Upstart Out Games event has early edge in registering athletes
Montreal, Chicago battling for gay sports fans

SOURCE : Houston Voice — Window Media

Montreal, Chicago battling for gay sports fans
by Lou Chibbaro Jr.
15 July 2005

A breakaway organization promoting an international gay and lesbian sports competition in Montreal in July 2006 called Out Games has registered more athletes and teams than its rival Gay Games event, which is set to take place in Chicago two weeks earlier.

But supporters of both events say it's too soon to determine which one will draw the most participants and spectators as both sides wage an aggressive campaign to sign up paid registrants.

The two sides are pushing their campaigns through upscale Web sites accessible in several languages. Elected officials and business leaders in both cities have joined the gay organizers to help promote the two events in an unprecedented effort to lure millions of gay tourist dollars to their hometowns.

At first, many gay sports enthusiasts predicted the two competing events would lead to a financial disaster for both and would dilute and split apart what had become a unified quadrennial gay event. Now, some are wondering whether the competition has triggered an unprecedented professionalism and such an overwhelming desire to come out ahead of the other that both events might turn out better than past Gay Games -- both in attendance and the financial bottom line.

As of this week, officials with Out Games announced that 5,600 participants had registered and paid in full or in part to compete in the Montreal games, including at least 1,500 Americans. Gay Games officials said about 3,000 participants who paid their registration fees in full have signed up to participate in the Chicago events. Both sides said the participants who signed up come from more than 20 countries, with most expected to come from North America.

Each side predicts at least 12,000 participants will attend their respective events.

Competing for more than athletes
The two sides are also competing to line up gay choruses and bands from Europe and North America. In recent years, the Gay Games evolved into a cultural festival as well as an athletic event, with extravaganza performances by choruses, bands and top-name entertainers taking place at stadiums where the opening and closing ceremonies are held.

"We still don't know where most of our teams will go," said Brent Minor, president of Team D.C., an umbrella group that represents more than two-dozen D.C. area gay and lesbian sports teams and groups, ranging from soccer and golf to swimming and volleyball.

"Team D.C. voted to support our participants, whichever event they choose to attend," Minor said.

Minor said members of some of the D.C. teams, as well as teams in other cities, are taking a wait-and-see posture to determine which city will capture the top competition in a category of sporting event
-- such as soccer or swimming.

The San Francisco-based Federation of Gay Games, which was formed by the late gay Olympic athlete Tom Waddell in the 1980s, is credited with starting what has become known as an international gay and lesbian sports "movement." Waddell almost single-handedly put together the first Gay Games competition in San Francisco in 1982 following a legal ruling initiated by the International Olympics Committee that forced him to drop the name "Gay Olympics."

The gay international sporting competition continued every four years since that time under the Gay Games title, growing each year in numbers. The founding event in 1982 drew 1,350 gay and lesbian athletes mostly from North America and Europe, according to Roger Brigham, communications director for the Federation of Gay Games.

The number of participants jumped to 12,500 in New York City in 1994, climbed to a record 13,000 in Amsterdam in 1998 and dropped back to 11,000 in Sydney, Australia in 2002, Brigham said.

Shortly before the Sydney games were held, the FGG named Montreal the winner in a competition among gay sporting associations to sponsor the 2006 Gay Games. A short time later, the Montreal organizing committee, Montreal 2006, says it lined up generous sponsors from some of Canada's largest corporations and persuaded the governments of Montreal, Quebec, and the national Canadian government to sign on as "partners" to the event and to kick in $1 million each to help finance the games.

The committee called those developments historic, saying Canada's entire governmental establishment had endorsed and agreed to help subsidize an international gay sporting event.

What happened next takes on an entirely different perspective and interpretation among the Gay Games and Out Games leaders.

The Gay Games in Sydney, while hailed as a highly successful sports event, turned into a financial disaster, with millions of dollars in debt and gay and gay-friendly vendors left holding the bag with unpaid bills. Coming on the heels of similar financial problems with the previous two Gay Games in Amsterdam and New York, the FGG pushed through a series of rules changes that required the Montreal committee to turn over financial control of the event to the FGG. Up until that time, the committees for the host cities had full financial control over the events.

