of the ancient foundational sports. So it's a lot of fun to work on it. Very different way of going about it than a city, though. Much more different. I mean, you're also competing against other sports while you're trying to get back in there other sports. So I loved working on both of those. They're both quite different. And wrestling has done an amazing job of turning it around. And I hope golf can stay in. I think it will. But I think the ISE is entering into a phase where they're looking at the sports program much more critically as they should. I mean, there are sports on the Olympic program that I just don't understand why they're there, and I'm sure you don't either in other sports or not. So we'll see. We'll see if golf stays in. If it wants to stay in, at the end of the day, it's going to be up to them. And the commitment that you have to make to the ISE with a sport like golf is that our stars will be there. We will have the best golfers in the planet playing in the Olympic Games. It's the conundrum with ice hockey, right?
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, yeah.
TERRENCE BURNS: It's the conundrum with ice hockey. If you don't have the NHL participating, it's just a different television-doing experience for the average punter out there who's watching Olympic ice hockey.
BEN WATERWORTH: Which is good to see as of now. They seem to have come up with a bit of an agreement for Beijing, but I mean, obviously, things can change on a dime. So yeah, exactly. The other one, I mean, a whole episode in itself here, Terrence, we could talk about this, but you've worked on a couple of World Cup bids, of course, Russia and the United bid for Mexico, Canada and the US in 2026. I mean, you talk about sports being a different kettle of fish to a city. I mean, a country bid is something unique, and a FIFA World Cup is obviously its own kettle of fish, its own beast, essentially like that. But I mean, what's it like working on a World Cup? That must be a fascinating experience.
TERRENCE BURNS: It is. It's similar in many ways and obviously different because it's a single sport, and it's a national effort as opposed to a city effort. The Russians brought us in to help them in 2008 or 2009. I can't remember the date exactly. But I'd worked on, I don't know how many bids. I've helped Russia win six bids. And I remember we went in and they had, their presentation was one slide, and my company was called Helios. Their slide said, in Helios, we trust. That's it. They said, help us do this. So we did what we always did. We found people who knew a lot about soccer or football, as you may know it. I actually worked for the Australian Soccer Association a long time ago. We rebranded the Australian Football Federation. Also rebranded the ARU right before the World Cup in 2003. I worked on there. You know, I think a lot of it's interesting. It's a different dynamic in those days. The 18 bid versus the 26 bid were totally different. 18 was Russia. You got 26, 24, 26 executive board members of FIFA. It's a very different, darker, murky process. Purposely vague so they can do what they want to do. I found the IOC's process much cleaner, more transparent, prescriptive than the 2018 Russia World Cup bid. But we did kind of the same playbook. There's so many fascinating things with that bid. The night before our final presentation, Live To The World in Zurich, in December of 10, I had one female on the speaking. I needed more, but it was the great opera singer, Natrypka, female opera singer. Well, it's 9 at night, the night before we're going to live the next day. She hadn't been to any rehearsals, hadn't read my speech. She's in Torino in a blizzard and can't get to Zurich. So I'm sitting around. By this time, there are a lot of Russians that arrived. Two stories here. One was the Deputy Prime Minister Shubalov. So I had three speeches written. I had one for Putin, I had one for Medvedev, and I had one for Shubalov. Shubalov walks in the room with this giant circus of Russians, loud, just Russians. And he said, You know why I'm here? I said, Yeah, I know why you're here. Because your government's not sure you're going to win this. So they sent you. He says, Let me see the speeches. So I gave him the speeches. Classic Russian. These are terrible. I hate it. Not good. You know, we're 12 hours to showtime. We're going to redo everything. I said, No, you're not. You're not going to redo shit. You're not going to touch it. You can't do it. It's impossible. Nothing's impossible for Russians. I said, Well, this is the way it's going to be. Well, I'm changing my speech. I brought my own speechwriter. I said, Well, no, you're not. He said, Yes, I am. So while that's going on, I found out the Trepka is not coming. I look at Yelena Isambayeva. She's two time gold medallist, three time world champion, record holder, and the pole vault. She's just a machine. Well, she's there. Abramovich is there. You know, they brought all the glittery, pretty people of Russia for this thing. And she's sitting across from me. I said, Yelena, can you speak English? Of course I can speak English. I said, you got anything pretty or nice that you can wear? Why? I said, because you're my new speaker. So you said, you're kidding me. I said, no, let's go downstairs to the bar. It's a three minute speech. I'll write it for you