Three months and counting

Behind the organization of the Gay Games

First published 1994

It may be an understatement to say that everyone fervently hopes that Unity '94, alias Gay Games IV and Cultural Festival, will run like clockwork come June. People want the biggest athletic event ever held to come off without a hitch, and a month-long Voice investigation suggests that it will - venues are largely finalized, planning for almost all the 31 sports events is running smoothly, and registrations are pouring into the Unity office-- on one particular day 1,557 entries arrived. Even more impressive is the ten-day waiver recently signed by Janet Reno allowing HIV-positive people to enter the U.S. for the event, the fruit of canny lobbying by Unity '94. It may not be quite true, as Unity's slogan goes, that "Games can change the world," but they will surely change the lives of thousands of participants and spectators.

That doesn't mean there aren't a few loose ends to tie up-- and some of those ends were loosened by bad planning on the part of the Unity '94 staff. But unlike the cash-soaked extravaganza called the Olympics, to which the Gay Games are often compared even while Games organizers are legally enjoined from using the O-word, Unity '94 is an event organized by, paid for, and benefitting the queer community (or communities, if you prefer). We here at the Voice are as interested in seeing this event succeed as anyone, so it's in a spirit of constructive criticism that we take a look at some issues that have arisen in planning the Games.

Jockstrap... or moneybelt? Not surprisingly-- and not unreasonably-- registering for the Games isn't free. You start with a $60 "participation fee" plus a $35-$100 "sport fee." If you sign up for two events, you pay a second sport fee and a $25 "second-sport surcharge." When added up, the fees range from $95 for soccer players to $285 for jocks who want to play hockey and golf, two of the most expensive sports. If the expected 15,000 athletes register, Unity will have 900,000 queer dollars in its bank account from participation fees alone; the take from the average $50 "sport fee" adds up to another $750,000. That $1.65 million is only a small chunk of the expected total budget of $6 million to $7 million; sponsorships, merchandising, and admission fees at events are supposed to pay for the rest. Corporate sponsorships are expected to account for $750,000 to $1 million in cash and in-kind gifts (like Continental Airlines tickets) at event's end.
In late March, a controversial and resentment-provoking $50 "late fee" for registering after December 31, 1993 was waived; at the same time, the deadline for registrations was pushed back from March 31 to April 18 (phone 212-633-9494 for a registration form). This was a welcome surprise; Unity executive director Jay Hill, a veteran of Newsweek, ABC Sports, and the Special Olympics, told me in February that "cashflow was going to be and will continue to be a big concern for the Games, and because of that...we had a late fee. We knew that we were going to need the cash. And in fact if we hadn't imposed a late fee, and hadn't had 8,000 people registered, we probably would be out of business by now, because we needed that money to put down venue deposits."
But operations manager Roz Quarto now explains that "we say we want 15,000 athletes and we're capable of handling that operationally, and we're planning for it, and [we thought that] if the late fees are in the way of that, then let's get rid of them so the that people can come here." Quarto hopes to make up for the lost revenue (about $350,000) through further sponsorships and more vigorous fundraising.
But what about people who can barely afford to travel to New York in the first place, let alone pay the registration fees? Unity is running "a very limited program for athlete scholarships," as the registration book puts it. Hill explains that "there is a special emphasis to try to make it accessible to people who haven't been involved with the Games before, and to groups that haven't been involved with the Games-- specifically people of colour, people with disabilities, people from countries that haven't been represented at the Games before, and women."
So do you automatically get a subsidy if you're in one of those groups? "I think it depends on the board's [scholarship] committee," Hill says. "[For] someone from Toronto, we may say we will offer them hosted housing, and we would underwrite their fees for the Games if they could pay their way here. Maybe with someone from Kenya we would to it the other way around, and we might underwrite their travel, if they could pay for the other fees here." There aren't any set criteria to qualify for a sponsorship; the registration form simply asks you to state why you need a subsidy. Requests are being dealt with case by case. So far, no one has been turned down, though anyone in that predicament could make an appeal to the Unity '94 board of directors.