Among other things, the FGG wanted Montreal to scale back its initial budget from 24,000 participants to 12,000, saying a 24,000 turnout appeared unrealistic and could lead to financial problems similar to Sydney's. FGG officials also requested that Montreal not link its sporting events to a planned international gay rights conference and to Montreal's annual Gay Pride event known as Diversité. In addition, the FGG objected to the Montreal committee's plans to link the Game Games to various circuit parties that have been associated with Diversité.

"This just came out of the blue after we put together a detailed and what we thought was a highly successful business plan," said Mark Tewksbury, an Olympic athlete and one of the Canadians organizing the Montreal Games.

Tewksbury and other leaders of Montreal 2006 called the FGG rule changes unfair. They point out that nearly all of Montreal's plans for the 2006 Gay Games -- the projected 24,000 participants, the link to the Diversité Gay Pride festivities, and the international gay conference -- were submitted to the FGG as part of Montreal's bid for the games. No one raised objections to any of these proposals at that time, Tewksbury said.

Brigham, the communications director for FGG, said the organization's international governing body, which includes representatives from nations in Europe and North America, approved the rules changes after assessing the financial problems encountered by Gay Games committees in New York, Amsterdam and Sydney.

"The income projections have always been overblown," he said. "We are concerned about hurting local gay businesses," he said, noting that gay-owned businesses that have provided services to help put on the games often have been stiffed when the committees run out of money.

Brigham said FGG officials also decided -- based on what he said was consultation with gay sporting teams in North America and abroad -- that the Gay Games should stick to its original role as a sports event, with some performing arts and cultural activities like gay chorus and band performances. Linking the games with other events such as circuit parties, political conferences, and Pride events -- as proposed by Montreal -- would not be consistent with the Gay Games and its "mission" to promote the gay sports movement, Brigham said.

According to Brigham, the FGG would have approved a larger budget to accommodate more than 12,000 participants later in the process, if Montreal succeeded in signing on more participants.

Negotiations break down
Nearly two years of negotiations followed. Each side has disputed claims by the other over the reasons the negotiations ultimately broke down. In November 2003, Montreal 2006 stunned the gay sports establishment by saying it would hold its own international gay sports competition in Montreal on the dates initially designated for the Gay Games: July 29-Aug. 5, 2006.

The group announced later that it had formed a new entity - the Gay & Lesbian International Sports Association -- and would take bids for Out Games II in 2010.

In March 2004, the FGG named Chicago as the host city for the "official" 2006 Gay Games. A newly formed Chicago organizing committee, Chicago Games, Inc., has since formed and hired gay corporate executive and past Gay Games athlete Brian McGuinness as CEO of the new organization. McGuinness is a Chicago native who learned to speak French while serving for three years as finance director for an international media company based in Paris, the Chicago Games Web site says.

With Montreal working hard to attract European participation, Chicago Games has been touting McGuinness's international background and finance skills in what is shaping up as a heated public relations campaign between the two cities.

The Chicago mayor and the Illinois governor has each endorsed the Gay Games, and Chicago's business establishment and Chamber of Commerce are pulling out all the stops to promote the event, said Kevin Beyer, chair of the Chicago Games Marketing Committee.

Last year, GLISA hired Rachel Corbet as executive director. Corbet has extensive experience working with international sports events in Canada and Europe.

Corbet said she is hopeful that both events will be successful but predicted the Out Games would surpass the Gay Games in future years to become the main international gay sporting competition. She dismissed calls by some Gay Games supporters that Out Games should become a North American gay sports competition similar to the yearly Euro Games, which are held each year except during the year of the Gay Games.

She predicts the opposite might happen -- that the Gay Games will shrink in participation and be forced to limit its role to North American teams.

"It is hard for a lot of GLBT people to come to the U.S.," she said, pointing to U.S. immigration policies that ban people with HIV from entering the country unless they get a special waiver. She also points to hostility toward the U.S. war in Iraq and to President Bush in general by many Europeans. With Canada's decision this year to legalize same-sex marriage and with Montreal's reputation for being North America's most gay-friendly city, Corbet said, Montreal is likely to attract far more participants from countries outside of North America.

Boyer and Brigham strongly dispute this assessment. The two note that the U.S. routinely waives its immigration restrictions for people with HIV for special events like the Gay Games.

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