Games to boost region's economy by £1bn - claim

Birmingham 's 2022 Commonwealth Games is set to bring more than a £1 billion boost to the West Midlands economy, according to the Games ' chief, writes Jessica Brookes.

Ian Reid (pictured), chief executive of the Organising Committee, the team putting together the major sporting extravaganza arriving next year, has highlighted the enormous economic opportunities that the Games will bring.

The Games take place between 28 July and 8 August, attracting a global TV audience of 1.5 billion and more than one million spectators and welcoming competitors from 72 nations and territories.

Other iterations of the Games in Manchester in 2002, Melbourne in 2006, Glasgow in 2014 and the Gold Coast in 2018 have provided huge economic uplifts for host cities, according to a Commonwealth Games Federation report produced by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) last year.

Mr Reid, who worked on the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games as chief financial officer, says that the business case for the Birmingham Games stacks up.

He said: “Over the last three or four iterations of the event, the economic benefit to the region has been in the range of £800 million to £1.2 billion from each.

“If you think about the local investment, the Games is funded from three sources primarily - local government, through Birmingham City Council and partners, secondly through national government through DCMS and thirdly through the private sector through our ticketing, sponsorship, merchandising and broadcast programme.

“The vast majority of that benefit will go to the West Midlands economy. If you take the likely economic benefit based on previous games, the return on investment from local investment could be five or six times more.

“Therefore compared to most projects the city council would put its money behind, this should pay off multiple times over in terms of local tax-payer 's money, and local business and employment benefits.

“The business case absolutely stacks up, and we should be seeing and aiming for well in excess of that £1billion of economic benefit to the West Midlands here as well. ”

One of the routes to economic benefit from the Games is the plethora of supply chain and business opportunities that the Games provides and there are many for business to access, says Mr Reid.

“Probably by value maybe about two-thirds of those contracts have already been let, but there is still a third to go and that is a significant amount of money, well in excess of £100 million, and will be across a huge number of contracts that can be accessible by all sizes of business, ” he said.

“The best way to get involved is to register your business on the Commonwealth Games business portal.

“You only need to register your business there once and it will proactively send you notifications of opportunities that will come up in your sector. ”

The Games has already attracted big business names as partners and supporters, including Longines and University of Birmingham as partners, and Gowling WLG, Gi Group, North, Severn Trent and PwC as supporters.

Official providers include Sunset + Vine as host broadcaster, CSM Live as provider of look, wayfinding and signage, NVT Group as IT services provider and Incorporatewear as workforce uniform provider.