So what do you do when the crowds dissipate, the athletes take their medals home and you’re left with empty multi-million-dollar Olympic facilities?
To solve this dilemma, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee went back to school. That is, they commissioned a group of graduate students from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management to tackle the problem.
Their charge: figure out how to convert the world-class sports venues into profitable post-Olympic attractions.
The students, from the school’s field studies program, spent a semester analyzing how the Utah Olympic Park, the Utah Olympic Oval and Soldier Hollow venues could make money. Three teams of four to five students each began contacting former Winter Olympic host and training cities to determine how they had managed their Olympic venues after the games ended.
Team member Cody Strong contacted the venue managers in Lillehammer, Norway, site of the 1994 Olympics. Lillehammer venue managers were impressed Strong could write and speak Norwegian fluently. Like many of the students in the Marriott School, Strong had learned a foreign language while on a two-year mission for his church.
“They were so amazed, they invited me to Norway to see the facilities first hand,” Strong said.
After spending a few days in Norway, Strong returned to Utah with several revenue-generating ideas for the Utah Olympic Park, including an idea to boost summer revenues: wheeled bobsleds.
“The biggest problem facing most Winter Olympic venues is determining how to keep them profitable during the summer months,” Strong said. “Wheeled bobsleds have helped bridge the summer revenue gap in Lillehammer, and we knew it could do the same for the Utah Olympic Park.”
Teammates working with the Utah Olympic Park also recommended and helped design a central scheduling system for the venue’s facilities.
“The centralized system allows the facility to coordinate all of the activities on one master computer,” said Kurt Hawes, team member and BYU MBA student. “It will allow greater capacity for visitors to enjoy the facilities.”
The Utah Olympic Oval field studies team focused its research on the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, home of the United States Olympic Speedskating Team.
“We wanted to adapt their successful practices to the Oval in Salt Lake City,” said team member Mark Hancock.
The ideas came skating in, including ice-hockey leagues, learn-to-skate programs, equipment rental, concessions and advertising options for the venue.
“The students’ work helped make this facility a benefit to the community in more ways than one; this isn’t going to be just a skating rink,” said Nick J. Thometz, director of the Utah Olympic Oval. “It will house everything from hockey leagues to a Spirit of the Olympics store.”
The team also recommended the possible addition of health-care facilities.
“The Oval has a lot of office space that the media is using during the Olympics,” Hancock said. “Once the Games are over, a sports-medicine and rehabilitation clinic could move in and set up shop in the empty space. Oval patrons could have all of their fitness amenities under one roof.”
Soldier Hollow is located near the Utah Olympic Park and multiple ski resorts. It is also the only Olympic biathlon and cross-country skiing venue in the western United States. With the venue’s close access to skiing, restaurants and lodging and its Olympic prestige, the student team recommended the development of ski-vacation packages, much like those available at Lake Placid. Packages could be tailored to corporations, families or individuals and could include skiing, lodging, dining, transportation and evening activities.
“I can’t think of many projects that we undertook in the field studies program that offered as much value in terms of detailed suggestions and practical recommendations as the Olympic project,” said Bill Gibbons, former field studies program director.
The lure of the Olympics and opportunity to play a behind-the-scenes role was an added draw to the students.
“We all felt we were involved with something that would have a positive impact on the community and pay big dividends in our careers down the road,” said team member Hawes.
The Marriott School field studies program is designed to provide students with hands-on experiences to apply classroom skills in a dynamic business environment.
“Real-world experiences are hard to replicate in class,” Hawes said. “Assignments and projects suddenly take on a lot more meaning when you know you are going to present them to people who may actually use them.”
Real-world stress is another important aspect of the field studies program.
“Many students quickly discover how difficult the nature of their projects can be because of the ambiguity involved,” Gibbons said. “There’s no book to go to that will give you all the answers.”
Facing new problems, developing viable solutions and meeting deadlines are a few of the experiences students say they valued most in their field studies.
“It’s almost universal that, at the end of their two-year MBA program, students tell us the field studies project was the most valuable thing they did while in school,” Gibbons said.
The Marriott School’s field studies program tackles more than 25 projects each year. Participating organizations vary from local start-ups to major international corporations, including Intel, Novell, Zenith National Insurance Corporation and BMW Financials. Students have even participated in field-studies projects in China and Japan.
The Marriott School is located at Brigham Young University, the largest privately owned, church-sponsored university in the United States. The school has nationally and internationally ranked programs in accountancy, business management, information systems, organizational behavior and entrepreneurship. The mission of the Marriott School focuses on education, research, outreach and friendship to train men and women to become outstanding leaders in a global environment. Approximately 3,000 students are enrolled in the Marriott School’s graduate and undergraduate programs. PULL FACTS
- Students studied post-Olympics marketability of three Utah Olympic venues — the Utah Olympic Park, the Utah Olympic Oval and Soldier Hollow.
- Venue recommendations included purchasing wheeled bobsleds, forming hockey leagues, providing equipment rental, developing vacation packages and implementing centralized scheduling systems.
- One student, Cody Strong, a fluent Norwegian speaker, visited Olympic venues in Lillehammer to conduct research for the project.
- The Marriott School’s field studies program tackles more than 25 projects each year.
- Teams devote 400 to 500 hours to each project.
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Writer: S. Wade Hansen
