Project Development
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August 2011 Advantage West Midlands London 2012 Games General Business Briefing – August 2011 Key Statistics 2012 Olympic Games: 27 July – 12 August 2012 2012 Paralympic Games: 29 August - 9 September 2012 Torch Relay starts 18 May 2012 26 Olympic sports / 20 Paralympic sports 10,500 Olympic athletes and 4,200 Paralympic athletes 20,000 press and media 8 million tickets (Olympics) plus 2 million (Paralympics) Over 4 Billion television audience Key Organisations IOC: International Olympic Committee LOCOG: London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games ODA: Olympics Delivery Authority LDA: London Development Agency (until end March 2012) GLA: Greater London Authority OPLC: Olympic Park Legacy Company The information contained in this Business Briefing is for general information purposes only. Neither Commercial Doctor Ltd nor Business Link nor Advantage West Midlands warrant its accuracy or completeness and will not accept responsibility for any loss or damages whatsoever caused by reliance on this information. 2 2012 Business Update West Midlands News • Companies from the West Midlands have smashed through the £500 million barrier in the race to win contracts for the 2012 Olympics. Latest figures show firms from the region have amassed £515 million worth of deals to supply to the games – more than any other region outside the south east. A total of 303 West Midlands firms have won orders to supply London 2012 from 57 of the 59 parliamentary constituencies in the West Midlands. • This year's London 2012 Open Weekend was the biggest to date in the West Midlands, with 106,000 people attending events marking one year to go until the start of the Olympic and Paralympic Games - double the expected audience. 60 events took place around the West Midlands from 22-23rd July. The events included Jamaica Live! in central Birmingham, a festival celebrating the Jamaican team’s visit to the city in 2012; The Great Train Dance on the Severn Valley Railway and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Park, a free concert of orchestral music performed in Telford Town Park. • A flavour of Wenlock, the birthplace of the modern Olympic Games, can now be tasted across the globe following the launch of Wenlock Hampers. Wenlock Hampers offer a truly local food and drink experience with all products sourced from producers within a 26.2 mile radius - a marathon’s distance of Much Wenlock to celebrate the town’s historical links with the Olympic Games. Karen Davies, Chief Executive of HEART of ENGLAND fine foods, said: “We’re very excited to be officially launching Wenlock Hampers as we’ve already had national and international interest as we’re getting closer to the 2012 Games. Click Here for further details. • Construction work has been completed on Wolverhampton-based Carillion’s London 2012 International Broadcast Centre (IBC) - the fifth venue to be completed on the Olympic Park. Along with the Main Press Centre, the IBC will be a hub for around 20,000 broadcasters, photographers and journalists - bringing the London 2012 Games to an estimated four billion people worldwide. The venue was completed on time and within budget and was announced as the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) published their Annual Report and Accounts. 3 • The official London 2012 Teddy bear has been launched by Ironbridge-based Merrythought. The unique London 2012 teddy bears are entirely handmade within the original Shropshire Borough of Much Wenlock - believed to be the inspiration behind the modern Olympic Games - by what is the last toy factory of its kind still producing in Britain today. The London 2012 Olympic Games Commemorative Teddy Bear is currently available exclusively from www.london2012.com/shop and will be released by other quality retailers shortly. • If you are a company looking for investment of between £0.5m and £5m then the Connect Midlands Investment Showcase could be for you. The showcase gives Midlands based companies the opportunity to present their proposition to a room of investors. This year, for the first time, the showcase will take place in London, on 22nd November. For further details contact Richard Comer on 02476 323309 or at [email protected] • UK Athletics has confirmed it will move its national headquarters to Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium in October 2011. Around 80 staff from the sport’s governing body will relocate to the stadium’s new grandstand at Perry Park. UK Athletics’ current base is at Blythe Valley Business Park in Solihull. The move to a new suite of offices formed part of the business plan for the Alexander stadium’s £12.5 million development project. • The 125th Wenlock Olympian Games took place over the weekend of 9-10 July. Media interest in the event was huge, including TV crews from Tokyo TV and Reuters, reporters from The Independent, Le