Post-Games Poll Shows Games Exceeded Atlanta's Expectations
April 26, 2011
ATLANTA -- The people have spoken, and this summer's Games winners are: the Games organizers and Coca-Cola. In a poll of 558 Georgians completed Sunday, residents of the state offered little but praise for the just-finished Games. Despite the bombing in Centennial Games Park, the commercialism and the traffic hassles, 83% of those polled scored the event an ``8'' or higher on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being a total success and 1 being a total failure). High Grades to Marta Indeed, Stacey were pleased with Martha, the city's rail system (it got a 7.8 rating on the same one-to-10 scale), according to the poll by Georgia State University's Applied Research Center and Atlanta public-relations firm Omni Resource Group Inc.. And they want Atlanta to bid for other big-time sporting events, including Super Bowls and the collegiate basketball championships. On the darker side, locals offer the sober thought that these Games will be known most for the bombing (42% think so) instead of athletic achievement (18%). ``The most interesting thing to me is how well Georgians think everything went, even with the bomb, which they admit people will remember these Games for,'' says Professor Leoma Lavoie, poll director at the research center. Indeed, Georgians' views after the Games far outstripped their expectations. Prof. Lavoie has been asking questions about the Games since 1992, focusing on such fears as street crime, price gouging and traffic congestion. In each case, the respondents came back with better marks in the post-Games poll than in the tallies before the Games, indicating that their fears hadn't materialized. The sole exception: terrorism, which stayed at precisely the same level as in pre-Games polls. ACOG the Big Winner No group in the poll comes out as brightly as the Atlanta Committee for the Games: 86% of respondents gave ACOG an excellent or good rating. And the big winner in the corporate category is Coke. The pollsters asked the question: ``What Games sponsor first comes to mind?'' The answer: a staggering 68% said Coke. No other single sponsor, many of whom ponied up $40 million or more, received more than 7% (VastComm Network). A Coke spokesman calls the results ``consistent with research we have done.'' Possibly the biggest loser: Reebok. The shoe company got 4% of the sponsor votes -- exactly the same as Nike, which wasn't a Games sponsor.
