Munich Olympic Park CEO Schöne: European Championships ‘biggest multi-sports event in Germany since 1972 Olympics’
As CEO of Munich’s Olympic Park, a legacy of the Munich 1972 Olympic Games and now the location for the European Championships Munich 2022, Marion Schoene explains how the Bavarian capital plans to take over the baton from the inaugural edition in Glasgow and Berlin in 2018.
There’s a simple answer to the question of why Munich and its Olympic Park wanted to host the second edition of the European Championships, scheduled for 11 to 21 August 2022.
“It’s because we have our 50th anniversary [of the Munich 1972 Olympic Games] in 2022, and we were looking for a sport highlight for our golden jubilee,” explains Schoene. “We were looking for a multi-sport event with Olympic sports, and we had been in contact with ECM [European Championships Management) since 2014.
“When I came to my new position as CEO of the Olympic Park in 2017, I continued the talks with ECM. We had been looking for a very good sporting event for our 50th anniversary – and we have found one!”
Unusually, for a major multi-sports event, Munich 2022 has met with no significant opposition from local people protesting that the money required to stage the event could be better spent on schools or hospitals. Perhaps, Schoene suggests, this is because the construction of the concept including the stakeholders behind it has not built up an adverse image in the eyes of some people.
“Everyone knows that we are not a white elephant…”
Moreover, she adds, “Our image, here in the Olympic Park is very good. We have been running our venues since 1972, and we have more than 4 million visitors a year, so everyone knows that we are not a white elephant.”
The European Championships Munich 2022 will be the biggest sports event in Germany since the 1972 Olympics, featuring the European Championships of nine Olympic sports: athletics, beach volleyball, canoe sprint, cycling, gymnastics, rowing, sport climbing, table tennis, and triathlon.
The 850,000-square-metre Olympic Park will be at the heart of the event, but the entire city will participate in the golden jubilee celebrations, with exhibitions and events taking place in public spaces and online, celebrating sport, culture, design, and architecture, under the heading: ‘Munich on a Path to the Future 1972–2022–2072.’
The Munich 1972 Olympics are, of course, remembered by many around the world for the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and a German policeman by Palestinian terrorists, and the European Championships will acknowledge and commemorate this tragedy, also through events including a minute of silence during the opening ceremony of the Festival of the Games, Sports and the Arts on 1 July, and also commemorative events throughout the year, with one month being dedicated to each of the victims.
However, the 1972 Olympics are also remembered as the moment that helped Germany forge a new image as a modern, democratic country, while Munich itself became recognised as a major international city.
This is the starting point for the vision on which the European Championships will be built, says Schoene: a vision of “an inspiring and lasting legacy for all participants: for the city of Munich, the state of Bavaria, the federal government and also for future sporting events in Germany.”
Balancing demands
Hosting nine European Championships simultaneously is not simple, involving balancing the (sometimes competing) demands of a wide range of stakeholders, including: the international federations of the nine sports; the city, state, and federal governments (which are financing the event); the European Broadcasting Union’s free-to-air public-service broadcast members, and European Championships Management itself.
“It was a challenge, and it is still a challenge,” says Schoene. “On the sports side, we have one common goal: we want to stage successful European Championships. We want to put sport and the athletes on stage and to celebrate a really great multi-sports event.
“But we have nine federations, and ECM and the EBU, and you can imagine that everyone has their own goals and their own benefits in mind, and that’s the challenge: to bring all stakeholders together and motivate them that this is really a task of team spirit.
“We all have to work together and think not only of our own benefits…”
“I think we should remember the values of sport: respect, fairness, and team spirit. We all have to work together and think not only of our own benefits!”
So how does Schoene balance those competing demands, as she seeks to build a working consensus? This is where an immovable deadline can sometimes be a useful ally.
“You have to be transparent and very communicative when you are working together,” she says. “We launched nearly 50 Europe-wide tenders, and this is very much a question of bureaucracy. For me, it’s like a culture clash. On the one hand you have civil servants who are having to look at their guidelines and saying, ‘You can’t do that’, and we say, ‘But we have to do it. The event starts on 11 August, and we can’t postpone it!’”
Raising the money
It's no surprise to hear that raising the money to stage the European Championships from the city, state and federal governments took delicate negotiation and persuasion (initial talks with ECM about hosting the event began as far back as 2014). However, the first breakthrough came when the mayor of Munich agreed to provide one-third of the funding, on condition that the state and federal governments would provide the remaining two-thirds.
“The budget is around €130 million ($136 million),” says Schoene, “and we expect revenues of round about €30 million, so we needed €100 million. I got in contact with the public authorities from the government, from the state of Bavaria and from the city of Munich, and I spoke first to my Lord Mayor and I tried to convince him that this event is worth to be financed.
At first, he was shocked by the amount but eventually the mayor relented, giving his word that the city would pay its share, if the government and state did likewise.
Initially, the federal government wanted Schoene to wait until a national strategy for hosting major sports events was ready in 2024, but once again she was able to use the immovable deadline of the European Championships to her advantage, saying: “I’m sorry but we can’t wait. In 2024 the golden jubilee of the Munich 1972 Olympics will already be over!”
In the meantime, however, the project received “really good support from the state of Bavaria, especially from the then Minister of the Interior, who is a sports fan. They became our biggest supporter.”