right now. We go downstairs. I'll work with her a little bit on it. She loves it. And I said, I want you to do this one part. I want you to look, and I want you to say it very slowly. I love the football, and I want it to come from the back of your throat. Really, really sexy. And she got it, and she was laughing, and we were laughing. But you know, hell, you're performing. So we go back up. And they're all there. It's just crazy. Russian riot going on. Got them quiet. And I said, OK, here's Elena's speech. Dead silence. We hate it. She is little champion. She's Olympic champion. That's all she should talk about. I said, no, that's not what we're going to talk about. The audience is this. So in the course of all this craziness, Shuvalov's guy writes him a new speech. Horrific Politburo sounding thing. And he writes her a speech. She's in a tough spot. That's the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. So she comes to me and goes, Terrence, I hate this speech. I won't forgive your speech. I said, here's what, Elena, I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. Tomorrow, all the slides that we've designed are going to support the speech I've written for you. So if you get up there and give his speech, it's going to be nonsensical. And by the way, once you're live to the world, you can say whatever you want. Doesn't matter. So the reality is, she gave my speech, Russians erupted, went crazy, screaming, crying, best speech we've ever heard. Unbelievable. She's fantastic. So there's so many stories like that. And here's the great story, the final great story on that the Russian did. So we all go to this super posh restaurant and the nicest hotel in Zurich, which of course the Russians were staying. And they had me and like a holiday in downtown. They're in this castle looking thing. And we all go have dinner. And there's 30 or 40 of us. I don't know, there's a lot of people. Suddenly, right toward the end of the dinner, everybody's phones goes off. Everybody except mine, of course, and my team. All the Russians phones are exploding. Well, Putin's about to land in his private jet. So they get up and leave, just left. And so the restaurant manager comes over to me and he goes, who's going to pay for this? And I said, well, I don't know. He said, well, you are. I said, okay. How much is it? It's $40,000.
BEN WATERWORTH: Wow.
TERRENCE BURNS: I said, well, let's see if America Express really works the way they say it does. Here's an Amex card. I gave him an Amex card. It went through.
BEN WATERWORTH: Wow.
TERRENCE BURNS: So the next morning, I just knew that people might forget that I did that. So the next morning, I found the bid leader, and I found their finance guy. And the Russians always travel with cash. These credit cards, and they'll take cash. So in the stairwell of a hotel, it counts out $40,000 to me, $100 bills. And to get back in the United States, you can only have less than $10,000 cash come in as an American citizen. So I had to give everybody in my team like $9,999.
BEN WATERWORTH: It's your bonus.
TERRENCE BURNS: To get back. So one of the guys who will remain nameless, one of my team, the external guy, he's connecting through Paris. So I get back to Atlanta and I call him like a week later. I said, dude, can you just go ahead and send me the check? Ten grand, $9,000. He goes, can you give me a couple more weeks? And I said, well, sure. What's going on? He goes, well, I've never had that much money in my pocket. And I went through Paris and I saw this incredible watch and I bought it for my wife. I said, you did what? So, you know, there's so many stories and bidding. It's hilarious.
BEN WATERWORTH: But I just wanted to go straight to Putin. Putin was in town. Where's my $40,000? Here's your speech I wrote for you. I want my money.
TERRENCE BURNS: You know, Putin, I did write his speech for Sochi. I wrote 17 speeches, versions of speeches for him. Wow. And then we never knew which one he was going to give. He never rehearsed. And then you've got five minutes. We're going to go out a mile. It's 2005. He's the last speaker. I didn't have any slides for him because I didn't know what he was going to say. So we just put up a picture of mountains. And by the way, those pictures of those mountains were the Dolomites, because we couldn't even get up to where the mountains were in Sochi in those days. So I see members had no idea what they were looking at. It was the Dolomites. And he spoke in Russian, in English, in French. He did a great job. There were probably bits and pieces of my speeches mixed with other pieces of speeches in it. Just craziness. Once the green light goes on, you don't really know what's going to happen. You've planned, you prayed, you hope the technology works. You hope that the telecomper doesn't break. It is literally a high wire act, no net. And they're all different. They're all different. Wow.
BEN WATERWORTH: That's absolutely crazy. And just quickly then on the United bit, I mean, it's exciting. Obviously, the World Cup coming back to the US, and obviously Canada and Mexico getting a taste of it too. I mean, that's obviously a groundbreaking bid. First time since 2002, there's been multiple countries hosting. The first time you've had three countries hosting it. So I mean, that must have been a very unique one to kind of sell out there.
