Coming Home

For the past 14 years, Wilfrid Spronk has led the Munich Olympiapark (above right) —
an enormous, hugely profitable facility that created $348.4 million in indirect profit for its community in 2003.
Photo courtesy of Martin Hangen.

Suddenly the guest from Texas takes off. At seven meters per second, the elevator catapults him to a height of 185 meters. As he gets out and looks far below him through the panorama window of the tower restaurant, he looks right into the heart of the Munich Olympiapark; into the stadium of the 1972 Olympic Games. He sees the large hall, the swimming arena, the Olympic Village, the building at 31 Connollystraße, which was the quarters of the Israeli athletes in 1972 and the target of a bloody attack by the Arab terror group “Black September.” The shimmering pre-spring sunlight is reflected from the glass tent roof, the architectural jewel of the facility with its unmistakable silhouette. The pastel colours of the overall park ensemble glow, as if they had just been painted on. The visitor from overseas takes in the impressions from this airy height and says: “It’s hard to believe that all of this is already 35 years old.”

Of course, Wilfrid Spronk knows how the words of his guest are intended: as a compliment, in which he can rightly take a certain pride. That’s because the Munich Olympiapark, for whose fate Spronk has been responsible for 14 years, is a part of the success story of Germany in the post-war period, and which from the perspective of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) even serves as a model.

“[It is] the only Olympic park that still functions like this,” says Spronk, which is why most of the organizers of Olympic Summer Games have travelled to the Bavarian capital after 1972, in order to get some hands-on instruction: how to build and administer an Olympic park to ensure sustainability — sports facilities not just for the three weeks of the Olympic Games, but for the benefit of at least one generation. Most recently, it was the organizers of London 2012 who sat with Wilfrid Spronk in his office.

One only has to consider a few figures to understand the pride of Munich in its park. From 1972 to 2006, Olympiapark München Gesellschaft (OMG) counted 166 million registered visitors, of which 94 million attended 9,611 events and 72 million spent their leisure time in the park. In 2006 alone, 5.1 million people came (including 3.1 million at 325 events); sales receipts that year totalled 26 million euros ($33.8 million dollars). One of the most impressive figures, which is a good measure of the extent to which the image of the city of Munich has profited even 31 years after the 1972 games: In the year 2003, visitors to the Olympiapark left 268 million euros ($348.4 million dollars) to the community and its economy, the so-called indirect profit.

In 1983, when Spronk moved from the Rhine to the Isar, from Mainz to Munich, he had no way of knowing that very important chapters in this success story would later bear his signature. At the time, he had followed the 1972 Olympics at his workplace only on television.

Spronk, who graduated from the universities in Bonn and Mainz in the areas of political science, history, German literature, and journalism, was then working in public relations for various ministries of the German State of Rhineland-Palatinate and still far from any contact with the operators of the Munich sports facilities.

The fact that a connection was made is due to one of Spronk’s passions: He was (and still is) a fan of cycling and as such had gained attention as the organizer of events of the highest quality, even including world championships on the road, in halls, and with mountain bikes. Most notably, in 1977 the young Rhinelander (born in Remagen) caught the eye of the Chairman of the German Cycling Sports Association and — as chance would have it — the manager of the Münchner Olympiapark-Gesellschaft, Werner Göhner.

Four years after this first encounter of the two, Spronk advanced to be Göhner’s deputy in the Cycling Sports Association and in 1983 to become his press secretary at the Olympiapark. The remaining stops on his Munich career route led systematically to the top: 1986 head of the area “Business and Events”; 1992 deputy manager; 1993 head of the world’s most beautiful Olympic park.

Under Spronk’s guidance, Olympiapark won the Live Entertainment Award 2007 for Best Location, scored big with the underwater animal show “Sea Life,” and opened its doors to winter and motor sports. Photo courtesy of Martin Hangen.

Just one year after taking over the post of CEO in Munich, Spronk joined the board of directors of the European Arenas Association (EAA), of which he was president 2004-2006. The skills he had acquired in Mainz and Munich were decisive; in addition, he points to “a network without which no one can do such a job. Business and private relationships had their influence on my success. I was able to make friends all over the world.”

