Meet Sarah Massey, CEO, World Athletics Championships, Oregon22
What it takes to lead a sustainable, diverse and unique World Athletics Championships
Sarah Massey’s career in sport makes CV-writing a sport in itself. From Rugby and Cricket World Cups to five Olympic Games, a Commonwealth Games, Paralympic World Cups, and time at both the International Field Hockey and Tennis Federation, she has operated at the top end of sport for over 30 years.
Sarah’s roles have involved everything from venue operations to strategy, commercial and marketing but over her entire career one thing has remained constant. She has never strayed far from an athletics track.
Her passion for running and deep reserve of experience working in athletics, including the roll-out of the first ever Diamond League series in the UK, ultimately led her to Eugene, Oregon and one of the biggest jobs in athletics.
In 2019 she found herself at the helm of the first ever World Championships to be held in the USA on the eve of a global pandemic. Leading a team of 180, with a budget of $75 million, this is her story.
On what attracted her to the CEO role at Oregon22…
Athletics has always been a big part of my life. My love of the sport started at school and really took off when I moved to South Africa to work on the 1995 Rugby World Cup and 1997 Lions Tour. Running is huge there, I got a real taste for longer distances and clocked several ultramarathons as well as using the sport to find my community. I was also involved in the launch of The Johannesburg Stadium, a huge, new athletics venue which was an inspiring project.
I have peppered working in athletics throughout everything I have done, so when the Oregon22 opportunity came along it was a very intuitive decision to go for it. I felt compelled to move to the US and do something important within a sport I love.
On what is so special about Oregon and Hayward Field…
When you drive into Eugene, Oregon, the signs all say ‘TrackTown USA’. The place is synonymous with the sport.
Its history of track and field runs deep and the running community is huge. The facilities are amazing - pretty much all middle and high schools in Oregon have their own tracks. Hayward Field itself is a mecca for athletes and its full rebuild was completed during COVID. It has a history of producing legendary performances so the athletes love competing there and it draws a knowledgeable and passionate crowd. The spectators are there because they love the sport. It makes for a very special, authentic atmosphere.
On the challenge of running a World Athletics event during COVID…
As soon as Tokyo2020 was delayed, the whole sporting calendar was squeezed. We had to postpone the World Championships from 2021 to 2022 and we found ourselves bumping up against the Commonwealth Games and the European Athletics Championships in the same year. People in Europe didn’t need to travel to see top level athletics as they had two events on their doorstep and many people were still hesitant to travel internationally post COVID. This made our big goal to attract more international travellers to the World Champs more challenging. We had to adapt our ticketing strategy to answer a post-COVID world.
The pandemic also turned a two-year plan into a three-year plan. We gained a year but that didn’t mean additional budget so we had to be very cost conscious at a time when supply chain issues and labour shortages meant costs were being driven up. The extra time did, however, lend momentum to both our social and environmental initiatives which ultimately made us a more sustainable event.
On maximising the impact of a small venue…
Hayward Field is an unbelievable venue. It is beautifully crafted. It has a whole indoor track and athlete facilities underneath it. It has its own museum. But being smaller than previous World Championships, it presented some interesting challenges to meet the space needed for broadcast and media in particular.
“Having a small venue was a double-edged sword… We turned it into an opportunity and it allowed us to reimagine what a World Champs could be and prove that it worked.”
The front row of seats is literally on the track and is what makes the atmosphere so amazing. So having a small venue in a small town was a double-edged sword. From an infrastructure point of view, it wasn’t ideal for a World Champs but we turned it into an opportunity and it allowed us to reimagine what a World Champs could be and prove that it worked. Optimization was needed all-round but we found creative solutions and there was no negative impact on the event, athletes or fans. In many cases, the intimacy of the venue enhanced the whole event experience.
On sustainability…
Oregon is a very eco-conscious State. We wanted to reflect and maximize its green philosophy through the event so we created an Environmental Sustainability Strategy called ‘Drive Change.’
