中英双语 | 120多年过去了，新的奥运商业模式出现了吗？
虽然国际奥委会一直着力鼓吹奥运会主办城市的经济遗产，然而举办一项重大活动所面临的巨大的运营挑战会引起巨大的后勤、安全和经济压力。为了寻找改善未来奥运会的想法，我采访了克里斯·邓普西（Chris Dempsey）。他是拒绝波士顿举办2024年夏季运动会的创始成员之一。这位前贝恩公司顾问认为经常性的费用超支和场地封存强调了改变奥运会商业模式的需要。
While the International Olympic Committee touts host cities’ economic legacy, the immense operational challenge of running a mega event creates intense logistical, security, and financial pressures. For ideas on how to improve future Olympics, I spoke with Chris Dempsey, a founding member of the group that defeated Boston’s bid for the 2024 Summer Games. The former Bain & Company consultant argues that recurring cost overruns and mothballed venues highlight the need for the Olympics to change its business model.
HBR：19世纪末，法国人皮埃尔·德·顾拜旦被希腊考古出来的古迹迷住，有了唤醒古代奥林匹亚比赛精神并把它带入现代的想法。因此，第一届奥运会1896年在希腊举行。当时顾拜旦的商业模式是什么？
HBR: In the late 1800s the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin was enthralled by the archaeological excavations at Olympia in Greece. He gets the idea to revive the spirit of those ancient competitions and bring them to the modern age. The first modern Olympics takes place in Greece in 1896. What was Coubertin’s business model?
邓普西：它的商业模式是实际上是建立在19世纪的另一项发明——世博会的基础上的。这个想法是如果想让一大批量的人都能够参与这些活动，确实需要将他们从不同城市和大陆聚集起来。如果在同一地点，那么绝大多数人可能需要花费许多星期乘船到达。所以皮埃尔.德.顾拜旦认为奥运会应该像世博会一样来回更换场地。
Dempsey: His business model was really based on that of the World’s Fair, another 19th-century invention. The idea was, for a wide range of people to experience these events, you really did have to move them around different cities and different continents. If you have them in one place year after year, that requires potentially many weeks of travel by boat for most people. So Pierre de Coubertin said the Olympics should move around, just like the World’s Fair.
他开创了一项运动并且帮助创建了如今价值数十亿美元的重大活动和一个难以置信的国际品牌。商业模式在这样的成功中扮演了什么角色？
He started a movement and helped create what’s now a multibillion-dollar mega event and an incredible international brand. How responsible was the business model for that success?
我们的确应该赞扬顾拜旦的远见卓识和成就。但即使是在第一届奥运会中你就能看到和今天一样费用超支和建造过多的问题。希腊国王要求顾拜旦在雅典每4年举办一次奥运会，他们已经建设了基础设施。但是顾拜旦致力循环模式。最终这项运动成为各个城市开始争夺的目标，他们都迫切地想借此机会向其他国家展示和炫耀自己可以举行如此大规模的国际赛事。
You have to give Pierre de Coubertin credit for the boldness of his vision and for what he was able to achieve. But even in the very first Olympics you saw the same sorts of cost overruns and overbuilding that you see today.The king of Greece asked Pierre de Coubertin to hold them in Athens every four years. They’d already built the infrastructure. But Coubertin was committed to the rotation model. Eventually the Games became something that cities started to compete for. They really wanted the opportunity to show off to the rest of the world and demonstrate that they, too, could host such a large-scale international event.
从许多方面来看这都是一种授权商业模式。国际奥委会是一个相对而言小的组织，实际上它所做的就是把权利出售给不同的组织，包括举办权、转播权和赞助权。这个模式要想成功，上述每一个领域都要有需求。赞助和转播方面的需求一直强劲，但主办城市却对是否值得举办一届奥运会有许多问题。
The business model is, in many ways, a franchise model. The International Olympic Committee is a relatively small organization. What it does, effectively, is sell the rights to various parties: the rights to host, to broadcast, and to sponsor the Games. For that model to be successful, it needs to have demand in each of those areas. There’s continued strong demand on the sponsorship side and on the television side. You’re seeing questions from the host city side about whether it’s really worth it.
