Wembley and VISA

Today we started off with a tour of Wembley Stadium. This stadium was absolutely gorgeous and so cool! For those who don't know, Wembley Stadium is a 90,000 seat capacity stadium (not as much as the Big House!) that is the home venue for England's national football (soccer) team. It was built in 2007 on the site of the previous Wembley Stadium that was built in 1923. It also hosts many large-scale concerts, a regular season NFL game, and will be a key site for the 2012 Summer Olympics. This will be London's third time hosting the Olympic Games. The previous time was in 1948. The older Wembley Stadium (which still stands) is the only site that will be used in both the 1948 and the 2012 games, and will be used for rhythmic gymnastics and badminton.

After Wembley, we had a little break before meeting with a VISA executive. Erica and I decided to go to the British Museum since the meeting would be held right down the road. We ended up spending our whole break at the restaurant there though. It was so delicious! The best part of the meal came at the end: upon leaving, a British middle-aged man asked where Erica and I were from. We told him and he said something about liking our accents and "I didn't know people actually talked like that. It's like I'm watching television". Needless to say, this made our day. 

It was then time to meet with Matt Kauffman, who is the head of Olympic and NFL sponsorship for VISA. Seriously sounds like one of the coolest jobs..working with the Olympics and the NFL! He went over a lot of issues regarding sponsorship with the Olympics, much of which I learned in my Intro to Sport Management class with Tom. Some of the things he talked about were the TOP Program (The Olympic Partnership), importance of social media in sponsorship, ambush marketing at the Olympic Games, and return on investment. He answered a lot of questions from us that we had about what it takes to be a sponsor for the Olympic Games.


Tomorrow, we will be meeting with IMG all day and will have to leave the hotel at 8 am. That means a fairly early night for me, but I'm still in London and want to enjoy tonight as much as possible!




Some pics from today:

Me with my favorite soccer player's jersey: Michael Ballack of Germany

Wembley Stadium with the FA Cup