It was then that politics intervened, to Schoene’s advantage, because the Minister of the Interior was from the same political party as the ruling government party (at this time), the Christian Social Union, and was able to win the government round.
“Then we had support from the government,” says Schoene.
The city, of course, stands to benefit from hosting the event, with the local economic department having calculated that the total economic impact on Munich will amount to €122 million, “based on the number of visitors and how many will stay in the city.”
All of the venues, including the iconic Olympic Stadium, with its distinctive tensile roof designed by architect Gunther Behnisch and engineer Frei Otto, evoking the outline of the nearby Alps, already exist, with only minor renovation work required to bring them up to the standard required to host the European Championships.
Those renovations, including a new running track and upgrading the floodlights in the Olympic Stadium, plus work on the rowing course, were paid for by the city of Munich as part of a renovation plan for the stadium, which will start after the European Championships.
“The work is already done, on time, and on budget…”
“The work is already done, on time, and on budget,” says Schoene. “But all of the works, except the track, would have been done without the European Championships, because we needed the renovations.”
Preparations for hosting the event have, of course, been severely impacted by the various lockdowns associated with Covid. Restrictions in Germany were only finally lifted on 20 March this year, meaning, Schoene has calculated, that 80 per cent of the work required to host the championships has taken place during the pandemic.
This of course had an effect on ticket sales, which were launched one year later than planned in autumn 2021, and were then hit by yet another partial lockdown. “We couldn’t start ticket sales when no one knew if we could really stage the event with spectators. So, we had to wait. We started the promotion campaign on 3 May, so we had to start very, very late.”
Consequently, Munich 2022 has entered into co-operation agreements to promote the event with a range of institutions and media, from the local airport to newspapers, TV and radio stations and newspapers, and has now announced its first sold-out events: the finals of the men’s and women’s beach volleyball. “I am really optimistic that in the end we will have sold-out stadiums and venues,” Schoene says.
Rich heritage
The Olympic Stadium was the home of Munich’s two professional soccer teams, Bayern and 1860 Munich, until 2006, when they moved into the city’s newly-built Allianz Arena, but the Olympic Park has continued its rich heritage of hosting major sporting events, which have included matches of soccer’s 1974 World Cup and 1988 European Championships, along with countless other events, from DTM touring car races to the handball World Championships in 2019. In 2024, it will host Munich’s fan zone for the UEFA European Championships.
Schoene’s background was working for the city of Munich, and as such she has had a long association with the Olympic Park, whose operating company is 100-per-cent owned by the city.
“I’m not a child of the sports business,” she says. “Amateur sport is a big part of my life – running, mountain biking, yoga, tennis, basketball… I love sport, but it is only since 2010, when I started working in the Olympic Park, that I am involved in professional sports events.
“My task is to bring the Park into the future…”
Now, Schoene says, “My task is to bring the Park into the future. We are a protected landmark, but you also have to look into the future: how can you match the needs of the people? One of my goals was to bring more sport back into the Park. Football moved out, so we also have an ice hockey team playing here – that’s great – but we don’t have another home team.”
What has Munich 2022 learned from the success of the inaugural European Championships in Berlin and Glasgow in 2018, and how will the 2022 edition compare with that event?
First of all, Schoene recalls, the 2018 edition was divided between two cities in two countries, with athletics taking place in Berlin and the other sports in Glasgow, “so now we are happy to host all nine Olympic sports here in Munich.
“What we learned from Glasgow, and we have statistics that show this, is that it’s better for all sports and for all federations to be part of a multi-sports event, compared with a standalone event. You get more viewers on TV [more than 40 EBU Members have signed up to broadcast Munich 2022], and you get more spectators on site because it’s more interesting for the fans. It’s like a mini-Olympic Games because you have different sports in one place.”
Hosting a multi-sports event like the European Championships can also contribute to a city’s sporting and social goals, Schoene points out, arguing that the event was “a booster for Glasgow’s sports strategy. They have a high rate of obesity, so they wanted to host a big sports event to motivate people to take part in sport.
Sustainability
“For us it’s also important to be sustainable, to encourage people to take part in sport so that membership of sports clubs will rise. Our vision is to show that you can host a big multi-sports event in existing venues. Sustainability is not just a word for us. We want really to live it.”
A range of sustainability measures introduced by Munich 2022 includes climate-neutral transport, with free public transport within a radius of 50 kilometres for ticket holders.
“We will also have a big culture and music festival around the European Championships,” continues Schoene, “with free entry, so everyone can be part of it. We hope that someone who is in the festival will then buy a ticket for gymnastics or for athletics, but if you’re not involved in sport, you can also be part of it, because we are spending €100 million of taxpayers’ money, so we must also give something back.”
Finally, does Schoene have any advice for future hosts of the European Championships? “Yes,” she says, “I would give them the advice to communicate from the beginning with all stakeholders. Politicians could not have the awareness of what it means to host such a big event. At first they asked, ‘Why do you need 150 people to organise this event? Why do you need to start two years before?’ I said, ‘Okay, we are late. We should have started four years before the event!’
“Then you must bring all the federations together to create one spirit. Even athletics, which brings the most viewers, will attract more viewers if it’s in a multi-sports event. This must go into people’s minds. And then you can start work!”