John Zerafa, a Maltese resident in London, played a key role in securing the London Olympics, as Head of Government Relations for the London 2012 Bid Committee, before taking on the same role for LOCOG (London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games).

John is the son of Carm and Sheila Zerafa. Carm was the mentor of the former Medallion Holidays, of which he was the Managing Director, and co-founder of the Maltese Movement of UK in London in the 1950s.

John has been involved in the 2012 Olympics since London won the bid.

Back in 2006, as a director of the company VERO, he had went on record as saying that he was confident that “if London could fulfil its promises, its legacy will be far-reaching, not just within the UK.

The Olympic Park will become the most visual legacy of 2012, and some innovative thinking is going into the afterlife of those Games’ venues that will remain after September 2012.”

If we get it right, I have little doubt that London 2012 will become the legacy blueprint for future Olympic Games. But there are challenges. For example, ensuring the long-term economic viability of the Olympic Stadium and aquatics centre is not easy. On the sporting participation front, no previous Olympic Games has made a positive impact on getting more people playing more sport in the long term.”

Zerafa has always maintained that London’s emphasis on ‘legacy’ has already impacted governing sports bodies, and will continue to permeate the global sporting landscape.

He had little doubt that LOCOG’s approach would have encouraged other federations to look harder at legacy when awarding their major events. “The bigger international sport federations, such as FIFA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), had already stipulated that legacy was part of the criteria they use for assessing bids to host their events. That said, not every federation has the luxury of creating a competitive bidding race for their major events, and in these cases don’t expect legacy considerations to be key for them,” said Zerafa.

John Zerafa has also been an adviser to the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid committee on communications strategy. Everyone is aware that Qatar’s bid was successful. And the country has adopted legacy as their mantra, and taken it significantly further than London.

“Legacy ran through pretty much every element of Qatar’s bid,” explains Zerafa. “On the infrastructure side, a huge amount of thinking went into how the stadiums could be reduced in size after the World Cup and relocated to other parts of the world. Similarly, we majored on how Qatar would share its cooling technology with other countries that had hot climates.

“But the legacy was not just physical. It was as much sporting, social and geo-political – about helping build bridges of understanding between the east and west, to create a greater understanding of the Middle East and inspire a new breed of football players and fans across a region whose population will be 700 million by 2022. So in a very real sense, Qatar’s pitch to FIFA was absolutely about legacy – physical, sporting, technological and political.”

John Zerafa

John joined the company VERO in March 2006 from the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games where he was Head of Government Relations. He held the same position at the London 2012 Olympic bid where he coordinated all high-level political communications for the bid.

John has extensive consultancy experience in the business of sport and advised Qatar 2022 in its successful bid to host the FIFA World Cup, specifically with regard to media communications strategy, narrative development, speech writing, media handling and training. He advised Glasgow in its successful bid to host the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships and his current clients include the Qatar Olympic Committee.

Previously he was Head of Public Affairs at sports development agency Sport England, Public Affairs Manager at broadcaster ITV Digital and was a senior consultant for communications agency Westminster Strategy where his clients included the FA Premier League – he also acted as Press officer for the League.

Prior to his consultancy career, John was an adviser and speech writer to Rt Hon Sir Edward Heath MP, former British Prime Minister.