LOS ANGELES >> On July 1, 2013, Eric Garcetti’s first day as Los Angeles’ new mayor, he signed a letter to the U.S. Olympic Committee asserting the city’s interest in hosting the 2024 Olympic Games.
Next to his signature, Garcetti scrawled “LA 2024” and drew the five Olympic rings.
With a few bold strokes, Garcetti offered a glimpse into the mindset of a man who has long viewed the destinies of the Olympic movement and Los Angeles as intertwined; a peek into the soul of a dreamer who grabbed hold of those rings as a teenager and never let go.
“I did that because the Olympic Games captured something in my heart when I was a 13-year-old boy,” Garcetti said of the letter. “A lot of people ask me why was that your immediate priority when you had so much to do as a mayor? But as anyone who was here for those 1984 Games knows, those 16 days transformed our city, touched each one of us. That legacy still resounds here strongly, every single day.”
On Wednesday in Lima, Peru, Garcetti will sign a contract with the International Olympic Committee and USOC in which Los Angeles will agree to host its third Olympic Games, in 2028, in a scene only Hollywood would dare dream up.
He’ll be joined in Lima by Los Angeles 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman, the sports, media and marketing entrepreneur, a boyhood Olympic torch-bearer who, like Garcetti, still carries the flame 33 years later.
“The 1984 Boys” is how IOC officials have taken to referring to Garcetti and Wasserman. It’s a term used fondly, and perhaps with a sense of hope.
Wasserman was 10 when he attended the 1984 Games with his grandfather, Lew Wasserman. At the time, the elder Wasserman was widely viewed as Hollywood’s ultimate power broker.
“I remember him telling me the most amazing thing (during the Games),” Wasserman said. “He said the Olympic Games aren’t just in the sports business, the Olympics are in the magic business. And he was right.”
Wasserman and Garcetti seemingly pulled the 2028 Games out of a hat, guiding a Los Angeles quest originally rejected by a USOC board of directors that favored an ill-conceived and ultimately doomed bid from Boston to host the 2024 games. And in September of 2015, after Boston dropped out, L.A. was still a longshot. But the L.A. bid outlasted rivals Rome, Hamburg and Budapest, the 1984 Boys’ passion and vision helping to convince the IOC to award two Games in the same year for the first time since 1921, with Paris receiving the 2024 Games.
Having extracted a record payout and unprecedented concessions from an IOC not known for its generosity, Garcetti and Wasserman are now tasked with transforming — even saving — an Olympic movement riddled by decades of corruption and financial scandal while struggling to connect with younger viewers.
“If you look at what happened to Rio and how much (those Olympics) set back financially that city, that state, that country, there’s a real need for a Garcetti and Wasserman to be there for the IOC,” said Rick Burton, a Syracuse sports management professor, referring to the fiscal crisis created in Brazil by the 2016 Olympic Games.
This isn’t the first time the IOC has turned to Los Angeles in a moment of crisis. Los Angeles was awarded the 1984 Games by default after Tehran, the only other candidate, dropped out of the bid process. The record-setting marketing success of the Los Angeles Games changed the way the world looked at the Olympics. Two years later six cities bid for the 1992 Summer Olympics eventually awarded to Barcelona.
But over the next three decades, city after city has been unable to replicate Peter Ueberroth’s formula of marketing and reliance on existing facilities. The multi-billion dollar cost of putting on the Games — and the IOC’s institutional arrogance and revolving door of corruption scandals — have scared away several high-profile cities in recent bid cycles.
Eight cities have withdrawn bids for the last two available Olympic Games. Four — Boston, Rome, Budapest and Hamburg — pulled out of the 2024 bidding, with Toronto officials deciding against even entering the race. The IOC’s decision to jointly award two Games was prompted in part by concerns that no other city would emerge as a viable candidate for 2028.
Simply keeping costs down by relying on Southern California’s world-class venues and approved infrastructure projects, however, will not be enough for Los Angeles to be another Games-changer for the Olympic movement in 2028.
