(ATR) Los Angeles 2024 chief executive officer Gene Sykes reveals to Around the Rings that the candidature has entered into a financial partnership with the National Football League’s Los Angeles Rams,
Close cooperation with the N.F.L. franchise should give the bid a boost, particularly in terms of use of the team’s future new stadium for ceremonies and possible events.
Sykes met with Around the Rings on the sidelines of this week’s Peace and Sport International Forum in Monaco to discuss the bid’s progress.
"The Los Angeles Rams have been great partners and supporters of the bid, along with every other sports team in the southern California area," Sykes tells ATR. "They’ve made an investment in our bid – we haven’t gone public with all of that, but I will say that much.
"We’ll be able to talk a lot more openly about that in the next couple of months," he said.
Los Angeles 2024, along with rival bids from Paris and Budapest must submit its third bid book to the IOC by the Feb. 3 deadline.
As part of the deal with the NFL to relocate to Los Angeles, an agreement to build a brand new stadium in Inglewood was reached. It is planned to have a seating capacity of 80,000, which could be expanded to 100,000, and is scheduled to open in August 2019. It seems logical that the new stadium complex would host ceremonies and competition in 2024, complimenting the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum where ceremonies and track and field took place during the 1984 Olympics.
"We haven’t talked about what we’re going to do with this, but we have some ideas that we will finalize over the next couple of months," Sykes says of possible use of the future stadium.
The L.A. 2024 Games concept is ‘L.A. 2024 is about what we have, not what we’re going to build'. The 300-acre football stadium complex nicknamed NFL Disney World, which would be financed independent of the bid, has an estimated cost of $2.6 billion. It is expected to be the world’s most expensive sports arena.
Sykes says the Rams – which are off to a 4-6 record this season in their return to California – are another good example of the city supporting professional sports, as they have also done with baseball’s Dodgers, basketball’s Lakers and Clippers and hockey’s Kings. This will likely be a talking point as bid leaders try and convince the IOC to vote in favor of bringing a third Summer Olympic Games to Los Angeles, following 1984 and 1932.
"The city is very excited to have the Rams come back – the attendance at the Rams home games at the Coliseum has been huge – they can fill the stadium," Sykes said. "The latent interest for football in Los Angeles is as deep as the NFL expected and it’s a good thing when a big city has a sports franchise that feels as if its part of the community.
"The stadium is a bonus and I think the NFL was wise to get them to make a big commitment to a big stadium that has the capacity of doing many things beyond football as well," Sykes said, hinting of an Olympic future for the new stadium.
"We’re excited to have both the Rams back and the Super Bowl in 2021."
L.A. bid leaders are optimistic that there will be equal enthusiasm should Los Angeles win the right to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024.
The IOC will select the 2024 host at the 130th IOC session in Lima, Peru on Sep. 13, 2017.
Written by Brian Pinelli in Monaco.
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