And it's not just Unity participants who will pay: Some Cultural Festival events will carry admission charges, though plans vary on the jock side. "For finals, we are ticketing those events," Hill says, "just as participants in the Olympics have to get a ticket to see events, either other people's events or their own finals." So yes, if your soccer team loses in Round 1, you will have to pay to see the finals even though it's your own sport. A so-called VIP Unity Pass went on sale April 1 offering access to opening and closing ceremonies and many sports and cultural events; tix for individual sports will go on sale in May via Ticketmaster, probably for $10 to $16 per event.
We're here! We're queer! Let's go shopping! Next, consider the plans for the Unity Center at the Pier, a combination registration nexus and mall to be installed in Pier 90 at 50th St. and the Hudson River. With athlete registration taking place there and a stage set up for use in the Cultural Festival, direct Unity '94 use will account for about a third of the space; the rest will be a gigantic marketplace, the Merchandise Fair. The entire complex is run by a for-profit Miami company called Unity Center at the Pier, Inc.
Oddly, though, flyers promoting the Merchandise Fair are written for straight businesses itching to capitalize on a putatively lucrative queer market: "This country's 20 to 25 million gay women and men are an influential and trend-setting market including corporate executives, business owners, civic leaders and politicians. We are your doctors, [your] lawyers, and your neighbours." This passage appears to introduce queers to ignorant straight businesspeople as high-income elites-- and as the writers of the flyer but not the readers.
Unity Center at the Pier, Inc. owner Seth Felson defends the approach. "We had thought that many `straight-owned' businesses would love a chance to sell to their primary market"-- by which he means Macy's and Bloomingdale's queens-- "especially those consumers who have traveled from all over the world to participate and be part of the Gay Games.... Yes, we would have loved to introduce gays to ignorant straight businesspeople. Nothing will get those straight business owners moving faster than the sound of cash registers ringing." Felson has sent out 3,000 brochures to gay-owned businesses, but most responses have been from "the community at large" (i.e., straight-owned businesses).
The Merchandise Fair is hardly aimed at mom-and-mom/pop-and-pop queer microbusinesses. Booths are offered in 8' x 10' increments at $5,000 each-- $6,000 if food and (non-alcoholic) beverages are served. With 200 booths planned, that multiplies out to a cool million. Will there be a profit? Felson hints that there may be, but won't divulge numbers; among other expenses, he estimates costs at $100,000 for rental of the space from the Port Authority, another $100,000 for air conditioning, and yet another $100,000 for security, transportation, phones, and advertising. (Unity '94 gets a prearranged cut of gross revenues, not profits.)
Cash-strapped businesses can apply for one of 50 reduced-rate booths, but as of mid-March no requests for those booths had been received and the exact rate had not been decided. "Artisans and craft workers" can opt for 4' x 10' booths in a central are of the building, but Felson would not disclose the rate for publication in this story.
The Cultural Festival. You would not know from the concurrent Cultural Festival's application form alone that Cultural Festival participants, if accepted, will have to pay a $25 fee. (If you're also registered in an athletic event, though, your $60 registration fee also covers you for cultural events at no extra charge.) That information is available in the fine print of a Unity '94 newsletter and was mentioned at a meeting of the Gay Games governing body, the Federation of Gay Games, last year. $25 isn't a ton of money, but shouldn't the application form have at least warned people that it would be levied?
"Well, it didn't seem like a necessary thing to put on the form, since you don't pay upon applying, you pay upon acceptance," responds Willa Taylor, a Lincoln Center administrator on leave to work with the Gay Games as director of the Cultural Festival. Was this fee planned for at the outset? "It came along later," Taylor says. "I had initially been very adamant that there should not be a fee. I felt that what we wanted to do with the Cultural Festival was to ensure diversity and inclusion, and I felt that a participation fee, even a nominal one, would make it exclusionary for some people financially. I also think that there are performers who do this for a living and actually should be paid, as opposed to paying, and that would set up a dilemma.
"There were potential Cultural Festival participants who adamantly suggested that they too should be included in terms of getting medals, that one of the larger criticisms from Festivals prior had been that Cultural Festival participants don't get participation medals." So this year all Cultural Festival participants (but not stage crews and other support people) will receive medals, partly funded by the $25 fee. And with that fee in place, will subsidies be available? "Cultural participants were always part of the pool of people who could apply for scholarship money and for hosted housing," Taylor says, a fact that Cultural Festival participants find out only after acceptance.