2014年你合作创立了“拒绝波士顿奥运”团体来阻止波士顿竞标举办2024年夏季奥运会。一年内，随着公众支持不断削弱，支持者最终撤销了他们的竞标。美国奥委会选择洛杉矶作为奥运会的竞选城市。你在阻止波士顿竞标时最有力的观点是什么？
In 2014 you cofounded No Boston Olympics to fight Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Games. Within a year, as public support kept eroding, supporters withdrew their bid. The United States Olympic Committee made Los Angeles the country’s candidate host city instead. What was your strongest argument in defeating the Boston bid?
我们最重要的观点是围绕国际奥委会对纳税人的担保要求。国际奥委会要求和主办城市以及纳税人签一个合同以保证他们会对费用超支负责。当国际奥委会自己无法为奥运会买单时，设计这样的激励很难让他们能够选择到一个从财政、环境以及社会责任方面都匹配的计划。我认为波士顿人看到了，举办奥运会成本和风险远超过它带来的收益。
The most important argument on our side was around the IOC’s requirement of a taxpayer guarantee. The IOC requires a signed contract that makes the host city and its taxpayers responsible for cost overruns. The incentives just are not aligned for the IOC to choose a fiscally, environmentally, and socially responsible plan when it’s not picking up the tab. I think Bostonians saw that the costs and the risks far outweighed the benefits.
你认为奥运会的商业模式已经过时了，为什么？
You believe that the Olympic business model is outdated. How so?
顾拜旦在第一次举办1896年奥运会时，他还看不到一个有电视、网络、洲际航空旅行的世界。技术的便利缩小了世界，无论是亲临现场还是在自家客厅观看奥运比赛都非常方便。今天，你绝对不会像顾拜旦在1896年那样举办奥运会。但我们紧紧还抓着19世纪的模式，对世界的快速发展置之不理。
When Coubertin launched the Games in 1896, he could not have conceived of a world with television, the internet, and intercontinental air travel. All of these things have shrunk our world and made it so much easier to experience the Olympics, in person or in your living room. In today’s world you’d never start the Olympics the way Coubertin did in 1896. We’ve clung to that 19th-century model while the world has passed it by.
令人遗憾的是，主办城市的居民负担了这些成本，而不是国际奥委会。这就是我们看到里约出现这么多问题的原因。那里的人知道这是把大量资源用在错误的地方上。
Sadly, the people who endure the costs of that decision aren’t the IOC — they’re the residents of the host city. That’s the reason we’re seeing so many issues with Rio. People there understand it’s an example of massive resources going to the wrong things.
你读过哈佛商学院，还是贝恩咨询公司的前顾问。如果国际奥委会雇你为奥运会想出一个新的商业模式，你会怎么做？
You went to Harvard Business School. You’re a former consultant at Bain & Company. Put on your consultant hat. If the International Olympic Committee hired you to come up with a new business model for the Olympics, what would you tell them?
国际奥委会应该找一个永久性的地点或者小数量的半永久性的地点来举办夏季和冬季奥运会。这样做仍然能保证国际奥委会获得和今天同样多的收入，但是举办城市会以一个远低于现在的成本来举办。事实上，这一改变还可以加强奥运会品牌，并且帮助消除许多我们已经听到过的里约以及索契的负面消息。
The IOC should find a permanent location or maybe a small number of semipermanent locations to host the Summer and Winter Games. Doing so would still allow the IOC to generate as much revenue as it does today, and at a far lower cost to the hosts. In fact, this change could strengthen the Olympic brand, and help forgo many of the negative stories we’ve heard in Rio and Sochi.
国际奥委会应该将商业模式从授权转变为自己经营。这对国际奥委会来说可能是一个大胆的飞跃，但这最终会给国际奥委会和相关利益者带来更多的收入。
The IOC would transform itself from a franchising business, going into business itself and taking responsibility for running the Games. This would be a bold leap for the IOC, one that ultimately would lead to a much better outcome not just for the IOC but also for its stakeholders.
一个永久的举办地的确会给你一个和现在同等规模的景观，所有的运动员在开幕式和闭幕式时都会聚集在同一个地方。但这会让我们丧失每一次在世界上不同城市闪耀的机会。
A permanent location would still give you that same scale of the spectacle. All the athletes would be in one place for the opening and closing ceremonies. But we would lose the ability to shine the limelight on a different world city each time.