We became the first World Athletics event not to sell any single-use plastics inside the stadium. We installed water stations, provided more sustainable boxed water to the athletes, ran a really successful Bring Your Own Bottle campaign for fans and provided 8,000 reusable water bottles to volunteers, broadcasters and media.
We diverted 90% of our waste from landfill through recycling and composting, donations and foodbanks and the stadium was powered using green energy for the duration of the event. We also used biodiesel fuel for our generators and vehicles. The Council for Responsible Sport gave us their highest rating - the Evergreen status.
On diversity…
The World Athletics Championships is about welcoming the world. The athletes represent 179 nations and from a race and gender point of view, it is very inclusive. We wanted to ensure that our culture and our workforce reflected that and understood what it meant. So, we had a definitive goal to recruit as diverse a workforce as possible and intentionally put measures in place and reached out to groups who could help us to do that.
We trained all our employees in Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (our JEDI programme) and partnered with an organisation called RISE who help sport organisations to eliminate racial discrimination and promote social justice.
“We made sure we had gender equality at Board level and 60% of the Directors team were female.”
We ran a ‘Women in the Spotlight’ seminar during which we encouraged member federations to sign a pledge to improve their female and gender equity policies. We recruited women-led and BIPOC-owned businesses particularly for the food carts and we ran social initiatives related to diversity, youth empowerment and donation programmes. We made sure we had gender equality at Board level and 60% of the Directors team were female.
On her standout track moments of Oregon22…
There were many standout moments with more World, Championship and National records broken than at any other World Champs.
Seeing Allyson Felix extend her record medal total to 20 after she won a gold and bronze in the relays was incredible. It was a fitting end to an amazing career in the sport. She has been such an influence on and off the track and is a huge advocate for gender equality.
I had to be impartial at the time, but now it is over I can say I enjoyed Jake Wightman’s gold for GB in the 1500 metres. It was particularly exciting as his dad was doing our in-stadium commentary.
On measuring success…
Alongside our sustainability metrics, satisfaction and experience were key measures of success for us and we set up the organisation to achieve this. We appointed directors of each experience – athletes fans, broadcast, media, World Athletics Family, workforce. Their role was to look at the experience that their group were going to get and set their aims and objectives for each of those areas. This helped to ensure that they got the service levels and facilities they needed.
Independent research by Nielsen, showed that 90% of fans rated their experience good/excellent and 4 in 5 said it was one of the best live events they had ever been to.
70% of athletes rated their experience as very good-excellent. Although they stayed in student accommodation rather than hotels, they were so close to the venue, they got to watch action live, we created an Olympic-style village for them to hang out in, they could have food whenever they wanted. What we delivered for them was unique and special for a World Champs.
The event was a sell-out and from a broadcast perspective, NBC covered more athletics than ever before, they reached 32.2million viewers during primetime and digital engagement through NBC was the highest they had seen for athletics in the USA. 169 territories took the event in total and they had incredible access to the athletes because the venue was so intimate.
Achieving this success was all down to the incredible Oregon22 team, volunteers, partners and community. Through the collaboration, support and hard work of so many people and organisations the event truly was the ‘Best of all Worlds’.
On the track and major events of the future…
Every sport is looking at how to be more sustainable from an environment, social and governance perspective, aiming to reduce wastage and optimise what they are doing. Everyone in athletics has a responsibility to find more sustainable ways forward – including the track suppliers. We made good strides at the World Champs but we need to keep running when it comes to the sustainability race.
Data insights will continue to be key to this. We drove everything through data at the World Champs. We knew how many people attended the previous World Athletics Championships in Doha and London. We combed the accommodation, transport and accreditation data and we used those figures to help ensure we were reducing wastage, maximising cost efficiencies and, fundamentally, doing the right thing to sustain the sport we love.
On where we’ll find her next…
Working in sport is my calling and I will always be drawn to major events but I also love a new challenge. I am currently completing a Masters in Sports Law and am planning to use these skills to support sports organisations with their Governance and legal frameworks and the development of their overall strategies.