The following editorial from European Athletics CEO Christian Milz features in the December 2015 edition of Inside Track.
On behalf of European Athletics, I would like to wish a merry Christmas to the entire athletics family following what has been a very busy year for the organisation.
This year we enjoyed several major championships organised across Europe while also staging a successful European Athletics Congress, where our President Svein Arne Hansen was elected last April. We also had the pleasure of hosting all our Member Federations during the Lausanne 2015 Convention in October.
Our focus now fully shifts to the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam 2016 and beyond as we continue to prepare for future events and build our presence in the running movement.
I would like to congratulate the Berlin 2018 local organising committee, which in early November had its first official meeting ahead of the European Athletics Championships it will organise in just over two and a half years.
Berlin 2018 will be the “beacon” of the inaugural 'European Sports Championships' concept, with athletics, aquatics, cycling, golf, gymnastics, rowing and triathlon staging their individual European Championships together for the first time.
Make no mistake, the “European Sports Championships” is a big opportunity for European Athletics. This innovative new approach by the governing bodies brings the existing European Championships together from seven sports in a sustainable format once every four years in order to continue building their prestige, profile and media exposure.
This combined championships is what television is asking for: the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is the enthusiastic broadcast partner. There is a projected television audience of around 850 million and an even wider audience via multiple digital platforms. The concept is expected to generate more than 2,750 hours of programming across Europe’s biggest broadcasters.
The newly-formed 2018 European Sports Championships Board has recently made the important step of ratifying the organisational rules and decision-making processes, ensuring strong governance going forward. These rules include a veto clause in the event European Athletics is not in agreement with important decisions. To be clear: European Athletics will always keep full control of our television rights and marketing rights, and we will work closely with the European Sports Championships Management to control the identity of the European Athletics Championships. We will be in the driving seat throughout this project.
Our recently formed European Athletics Marketing Co. will be working on exploiting the marketing rights for Berlin 2018 among others rights. We have “kicked off” the company with its first Board meeting, and we will be working hard, under the leadership of Council member Libor Varhanik, to find the optimal solution for the marketing rights of the European Athletics Championships and European Athletics Indoor Championships. We will, however, look to offer some flexibility and room for movement when it comes to marketing rights for our other events. Our current planning sees us working through an intermediate period 2016-2019 where we position ourselves in the market and test the waters in certain areas, with a brand new sales concept to take to the market from 2020 onwards.
Meanwhile, our Event Bidding system is working very well with our new Evaluation Commission members. We have received a strong response to our annual Event Bidding questionnaire, with 73 declarations of interest from 26 Member Federations to organise our 19 sporting and non-sporting events through 2017-2022. The responses to the now-closed questionnaire saw at least three federations interested in organising each of European Athletics' major events, with all 19 sporting and non-sporting events having at least one potential bidder interested in hosting. A record number of 12 Member Federations remain interested in bidding for the 2022 European Athletics Championships!
Away from our competitions, we have seen some strong developments in our initiatives related to the running movement in Europe. With the support of our Member Federations, European Athletics has achieved an early milestone with over 100 road races registered and certified on our Quality and Safety Standards platform (www.european-running4all.org). The figures confirm the strong responses we have received from Member Federations and race organisers over the past months, and that they understand the benefits of a system to assess and publicise the quality of mass participation races across the continent. So far, nearly 30 different European countries have races certified on the platform – a fantastic collective effort!
We also saw great success in engaging with the running movement via the European Week of Sport (EWoS), which took place from 7 to 13 September, initiated by the European Commission with the aim of raising awareness about the values of sport and physical activity among Europeans. Working closely with the Commission in Brussels, European Athletics persuaded organisers of existing races across the continent to get on board and help promote the initiative. More than 120 road races signed up to the EWoS website to be a part of the week itself or to promote the event during a promotion period running from 14 to 30 September. About 300,000 runners took part in the registered races.