TERRENCE BURNS: It was, and I was late to that bid, honestly. I was brought in, I think, in January of 2018, and the bid was in June or July, was our final presentation in Moscow. It was a great, great bid, very simple bid, frankly, messaging-wise. So simple that I was trying to put a different spin on it. But honestly, my role on that was certainly less strategic. They were on the five-yard line when I joined. I really helped train the speakers more than anything else. We had a speechwriter who was President Obama's former speechwriter who they brought in to do the speeches. Lovely person, and we worked great together. He would allow me to change and modify. Because once you get, you can write a speech, but until you see someone give it, you don't quite know how to adapt it to them. Most of my speeches, the final presentation might be version 43 of a speech. If you do that for seven people, that's a lot of editing and rewriting. So it was great, and I enjoyed the camaraderie of the other two countries, to your point. It was interesting to see how that worked. Obviously, the US was driving that shift. 60 of the matches are in the US tenor and Canada tenor and Mexico. But we worked hard, really hard, and it was important for the bid leadership to not make it look like it was an American show, to make it look truly tri-national. And I think they did an excellent job of that. We had young athletes speaking, one from Canada, one from Mexico, one from the US and we were competing against Morocco. So that safe pair of hands messaging was in there. Obviously, the economic boom to the world, global world, global football was in there. In many ways, it was an obvious tack to take, and sometimes that's the best way to do it. You don't get too cute. Don't look so hard for the prosaic that you miss the obvious, and sometimes I see bids make that mistake. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. That was an amazing process because it was under Infantino. It was a completely different process than the 18 process. I'd say one thing I thought was amazing about it, and I wish the IOC would do, we presented, Morocco presented, then FIFA's evaluation team presented their findings of the two bids. They tried to be not too heavy handed about how risky Morocco was and how unrisky we were, but it was pretty clear that FIFA would prefer to have it North America for a host of reasons. But they had to be careful not to insult the Moroccans in their bid because they're good people and nice people. And then Infantino says, OK, in one minute, we're going to start voting. Everybody's name is going to be up on the board, and we're going to see who you vote for. That was, as an old bid person, old being time bidding and also age, I guess. But as a bid veteran, to see that type of transparency put on the voters themselves was breathtaking, refreshing, and stunning. Because you saw who voted for whom, and it was clear that if there's any hanky panky going on, it would show up on that screen. And I applaud Infantino for trying to bring FIFA from what it was back in the old days to the new days. Is he there yet? I don't know. I don't know enough about it, but I think he's made a lot of progress. And I think the IOC, it'll be a long time before you see that, but they don't have to do it anymore, because now, as we referred to earlier, it's the executive board, frankly, making the decision on Brisbane, and then the IOC members just vote to rubber stamp it or not. So in many ways, they've taken that whole decision out of the IOC members' hands.
BEN WATERWORTH: Got to ask a question, mainly because I know the answer already, because you told me you're fair, and I just want you to talk about it. What's your favourite Olympics that you've ever been to?
TERRENCE BURNS: Favourite games for me were Sydney 2000. That was my first summer games as an IOC employee. My first games as an IOC employee were Nagano. I enjoyed those two. I love Japanese culture, and I like the country. I admire it greatly. But Sydney, man, number one, I remember my first trip to Sydney, and I had lunch with some of the key people of the city. I don't even remember who they were, but I could tell they were the hoity-toities of Sydney, and they had something to do with the organising committee, and many of them had been helping for years on the bid, et cetera. Lovely people, and we had a restaurant on the rocks. I don't remember the name of it, but you can see everything. For me, it was just astounding. And I was the only American they had ever met that had read The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes, which is one of my favourite books of all time, which is about the founding of Australia. Robert Hughes was an Aussie, and he was a Time magazine art critic, but a great writer. And I think that still to this day may be one of the only history books that's ever been on the New York Times bestseller list. It was called The Fatal Shore. I don't know if you've read it, but this is the mid-90s, 96 when I went down there. So I was able to talk about what I knew about Australian history, which for them to have an American, or a septic, as they like to call me, talk about Australian history and understand it a little bit, it was cool. And I just found them lovely. I love the irreverence of the Australians. I love how they took piss out of us. They didn't call us the IOC. They called us the OIC, which was hilarious. They knew that there was room for