国际奥委会做得最好的创造价值最多的，在于创造了全世界观众都乐意消费的真正引人注目的内容。我想不出一个你为什么不能在一个永久场地举办奥运会的理由。你可以在定期重复大型活动的基础上攀登经验曲线。这是现今奥林匹克模式的关键挑战：你要求你一个城市举办世界上最大的、最奢侈的、最复杂的活动，却只让它举办一次。
What the IOC does best and where it creates the most value is in creating really compelling content that people around the world want to consume. And I can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t be able to do that at a permanent location. You’d be able to climb the experience curve by repeating these activities on a regular basis. That’s one of the key challenges with the Olympic model today: You’re asking a city to host the world’s biggest, most extravagant, most complicated event, but to do it only once.
在地球另一边不同时区的转播利益相关者会怎么看？
What about those broadcast stakeholders in a time zone on the opposite side of the globe?
这可能是最棘手的问题。电视广播公司都想要尽可能多的在黄金时段直播现场赛事。你可能会有赢家和输家。但总体来说，转播利益相关者的总体收入总价值不一定会下降。
That is probably the trickiest issue. Television broadcasters want as many live events to occur in their primetime hours as possible. You would have winners and losers. As a whole, I don’t necessarily see the overall value from the broadcasting stakeholders declining.
你提到的另外一个模式呢？小数量的分散地区可能顾全不同时区广播媒体的利益。但是你会失去让所有运动员都在同一个地方开闭幕式的壮观景象。这还可能会分散运行和财务负担，但也会到处扩散奥运会的规模。
What about your other alternative model? A small number of distributed locations would perhaps help with the broadcast media stakeholders. But you’d lose that spectacle of having all the athletes in the same place. It would distribute a lot of the operational and the financial burden, but it would also diffuse much of the scale.
这一点其实在是否举办波士顿奥运会的时候讨论过很多。的确，将所有运动员和观众聚集在一个5平方英里的地方有一定的魔力效果。但另一方面，99.9%接触奥运会的人是在屏幕上看的，这些人分散在世界各地。不论这些运动员是否在同一个地方，他们都将会有相同的体验。我想你可以找到一些办法来维持这一魔力，同时不用花费把他们都聚集在一起的成本和缺点。
You heard a lot about that in the Olympic debate in Boston, that there’s a certain magic to bringing all those athletes and visitors together into a five square-mile area. On the other hand, 99.9% of people who engage with the Olympics do so on a screen and are distributed throughout the world. They’re going to have a similar experience, whether all those athletes are in one place or not. I think you can find ways to make it work and still retain that magic without all of the costs and drawbacks of having them all in one location.
2014年国际奥委会通过了一系列改革，被称为“奥林匹克2020计划”（Olympic Agenda 2020）。他们设置的目标是让奥运会更实用并且举办城市负担得起。在这一计划下，国际奥委会将会支持使用临时和现有场地，这样将成本降低。调整过后的这一商业模式会有用吗？
In 2014 the IOC passed a series of reforms called Olympic Agenda 2020. The stated goal is to make hosting the Olympics more practical and affordable for cities. Under this plan, the IOC would support the use of temporary and existing venues that would cost less. Can the existing business model work with some changes?
国际奥委会在这之前就宣称他们了解这些问题并且准备改革，但实际上它并没有表现出执行这些承诺的意愿。我认为这一商业模式再向前发展，最有可能是国际奥委会将继续做他们现在正在做的。它会继续希望每几年都会有一些城市为了在国际舞台上闪闪发光的机会而承担这个风险。事情会跌跌撞撞地向前发展，不幸的结果还是会由举办城市的居民和纳税者承担。我想我看到了改变即将来临，可是国际奥委会没有做任何事情给我信心觉得他们会真正改革。
The IOC has made the claim before that it understands the issue and that it’s going to reform, but it hasn’t actually demonstrated a willingness to stick to those promises. As I think about the business model going forward, the most likely outcome is that the IOC will continue to do what it’s doing. And it will continue to hope that some number of cities every few years will take that risk because of the glittery promise of being on the world stage. Things will continue to chug along, with unfortunate outcomes for residents and taxpayers in those host cities. I would love to say that I see a change on the way, but there’s nothing that the IOC has done to date that gives me any confidence that it’s truly reformed.
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