I would walk 500 miles/ And I would walk 500 more/ Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door.” These were the words that rang out on a cold November night 2007, when nearly 2,000 people crammed into The Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow to discover that the city had been awarded the 2014 Commonwealth Games. The announcement was the cue for a spontaneous singalong, led by Scottish pop duo The Proclaimers, whose 20-year-old hit song I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) had become the official anthem of the bid.

The final decision, made by the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), saw Glasgow win out over Nigerian capital Abuja, which was trying to become the first African state to host the event, and served as a reminder of the event’s original incarnation as the British Empire Games (it was renamed a number of times until it got its current title in 1978).


But such issues were for another time: that night was a good time to be Scottish. Among the assembled mix of politicians, business leaders and sports stars there was a collective will to interpret it as more than a sporting issue. It was a statement of intent, and a potent symbol of modern Scotland’s national identity. First Minister Alex Salmond, elected to lead the Scottish Parliament just a few months before, the only Scottish Nationalist politician to win power in the party’s 73-year history, said on taking office: “We’re a small nation but we’ve got a big future.” And he needed no invitation to make political capital from this victory: “We will make these Games the greatest sporting event our country has ever seen. They will be our chance to show the whole world the very best of Scotland.”


Salmond praised the galvanising effect of the Games to unite the country with its talented and vocal diaspora. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a native Glaswegian, had telephoned swing voters in the run up to the bid election. And even Hollywood stars were called to serve their country: Sir Sean Connery narrated the 30-minute promotional video used in the city’s presentation. This is a golden era for Scotland screamed the headlines, with journalists quick to join the dots: golf’s Ryder Cup between Europe and America would be held at Gleneagles in Perthshire in 2014; tennis player Andy Murray was emerging as a genuine Grand Slam contender; and cyclist Chris Hoy was top of his game, and eight months away from leading the British Olympic team to their greatest medal success in 100 years at the Beijing Olympics. 


Each individual and collective achievement lent authority to the claims of the bid committee that Scotland was living up to its promise as a forward-looking, 21st-century nation, with growing ambitions, not confined only to the sporting arena. 


Just a few weeks before the CGF vote in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the business world had watched as a Royal Bank of Scotland-led consortium completed a €70bn takeover of Dutch bank ABN AMRO, to form one of the world’s largest banking groups. 


With the party in full swing, those in the hall felt they were present to mark a turning point for the country. Expectations for the future were running high. 


But, after every great party comes the hangover, and, in the case of Scotland’s victorious bid, the comedown has coincided with the greatest economic crisis of our time. Staging major sporting events is a folly of the bull market, say the government’s critics, how can we afford it now?


And, certainly, it will be no easy task. The 2014 Commonwealth Games will be the biggest multi-sports event Scotland has ever hosted: more than 6,000 athletes and officials from 71 countries will take part in 17 sports in 13 venues over 11 days. 


It has a budget of €400m including public investment of €320m. The target for revenues raised through sponsorship, merchandising, ticket sales and the sale of broadcast rights for the Games is €80m. Sponsorship accounts for €25m of this. And it is now, as sports administrators hand the reins to businessmen and politicians, that the process reveals much more about modern Scotland, than the bid campaign ever did. 


The crux of the issue is Scotland’s relationship with London, still the economic and political engine of the UK, despite the devolution strategy of the Blair/Brown governments since Labour came to power in 1997. 


For all Salmond’s talk of independence, the major fiscal decisions are still taken at Westminster, and specifically at 11 Downing Street — home of another Scot, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling. And today, the British government’s priorities lay elsewhere, notably in funding their own €9.9bn sporting statement, the 2012 Olympic Games. 


“It is well known that funding for the London Olympics is costing [National] Lottery good causes in Scotland some £150m,” said Salmond as he launched the fundraising effort. “It is entirely reasonable therefore to call for an equivalent sum to be returned to Scotland to help us deliver a real, lasting legacy for the whole of Scotland”.


Salmond is a smart and streetwise political operator, and his focus on legacy was intended to provoke those with longer memories into action. When Scotland last staged the Commonwealth Games, in Edinburgh in 1986, it was a PR and financial disaster, losing the city £3m on expenditure of £14m. Worse still was its decision to go, cap in hand, to Robert Maxwell, the self-promoting newspaper baron who later died in mysterious circumstances as stories of his financial skullduggery emerged. The legacy of Edinburgh 1986 was civic debt and, perhaps more damaging, pictures of Maxwell giving out medals in a rain-sodden Scottish capital. 


This time has to be different, Salmond is telling anyone who’ll listen, the Games must be a force for good. But while the First Minister works the corridors of power, the Glasgow 2014 team are knocking on the doors of the private sector to raise the required funds. 


The original plan would have seen one of the big Scottish banks, RBS or Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), to step in to partner the Games — a great Scottish institution standing tall at the country’s proudest moment. That was then: RBS recently posted the biggest annual loss in UK corporate history, and its chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin, the man who drove the ABN AMRO acquisition, is the poster boy for the banking crisis. RBS along with HBOS now reside largely in government hands, having been part-privatised in the economic rescue package devised by those two expat Scots, Brown and Darling. 


It’s hardly news to describe 2009 as a tough time to raise sponsorship. Across the sporting world businesses are withdrawing funds and exiting contracts. RBS announced that its €215m sponsor budget, which included Formula One, Six Nations rugby and a large golf portfolio, was to be slashed in half. 


Meanwhile, LOCOG, the London 2012 Organising committee, has been knocking on the same doors, selling its top-level partnerships for between €53m and €85m. Major corporations have signed up, including Lloyds Banking Group, Adidas, BT, British Airways and EDF Energy, companies that would have been on the Glasgow team’s wish list. 


Those seeking a positive spin on Glasgow’s funding dilemma say that they benefit from a halo effect of the London Games. This sees brands that have supported minority sports seeking to leverage their involvement still further. Siemens and Norwich Union, which support the UK’s rowing and athletics teams respectively, might be persuaded to extend the window of media coverage a further two years by signing up to Glasgow 2014.


However, in today’s sponsor market, there is every chance that the reverse will happen and that the glamour of the Olympics will leave Glasgow in the shade. Leading sports marketing expert Steve Martin, chief executive of M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment, says: “There is a lack of stardust about the Commonwealth Games.” 


He describes Glasgow 2014 as a “tough sell” and is “very much second tier” in the sporting pantheon. Britain’s most recent experience of hosting major events, the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games, backs up Martin’s view. And although it drew support from blue-chip brands such as Cadbury and Microsoft, the money raised was below expectations. The price of top-level sponsorships for the event was initially set at between £2m and £3m, but brinkmanship on the part of some brands drove the final price down to a fraction of this. One source close to negotiations for an elite-level partner says the final rights fee it paid was about £600,000.


Ironically, the positioning of Glasgow 2014 as a Scottish event, may hamper the organising committee’s commercial plans further, according to the man who ran the event in Manchester. “How many Scottish firms have the desire and capability to fund what will be seen as a Scottish campaign?” asks Niels de Vos, chief executive of UK Athletics and commerical director of Manchester 2002. To generate the minimum €25m required from sponsorship, De Vos says, it will be necessary to present the Games as a genuine UK proposition. 


It’s barely 18 months since that memorable night in the Old Fruitmarket and the nationalist fervour has been undermined by political and economic realities. Rather than a chance to show off its independence, the success of Glasgow 2014 may depend on persuading the rest of the UK to join the party. “I would walk 500 miles” was the mantra. If only it were that simple.