humour and irreverence in the Olympic brand better than any organising committee I've ever seen, because the IOC sometimes gets in its own way with its pomposity. And if you've ever been to Lausanne and worked there, been there, been in Aussie headquarters, it's easy to see how you can, again, start drinking your own bathwater. The Aussies would have none of that. I just thought the city was... You could have a brick painting contest in Sydney, and it'd be a great experience just because of the place. It's one of the most gorgeous cities on the planet, how it sits there, looking at it. The culture of Australia I loved, and I felt an affinity for it as a southern American. You know, the south where I come from, where I lived at the time, Georgia, the state of Georgia was Britain's penal colony until we got our independence. When we got our independence, they started saying all the convicts to Australia. So I had a little bit of understanding and affinity with them. There's a great oral tradition in the southern part of the United States. It's very funny. It's a very agrarian part of the United States. It's behind and traditionally, it's been behind economically and educationally. So this hell, a lot of people couldn't read. So there was a great oral tradition of humour in the United States. So I found a lot of similarities with Australian slang and how just they were so willing just to take the piss out of anything that thought it was important. So for a thousand reasons, it remains my favourite Olympic Games, and it's because of the people. That's why and how you remember Olympic Games in my experience. It's the people themselves. And believe me, SoCog had an incredibly hard time with the media leading up to the Games. You know what the Australian media is like. I mean, it's full contact sport, and they were beaten up months and months and months and years. And then those Games happen, and as I told you, this pixie desk comes over the city. Cabbies are suddenly nice as they can be. People on the street. Believe me, I've been in bars in Sydney when I open my mouth and they hear my accent. Sometimes that's not a positive. I'll just put it that way. And sometimes you feel it. And it's uncomfortable sometimes. But all that went away, you know, at least for 17 days. So the Aussies did a brilliant job. It's a great sporting nation, which is a cliché. Punch above their own weight, cliché. But I love your country, and I love being there. And I'm often asked by a lot of people, you've been all over the world, you lived all over the world. If you had to move somewhere tomorrow, where would you go with the least complaint? And I always say Australia. If somebody said you got to move to Sydney tomorrow, I'd go on the second.
BEN WATERWORTH: Love it. So I can imagine you're booking your flights to Brisbane basically for 11 years time. You're on that plane ready to go.
TERRENCE BURNS: Oh, you know, if they stayed wheelchairs, I'll be too damn old by then.
BEN WATERWORTH: It'll help. It's actually interesting hearing you sort of explain that sort of the connection with the South. I've been to Atlanta a few times, and I love it there. I've always enjoyed my experiences in Georgia.
TERRENCE BURNS: Southern Americans are very different from, like, LA. Here's how I tell you. Because I've worked and lived in, not lived, but worked a lot in New York, worked a lot, obviously Atlanta and LA. When you go to New York, nobody gives a damn about your story. When you go to LA, all they want to do is tell you their story. And if you go down south, they'll sit down with you for hours and say, hon, son, tell me about yourself. Who are you people? Where are you from? Tell me your story. That's a real difference. It's a real geographical difference. The south has its own challenges that we're seeing manifest now even in the COVID and political situations, which are challenging. But the people themselves are slower, more hospitable, more real, more warm. And I think anywhere I've ever been in the world, especially Europe, the further south you go in the country, the more the people are like that to me. That's why I love working in Mediterranean cultures. Although I did work for Stockholm 2026, and I must say love those people extraordinarily. Really, really fun and rewarding few months that I spent in Stockholm. I was surprised, to be honest with you. I expected something different, which shows you that you can't judge people. But the south, yeah, it's interesting you say that. I felt a great affinity to Australian humour, and we're kind of the people that Britain didn't want either, to be honest with you. We're just, we are.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yep, yep.
TERRENCE BURNS: We're the outcasts.
BEN WATERWORTH: The south part in Australia, very true. Further south, come down to Tasmania, the further you go, we're our own unique people down here too. So, you know.
TERRENCE BURNS: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, it's very fascinating. Terrence, before we let you go, plug what you're up to now. People can check out sort of your company's website, anything you want to sort of, you know, put out there. I mean, you don't need any help to promote what you do. That's your job. And you're in a little kind of podcast right now. It's not going to help you at all. But like for people who maybe want to sort of see more about you and kind of learn about what you do or where can people check you out?