“The needle is going to have to move 44 years after the 1984 Games,” said Alma College professor Derick L. Hulme, author of “The Political Olympics: Moscow, Afghanistan, and the 1980 U.S. Boycott.” “This is a brand new world and I think that this whole notion of trying to deliver a Games that will appeal to sort of the new generation that is looking for something that is delivered in a fundamentally different way and that will appeal to them is something that I think Los Angeles is uniquely prepared and able to deliver. Yeah, this is not going to be the Games of 1984 and it can’t be. It can’t be for L.A. and it can’t be for the IOC.”
The 1984 Boys have no intention of delivering their father’s — or grandfather’s — Olympics. Instead, Garcetti and Wasserman look to bring their 1984 values to a 21st century vision that capitalizes on a diverse, re-energized city, convinced that their and California’s place at the epicenter of the entertainment and technology industries, and at the intersection of Latin America and the Pacific Rim, will enable them to point the Olympic movement in a new direction.
“Like Casey I attended those (’84) Games as a boy. And they showed me a world I guess I had only imagined,” Garcetti said. “The whole world came to my city and my city came to the world.
The Olympics, Garcetti said, are “in our DNA, and the potential of hosting an Olympic and Paralympic Games again is a huge opportunity. But more importantly we know it’s a huge responsibility. Something bold and new. Not merely more of the same.
“We’re focused on creating a transformative Games.”
To do so, Wasserman and Garcetti plan to put the Olympics back in the magic business.
“Our goal is to re-imagine a Games model that will achieve three things: use high tech to redefine sustainability, use innovation to minimize risk and use creativity to engage the global youth audience,” Wasserman said.
A more immediate question is this: Can Wasserman and Garcetti keep Los Angeles engaged?
While 83 percent of local residents surveyed in a recent Loyola Marymount poll said they support the 2028 Games, can that support be maintained for more than a decade?
“How do you keep people fired up?” asked Syracuse University’s Burton, the USOC’s chief marketing officer for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. “You have to keep telling them that you’re putting on the best Olympics ever and you’re going to be putting on Olympic Games that I think are going to save the Olympic movement, that L.A. is going to be pivotal to the future of the Olympics.
“Do I believe in the Mayor and Casey to get it done? Absolutely, they have withstood an enormous set of challenges just to get to where they are. And I really hope they have a great celebration planned for (Wednesday’s vote) because to pick up the failure that was Boston, to pick up the dropped ball that the USOC handed them, to survive the early rounds (of the IOC bidding process), that the people of Los Angeles did not blow up the bid before we even got to the possibility of an agreement where Paris could have ’24 and LA would take ’28 with concessions, what they’ve done is really nothing short of amazing.”
Throughout the bid process people in and around the Olympic movement have been struck by how in sync Garcetti and Wasserman are. Perhaps only former London Mayor Boris Johnson and Sebastian Coe, chairman of the 2012 Olympic Games organizing committee, among recent Olympic bids match Wasserman and Garcetti for effectiveness and synchronicity of vision.
“One thing that maybe isn’t always the case is that these are two very young, talented, ambitious people and they get along very, very well,” said Scott Blackmun, chief executive of the USOC. “They complement each other well, they act as one and in every situation that I’ve ever seen them. ”
At the center of that bond is their 1984 experience.
“It’s part of the narrative for both of them,” Blackmun said. “They often do talk about how it shaped their lives, the events they attended. It’s kind of a part of the regular dialogue.”
Wasserman formed Wasserman Media Group in 1998. Now known simply as Wasserman, the company that bills itself as a “full service culture-centric agency built to serve the best talent, brands and properties in the world” is a global sports, entertainment, and marketing juggernaut. Clients include Miami Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck, an estimated 20 percent of all NBA players and more than 600 soccer players in 45 leagues. In 2012, the company represented the first pick in the drafts of the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA and Major League Soccer.
Wasserman has made a reported $2 billion in representing sports teams, companies and stadiums. The company negotiated Arsenal’s $180 million naming rights deal for Emirates Stadium and the reported $400 million MetLife paid for naming rights to the New Jersey stadium in the Meadowlands that is home to the NFL’s Jets and Giants.