Figaro, Best Western Hotel magazine, Sunday Express magazine and many more. On Saturday Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State made a private visit hosted by Philip Dunne MP (Ludlow). TV personality Tony Robinson was also present on Sunday making a documentary for an Australian production company. • The prototype for the 2012 Olympic torch has visited Coventry city centre. Visitors to the Millennium Place torch relay roadshow were able to hold the 80cm tall perforated gold torch. Eight thousand Olympic torches will be manufactured by Premier Sheet Metal of Coventry, using an aluminium alloy normally used for aeroplanes and cars. London 2012 News • LOCOG has now awarded 430 contracts to a value of around £550 million. Over 50 percent of the contract winners are outside London and the South East. Another 4 £200 million worth of LOCOG tenders are in the market place currently. This leaves around £75 million to be let. Many supply-chain opportunities will also be available in the approach to the Games, a high proportion of which will be on CompeteFor. • Events have been held to mark the start of the 2012 Olympic Games in one year's time. London‘s Trafalgar Square was the venue for the formal invitation by IOC head Jacques Rogge, to the athletes of the world to compete at the 2012 Games. The event, in which the London 2012 medals were unveiled, was broadcast live by the BBC. Meanwhile, the Foreign Office organised a range of events at nearly 100 of its posts across the world to encourage visitors, businesses, students and sports people to get involved. • LOCOG has announced details of the Young Games Maker programme, a drive to find more than 2,000 young volunteers from around the UK to help out during next summer's Olympic and Paralympic Games. Around 250 teams of young people aged between 16 and 18 will join the adult Games Makers, making a total of up to 70,000 dedicated volunteers on hand to help stage London 2012. Click Here for details. • Future Olympic hosts London, Sochi and Rio have presented progress reports to the 123rd IOC Session in Durban, South Africa. The London 2012 preparations are in a “very good place,” according to LOCOG Chairman Sebastian Coe, as they approach one year to go before the start of the Games. Construction of venues is 88 per cent complete, allowing LOCOG to get their “London Prepares” testing programme under way in the best conditions possible. London is now literally “coming alive” with preparatory sports events. As LOCOG moves into the delivery phase, a major focus is on building the fan base for the Games. • Consumer spending will jump by £30 million a day during next summer's Olympics, according to research carried out for Visa Europe. Over the three weeks of the Games, visitors will spend an estimated £621 million, plus a further £129 million spent during the following Paralympics. Total consumer spending across the full seven weeks is predicted to rise by £750 million, an increase of 18.5 percent on normal summer spending levels and far more than for previous Olympics. • People who obtained tickets for the 2012 Olympics in the initial first round ballot have had an opportunity to buy seats for more events. Some 1.5 million tickets for football, 40,000 for volleyball and 8,000 for freestyle wrestling were available, and were sold on a first-come first-served basis in a process which finished on 17th July. Meanwhile, the director of London 2012 Coordination at the Greater London 5 Authority (GLE), Neale Coleman, has announced that tickets for most days at the London Live Sites will be issued on a first-come-first-serve basis. • LOCOG has appointed People 1st to develop its customer service training programme for London 2012. People1st's WorldHost training will be offered to tens of thousands of employees and contractors' staff who will be working at the Olympic and Paralympic venues. WorldHost has already been used at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, where it trained 39,000 volunteers and tourism staff last year, and has been developed for the UK by People 1st, with the support of VisitEngland. • On 13th September this year, the automatic doors at Westfield Stratford City will glide open and Stratford’s residents will find themselves living beside Europe’s largest shopping centre. The borough’s council officials are eager to promote the project’s long-term economic benefits: as a result of winning the Games up to £600 million has been invested in infrastructure, which in turn has enabled the first phase of the £1.45 billion complex to be developed seven years earlier than planned. It is expected the centre will create an extra 10,000 permanent jobs in the area, with 2,000 of those going to local, long-term unemployed people. Post-London 2012 News • The Olympic Park Legacy Company has announced the shortlist of organisations to operate both the Aquatics Centre and the Multi-Use Arena after the 2012 Games.