TERRENCE BURNS: Well, you know, my company is T. Burns Sports, tburnsports.com. I would go to the section that says what we say. I'm not a prolific writer, but I like to write. I get paid to write. But I do a lot of op-ed writing for things like sport business. So you'll find a lot of drivel in there that I've come up with. I think that the op-ed, I'm 63 years old. I've been doing this for a long time. I know how to do what I know how to do better than I've ever known how to do it. But I'm also a 63-year-old white male in the world today. That's not exactly a calling card. But I've spent almost 30 years going all over the world making a living in the Olympics. And the interesting thing for me is I look out over the next decade here in North America. I have a tagline. I use the decade of global sport in North America. World Cup's here in 26. LA's 28. Not inconceivable that Vancouver and or doubtful, but Salt Lake or some combination thereof. If they were smart, they'd do it together. Might be in 2030. So I don't... And I told you I've kind of changed gears on bidding anyway. The Doha Bid is the last big one I worked on six or seven months ago. And that was kind of like a triage, emergency room crisis last four weeks, changing everything. The bidding process in the world has changed. You know, I hope to work on a 2030 World Cup bid. I think I will. But my opportunity and what I know really how to do is from the sponsorship world. And with these great events coming to the States and Canada, Mexico, there are going to be a myriad of brands that need good advice, not maybe on how to be a sponsor, but how to have a strategy within this dynamic. And my point is not ambush marketing, but I think any consumer-facing brand is going to have to have a football strategy or an Olympic sports strategy around those events. And I can help those people do that in legitimate ways that don't detract from real sponsors and or what those organising committees are trying to do, but do it in ways that support athletes at various levels. And then also working with sponsors. Allianz is a client of mine. They're a relatively new IOC top partner. We've been working for them for about two years, and it's been really rewarding. I like working with new sponsors because they're not really constrained by being jaded or being cynical or what's been done in the past. They typically are very open to new ideas and new challenges. So that's what I want to do for the next few years, is focus on helping the World Cup and LA be as successful as they can be by working on the brand side with as many sponsors as I can.
BEN WATERWORTH: Well, I'll tell you one thing, a random fact that listeners of the show will know. I, back in the day, started a bit of a joke-mock bit on a former radio show of mine for Hobart hosted Olympics. It went way too far. So if all of a sudden this kind of resurfaces itself somewhere out of nowhere, that you'll be the first person I call in if all of a sudden I'm like, hey, bugger it, let's Hobart 2036, you know, back-to-back games in Australia. Let's do it.
TERRENCE BURNS: Stranger things have happened then.
BEN WATERWORTH: Yeah, well, this would be the strangest thing probably on planet Earth if that ever came down here. Terrence, it has seriously been an absolutely fascinating and interesting chat to learn sort of more about the marketing side of the Olympics, the marketing side of bids and everything else in between. And really have thoroughly enjoyed talking to you on the show today. And we're going to keep an eye out for all the great things that you're going to do in the future and how great these games that you've already worked on are going to turn out. Bring on bring on LA, bring on 2026 as well for the World Cup.
TERRENCE BURNS: Looking forward to it, Ben. And good luck down there and enjoy the lead up to Brisbane. It'll be the ride of your life. Get involved with it because the Olympics are a force for good. I believe it with all my heart or I wouldn't be doing this every single day.
BEN WATERWORTH: Massive, massive thanks to Terrence there. As I said at the top of the interview, such a fascinating chat, insight into just everything to do with the Olympic marketing side of things. And who would have ever thought that you were going to hear an interview on this show that involved a bunch of Russians leaving to go see Vladimir Putin and then paying a man in $40,000 in cash? That is an insane story, an absolutely insane story. And I can officially say now that my Kevin Bacon number to Vladimir Putin is one. I have a simple step to Mr. Vladimir Putin. So there's something that I never thought I would achieve on this show, and I have just managed to do that. So a big thanks to Terrence. Thoroughly fascinating chat there. We have so many more thoroughly fascinating chats to come your way. We've got some great athletes. We've got some great behind the scenes people still to come on Off The Podium as we bring you a myriad of great episodes and interviews in the lead up to Beijing and of course, not only just winter athletes, we've got plenty more summer athletes to come from Tokyo and previous games and other games and events and everything else. We've got so much coming out right now that I don't even know where to begin. So you don't want to miss an episode and you don't have to miss an episode because you can subscribe to the show. Go to all the good podcast platforms, search Off The Podium, hit the subscribe button, and while you're there, leave some feedback and a rating, we'd love to hear what you think of the show. And of course, on social media, Off The Podium, search for it on all those different platforms there. And you can stay up to date with everything that we are posting, and never miss a thing. We love hearing from all of you. It's great all the feedback we're getting for these interviews. And as I said, we have plenty more to come. We are keeping you very, very busy here at the Off The Podium office. And we are going to continue to bring you some great content. Big thanks again to Terrence. Big thanks to you for listening. My name is Ben. This has been Off The Podium, and we will speak to you next time. Good night.
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