“He built a full-service agency that has given him nearly a 360-degree view of how money flows through the sports industry and, if nothing else, how events like the Olympics and the World Cup are ultimately about the flow of funds,” said David Carter, executive director of USC’s Sports Business Institute. “On occasion, sports plays a big role. But these are massive international events anchored in nationality but funded by corporations, the media and others. And I think he understands that as well as anybody,”
The company also represents Spotify and Shaw Communications, the Canadian telecom company. Wasserman has created a Super Bowl fan festival for Verizon and made London’s Fashion Week more interactive on behalf of Vodafone.
“Casey really understands communications channels. He understands the importance of digital media,” Blackmun said.
Meanwhile Garcetti, a Rhodes scholar, is fluent in Spanish as well as English, and his passion for the Olympics and his city come through in either language in talks with IOC members.
“Every IOC member that I’ve encountered that’s met with the mayor has just raved about him,” said USOC chairman Larry Probst, an IOC member and former chairman and chief executive officer of Electronic Arts. “‘Wow, what an impressive guy.’ He’s just a rock star.”
Blackmun had a similar impression after meeting Garcetti shortly after he was elected. The new mayor showed him the collection of Olympic memorabilia he kept in his City Hall office.
“You could really sense the authenticity of his feeling about the Olympic Games and the impact that the ’84 Olympic Games had on him, how he perceives Los Angeles,” Blackmun said. “It was very genuine and authentic.”
Barry Sanders, chairman of the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games, the godfather of the region’s Olympic aspirations, approached candidate Garcetti, then a member of the City Council, to gauge his interest in a pursuit of a third Games for L.A. During a meeting in City Hall’s council chambers, Garcetti left the dais to join Sanders on a bench near the back of the room.
“He said ‘absolutely,’” Sanders recalled.
Shortly after writing to the USOC, Garcetti asked Wasserman to put together a list of potential bid chairmen. Wasserman had been an influential member of the Democratic Party power structure for more than a decade. Wasserman contributed $528,900 to Democratic candidates in federal races during the 2016 election cycle, according to federal campaign filings. Wasserman is the president and CEO of the Wasserman Foundation, a non-profit established in 1952 by his grandparents. Between 2011 and 2015, the Wasserman Foundation donated $2.1 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to Internal Revenue Service filings.
While Wasserman contributed to Wendy Greuel, Garcetti’s 2013 mayoral election opponent, Lynne Wasserman, Casey’s mother, was one of the earliest supporters of Garcetti’s political career more than a decade earlier, according to campaign records. The Wasserman Foundation contributed a combined $500,000 to the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles in 2014 and 2015, according to IRS filings.
When Garcetti forwarded Wasserman’s list of candidates to USOC headquarters in Colorado Springs, Probst and Blackmun found one obvious name missing — Wasserman.
A 17-year-old Wasserman had interned for Probst at EA. Blackmun, an attorney by trade, has known Wasserman since 2002 and at times represented him. The USOC officials urged Garcetti to offer the chairmanship to Wasserman, who rejected the mayor’s first approach before eventually agreeing.
The 1984 Boys were in business. Or were they?
Not everyone at the USOC shared the pair’s passion for the 1984 Games. A Los Angeles bid for the 2012 Games didn’t make it past the USOC’s first round of cuts. A bid for the 2016 Olympics lost to Chicago as the U.S. bid candidate in the finals of the USOC selection process. In both cases Los Angeles officials felt their bids were done in by a “been there, done that” attitude toward the city by USOC board members.
“I think Scott Blackmun has always respected that, but his colleagues at the USOC have often penalized us for that,” Sanders said. “They have felt and they would say openly when we bid for 2012, when we bid for 2016, ‘Don’t mention 1984. We have to look forward.’ And of course we did look forward. And, of course, in our 2024 bid, we made sure always to heed that advice; not because it was good advice in my opinion, I think the International Olympic Committee is very respectful of 1984. But we first had to get through the US Olympic Committee, where some of the people there did not like to hear about 1984.
“So it was a two-edged sword. You had to be able to remind them of the success of 1984 without seeming to lord over them or seem to be backward-looking.”
In 2015 the USOC board ignored the recommendation of Probst and Blackmun and chose Boston as the U.S. candidate for the 2024 Games. By that summer, the Boston bid had imploded.
