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Games organisers would not reveal how much was spent coming up with the terminology but rejected suggestions it had cost $1 million, saying the bill was much lower and came at no cost to the taxpayer.
The phrase “Believe. Belong. Become” had already been adopted by a range of churches and religious sites in Australia and abroad.
The homepage of Riverstone Community Church in north-west Sydney. Credit: Internet
Pastor Adrian O’Prea of Sydney’s Dulwich Hill Baptist Church said he had seen on the news on Thursday morning that the Olympics had picked up the same wording and word order as it displayed on its website.
“It was something we thought of and came up with about 10 years ago. I guess other people think the same. We applied it in a spiritual way,” he said.
“We thought we were original but later on we found out that other churches [used it] as well.”
Riverstone Community Church in Sydney’s north-west said they had been its keywords for years while KawanaLife Baptist church on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast says on its homepage the words are “foundational for us”.
Retired Olympic swimming star Cate Campbell speaks at the Games vision announcement.Credit: Getty Images
The phrase “Belong. Believe. Become”, a slightly different word order to the Brisbane 2032 vision, was registered as a trademark in 2008 by Whitefriars College, a Catholic boys’ secondary school in Melbourne.
The Brisbane 2032 organising committee has applied to trademark the slogans “Believe. Belong. Become” and “Believe. Belong. Become. Brisbane 2032” with IP Australia, the Australian government agency that oversees intellectual property rights.
Organisers engaged a Brisbane-based agency to support the process of delivering a Games vision.
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It has been described as the largest stakeholder consultation since the Olympics were awarded to the Queensland capital in 2021, with 6000 people taking part in a survey and 1300 ideas gathered.
Variations of the Brisbane Games vision have been embraced by other sports teams in Australia.
The North Queensland Cowboys NRL team use the term “Believe. Belong” as a membership strategy, while NBL club Perth Wildcats in July announced a “Believe and Belong” social media strategy.
The vision for last year’s Paris Olympics was “Sport can change lives” and the next Games in Los Angeles in 2028 has taken on the statement “Together we can change the future”.
While the federal and Queensland governments are jointly funding the $7.1 billion being spent on venues for the Olympics, including a new 63,000-seat stadium, a spokesperson said Brisbane 2032 was self-funded.
Host city organising committees get funding from the International Olympic Committee and Brisbane 2032 received an advance payment of $US10 million ($15.3 million) in June for broadcast rights revenue, according to its latest annual report.
