Background on PyeongChang Winter Olympics
The Winter Olympics at PyeongChang also known as the XXIII Olympic Winter Games was a multi-sport event that held between 9th and 25th February 2018 (Lindberg 2017). This was the first time that South Korea ever hosted Winter Olympics and considered to be the second Olympics in the country. In this regard, the purpose of this report is to evaluate the life cycle stages of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in order to perceive a clear understand regarding different aspects and short coming that the event had faced in its course. Furthermore, based on this understanding, the report also encapsulates a recommendation section that is entitled to mitigate the issues and drawbacks of PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
Formation stage
According to Kim, Choi and Kaplanidou (2015) it can be argued that before initiating the initial formation and preparation of the Winter Olympic the South Korean government established an efficient and detailed calculation of the budget that would be required for the organisation of the Winter Olympic. As per the report of 2016, the average expenses of the previous Olympic Games were cost $8.9 billion whereas the most expensive summer games were in London in 2012 with a huge estimation of $15 billion (Baade and Matheson 2016). Besides this, the most costly Winter Games was the Sochi Olympic in 2012 with an approximate estimation of $21.9 billion (Kim and Kim 2015). Putting an emphasis on those budget and expenses, the PyeongChang Olympic Committee started to estimate the probable cost for the 2018 Winter Games.
In this regard, only 10% of the entire revenue was levied from the broadcast agreements and the global sponsorship. However, the rests of the 90% expenses was carried out by the Olympic Committee and South Korean government with the purpose to develop the sports worldwide (Lee and Son 2016). It can be stated that the role of the national Olympic committee and the financial aid of the South Korean government was highly significant in order to cope with bulk of expenses regarding the PyeongChang Winter Olympic. Besides fixing the budget, there was a huge tension regarding the security issue of the players and participants because of continuous threat from the neighbouring North Korean government. As per the article of Cho, Min and Kim (2018) there were 17 cases where the South Korean immigration office deported people who were supposed to be a terrorist menace to the Olympic Games.
Growth stage
It can be asserted that the Winter Olympics is significantly smaller than the Summer Games. For an example, Lee (2016) articulated that in the Sochi Winter Olympic 2014 there were less than 3000 athletes in compare to the Rio Summer Olympic 2016 with a number of more than 11,000 athletes. Therefore, it is obvious that the magnitude of the summer Olympic will be absent in case of the PyeongChang Winter Olympic. The national Olympic committee put a great impression on developing not only the stadiums but also logo, mascot, torch and medals. In this regard, the temporary stadium was referred as one of the unique infrastructure. The short term or “pop-up” stadium at PyeongChang helped to cost down the maintenance of the stadium and in comparison to other important Olympic stadiums around the world, the PyeongChang stadium costs $75 million which was less expensive and strategic enough. Besides this, the unique mascot and the logo of the Winter Olympic games 2018 facilitated better and unique styles (Park et al. 2017).
Budget and Expenses of PyeongChang Winter Olympics
However, there are some previous issues that could create a threat for the Winter Olympics at PyeongChang. For an instance, the low sales of tickets was considered to be one of the major issue that the PyeongChang Winter Olympics had been faced. As per the research of Ahn (2018) it can be asserted that due to lack of interests among the people and poor marketing mechanism were contributed to the fall of the popularity of winter Olympics. In addition to this, the inefficiency and infrastructural malfunction would create grave problem.
Staging of the event
Before the inauguration of the Olympic event, the PyeongChang national Olympic committee had started to join in stakeholders meeting and analysed the progress so far. It was also done by the international Olympic committee to monitor and investigate the development and find out any problem or issues regarding the event management. In this regard, the member of the committee and the responsible people related to the PyeongChang Winter Olympic gathered at the Gangneung Olympic Park and discussed about the role of the national committee and the mode of promotion for the finale of the PyeongChang Winter Olympic (Lisson 2018). Moreover, the national Olympic committee started to sale tickets more than 5 months before so that international audiences could buy tickets and the distribution of tickets would equally be circulated around the world.
Despite of all those efforts, creating good and benevolent image was considered to be one of the major aspect that the authority could deal with. Due to lack of efforts and vision of enriching the image of the PyeongChang Olympic it became a threat to popularise and attract the international visitors so extensively. This was a great obstacle to the development of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics the national Olympic committee faced serious problem in this regard.
In this context, some necessary measures have been recommended in order to mitigate the issues effectively and efficiently. The recommendations are as follows,
Promotional measures are contributed enough to increase the sales of the tickets. There were more than 1.18 million seats were vacant due to the lack of promotional measures. According to Duguid (2019) promotional activities played a significant role for the big events in order to make it more efficient and attractive enough to maximise the visitors. In response to this, effective promotional mechanism can be shaped with the help of making better communication with the broadcasting teams and prepare a clear plan in order to make it a success. Incorporating the stakeholders is also identified as a strategic measure in this regard.
Security Measures for PyeongChang Winter Olympics
As per the investigation of theconversation.com (2018) it can be stated that infrastructural malfunction was a common feature in the big events like Olympics. For an instance, in case of the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympic the athletes were not satisfied with the facilities as a result of that it damaged the image of the Olympic committee. From that point of view, it can be argued that the role of the cutting edge technologies and well skilled labourers are so effective and bring efficacy into the entire process. As a matter of fact, it will usher the efficiency of the country and its ability to organise big events.
The big and international events have enough number of international visitors. Therefore, it is pertinent to set some security perimeter in order to ensure the safety and security of the people. In this context, confrontation between North Korea and South Korea could jeopardize the arrangement of the event (Farhan 2017). Therefore, seeking help from other countries and private security companies would be so helpful to ensure safety and security of the mass.
Conclusion
The above discussion was circled around the life cycle stages of PyeongChang Winter Olympic event. The report rightly pointed out the key stages from the inception to the completion of the arrangement of the winter Olympic 2018. However, there were some issues regarding in each stage that could create enough problem for the success of PyeongChang Winter Olympic. Henceforth, the report recommends some measure that can contribute to the resolving framework of those issues. Therefore, it can be concluded that the report is effective and relevant enough to understand different life cycle stages and problems regarding big events like the PyeongChang Olympic.
References
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