“The bid book that (Boston) put forward wasn’t a bid book that was feasible,” Wasserman told the Los Angeles City Council shortly after the USOC withdrew the Boston bid. “… The truth is a new city with a plan that is not feasible is not a good city to bid with, and that quickly became evident.”
The late entry into the international stage of the bidding process only added to the obstacles facing a longshot Los Angeles bid. Paris was a heavy favorite, its status bolstered by the belief that a Eurocentric IOC would be unwilling to extend a 12-year gap between European Olympics, already the longest ever, for another four years.
Playing catch-up, Wasserman and Garcetti pulled off an early coup in convincing Goldman Sachs partner Gene Sykes to take over as the bid committee’s CEO. Sykes, who receives no salary, would play an invaluable role.
Wasserman also convinced Lakers owner Jeanie Buss, the Clippers, the David Geffen Foundation, the Dodgers, Live Nation, Westfield Property Management, Majestic Reality, the Fox Network and Universal City Studios to contribute $1 million each during the 2016 fiscal year to the bid’s $32.4 million war chest. The bid’s largest financial backer was the Wasserman Foundation, which contributed $3 million.
By early 2017 it was clear the IOC and Paris were taking Los Angeles seriously.
“The 1984 Boys bring a very powerful combination of intelligence, enthusiasm and energy to this cause,” said Patrick Baumann, chairman of the IOC host evaluation commission. “They channeled the excitement they felt when the Olympic Games last came to their city into an all-out effort to bring the Games back to this city.”
By March, IOC president Thomas Bach, seeing the likelihood of a Paris victory in the IOC election in Lima but viewing Los Angeles as too strong a bid to let slip away, began pushing the idea of a joint awarding in Peru. IOC members unanimously approved the plan in July, leaving Los Angeles, Paris and the IOC to sort out which city would host in 2024 and which in 2028.
The July vote gave Los Angeles and the USOC unprecedented leverage, which they used to secure a record-setting deal in agreeing to host the 2028 Games.
“We lost all the battles but won the war,” Sanders said. “If (2024) would have gone to a vote we would have been surprised if we won.”
Under the terms of the Host City Contract, LA 2028 will receive at least $2 billion from the IOC, up from $1.7 billion the city would have been awarded for hosting the 2024 Games. LA 2028 also will receive the IOC’s 20 percent share of the 2028 Games surplus. With the deal, LA 2028 will receive 80 percent of those Olympics’ surplus. LA 2028 projected a $166.1 million surplus in 2015 documents, an estimate considered conservative by several longtime Olympic bid analysts.
The IOC also agreed to provide LA 2028 with a $180 million advance, the first time the IOC has provided a host city an advance. LA 2028 will use as much as $160 million to fund youth sports programs through Los Angeles Parks and Recreation starting next year.
The IOC also agreed to concessions that will result in $67 million in applied cost savings, and $39 million in in-kind services.
It is still days until Garcetti sits down in Lima, Wasserman near his side, to sign another Olympic promise. But they’ve already changed the Games model. Video screens, it turns out, aren’t the only place you can capture the next generation’s attention.
“The deal that L.A. folks negotiated with the IOC was … speaking to that need in the sense that you had up-front money to engage youth in a way that’s never been done before,” Hulme said. “Traditionally the payoff from the Games theoretically was supposed to be after the fact. This is really saying, ‘No, we’re going to use this money to cultivate youth in a very intentional way.’ The deal really reflects this new mindset and approach.”
Garcetti, especially, pushed the youth sports funding idea. In his sales pitch to the IOC, he frequently refers to tennis champions Venus and Serena Williams, products of similar programs funded by the LA ’84 Foundation, the non-profit created by the surplus from the 1984 Games. Venus and Serena, Garcetti said, are part of those Games’ legacy.
But so are two other whiz kids shaped by the 1984 Games, now convinced they are on the brink of leading the Olympic movement toward another golden summer, still guided by the words of a wise, old man.
The Olympics are in the magic business.
“And interesting enough,” Lew Wasserman’s grandson beamed more than 30 years later, “so is Los Angeles.”