Parochialism and Americentrism. Founded by an American, Tom Waddell, the Gay Games have been held on the North American continent since their inception in 1982, with Vancouver in 1990 the only "foreign" city to have the honour. (Amsterdam will get the Games in 1998.) American athletes still dominate the event. "It's getting much more international, as a matter of fact," says Jay Hill. "Moving it to New York is one of the reasons it's becoming more international. Even though the Games were in Canada the last time [and] they had 7,300 participants, the overwhelming majority were from America, and specifically from California. They had approximately 5,500 people that were from the United States. Our registration numbers thus far show that we'll have more international participation than the last Games."
Unity '94's registration numbers do show an upswing in "international" registrants-- as of March 24, 1,854 registrations came from outside the U.S. compared to 5,857 from within. Canada (550), Germany (477), and the Netherlands (217) lead the pack, with small(er) contingents from Israel, Malaysia, Poland, and beyond. Even a Ghanaian soccer team and a choir from Soweto are trying to find the money to attend (and may end up with Unity scholarship funds).
On the other hand, there is evidence of fumbling the international ball, as it were. Take the athlete registration handbook. The 44-page glossy pamphlet is in English only except for a single-page summary of the registration procedures in French, Spanish, German, and Japanese, though Unity later was forced to acknowledge that the German translation was "unintelligible" (an assessment confirmed by a native speaker of German I know). While Taylor says the Cultural Festival application forms are available in languages other than English (a fact not stated on the English form), all other information on the athletic events is available in English only. Contrast this with the intent of the Amsterdam organizing committee to provide all relevant materials in Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian.
"We did a good job in getting the translations of the four languages out there," Hill says despite it all. Producing foreign-language versions "increases your administration in terms of how many language books do people want and getting those out. There's a lot of challenges involved with doing that. And hopefully maybe future Games will be able to do that, but we did, we're trying to do, we're doing the best we can with the resources we have."
People know they're dealing with a group run largely by volunteers and not the International Olympic Committee, but "international" participants would probably have been happy to trade a glossy format for a language they can actually comprehend. In the modern world of multilingual word processing, laser printing, and photocopying, is it so hard to imagine having foreign-language versions of the registration book available on request? "Well, I think `a modern world' assumes modern equipment and modern resources and you know, I think even the things that you're talking about-- going to Kinko's, copying certain things-- that assumes resources to do that." Presumably the money saved by printing fewer glossy English-only booklets could have been diverted to laser-printing a few intelligible German booklets, among other things, but Unity '94 spokesperson Marlin Collingwood can't say if that option was even pursued.
Squalor and chaos. Hill is right, at least, in suggesting that Unity '94 is not blessed with modern equipment. Unity's ramshackle offices, spread inconveniently over two floors in a West 21st St. tower, are not exactly filled with high-tech conveniences. At an event this big, thorough computerization is essential, but despite the immense computer knowledge available in the queer universe, the systems in a typical dentist's office are more modern and run more smoothly than Unity '94's. Most computers are clunky DOS clones, and many are the complaints from organizers of individual events that Unity is slow in providing basic information like the number of registrants in each event, a problem that all concerned chalk up to lousy information processing.
Unity is only now getting on E-mail, something that should have been set up at the outset as a cheap and efficient means of communicating with teams, athletes, and artists worldwide. (A case could be made for requiring teams to be accessible online to cut costs and improve communication.) Unity never did manage to widely post the registration materials online, and online registration-- common in the shareware software biz-- also did not happen.

But what's past is prologue, and these bumps in the path toward the Gay Games aren't make-or-break.The Gay Games should unfurl more or less as planned and set a new standard for amateur athletic and cultural events. Think you can top it, Amsterdam?

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