In fact, the things he learned from his experience in his early training in public relations and management of sports facilities were the ideal prerequisites for a position such as Spronk held. However, he also admits: “Except for a few lectures in law, my areas of study at the university did not really help in my current profession.”

Showing strength in the international arena was also made easier for him by the fact that he came from Munich: “With the Olympiapark at my back, I was always somebody.”

On the other hand, Spronk utilized the European orientation of his office for the success of the Munich facility. His goal was: “Always to bring something back for Munich from my meetings.”

Internally, Spronk likes to see himself as a team player, “as a fan of interpersonal cooperation.” He is “no apparatchik,” but he does not want to be everybody’s “nice little boy” either: “I can be very, very sensitive.”

In his opinion, having success in the event industry functions above all “when you take a risk.” He calls himself very immodestly “a pick-up artist” in the area of acquiring events. As an example he mentions the initially not unproblematic 2002 European Track and Field Championship. It turned out to be a super event. Spronk: “That was my 1972.”

His understanding of himself as a global player is demonstrated by his membership in the International Association of Assembly Managers (IAAM). Still he is considered a critical member of the association. “I have always warned: Europe is not America,” he says in an interview with the author. “There must be a stronger exchange of know-how.”

And it is important, to make the IAAM “more aware of the mission of the Europeans” — a cautionary tip for the IAAM Europe Congress in April in Amsterdam. “However, sooner or later both parties will profit from each other,” Spronk says optimistically.

Optimism has always been a faithful companion of Wilfrid Spronk. Only once in his Munich career was his faith in a good end to a problem brutally shattered: In the year 2000, as the decision was made not to remodel the Olympic Stadium for football and instead to build a new, modern arena on the outskirts of Munich exclusively for the number one German sport, football. That meant nothing more or less than: From mid-2005 on, when the new temple of football was to open, the Olympiapark-Gesellschaft would lose its best customer, FC Bayern, the top European club.

Spronk expects to stay at the helm of Olympiapark until 2009, at which point he will have spent 16 years in the top position. Photo courtesy of Martin Hangen.

Since 1972, the “Bavarians,” the record-holding German champions and four-time winners of the top European series “Champions League,” with an average of 57,000 spectators, had made the OMG cash register jingle. Spronk calls the moment of the vote against “his” stadium “my darkest hour.”

To the end he had fought for the remodeling of the Olympic arena, but in the end he had to admit that he had no chance against the architects of the stadium. Master builder Behnisch insisted on a “Monument for Eternity” and was therefore against any radical remodeling. His copyright protected him like a knight’s armour against mosquito bites. Spronk still complains about his “helplessness against the egotism of architecture.”

The exodus of football did not really threaten the existence of the park, but it forced the Spronk team to develop new project ideas. The goal was to counteract an impending deficit. Without football there would have been a budgetary hole of five million euros ($6.5 million dollars) annually, “if nothing else would have happened,” as Spronk expresses it.

Consequently, OMG expanded the show area even further, increased the number of open-air concerts — and recently just won the Live Entertainment Award 2007 in the category “Best Location”, brought the rising success of the underwater animal show “Sea Life” to the site (600,000 visitors in one year), and opened the stadium for winter and motor sports. That was all done in the knowledge “that there could be no full financial compensation for football.” The summer of the year 2006, the first year completely without football, from the perspective of the manager: “Time will tell whether it always goes so well.”

Without question the break caused by the loss of football had highlighted an insight that had long existed but was never completely implemented: no more baby steps for the Olympiapark; the time has come for giant steps. By 2009, when Wilfrid Spronk, who will then be 63, will leave his job for private reasons after 16 years in the top position, the Olympiapark will be gotten into shape for the next 10 to 15 years, or as Spronk calls it: converted from a place where events are held into a real Event Park.
Increased service requirements will be met; the technology modernized from the ground up. In the great Olympiahalle, then, the transition to the future will be visible as an example. Adapting the Olympic heritage of 1972 to the modern age is at once the lasting challenge and the legacy of Wilfrid Spronk.

Spronk expects to stay at the helm of Olympiapark until 2009, at which point he will have spent 16 years in the top position. Photo courtesy of Martin Hangen.