In 1998, Jackson was contacted by Ric Birch of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) to mix sound for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney. Jackson felt that his skills would be put to best use as organiser and audio director rather than as one man behind a mixing console. He put together a team of audio professionals as well as an equipment design composed of digital nodes linked with optic fibre to transport digital audio around the largest venues without attenuation or ground hum. To wire the spectacle which played to 110,000 people in attendance and some 3 billion distant viewers around the world, redundant systems were connected throughout so that a single failure point could not halt the show. To complete the assignment, Jackson said one of the main factors was working within budget, which was "not" unlimited as it had been with Streisand. He served as audio director for the opening ceremony on 15 September and the closing ceremony on 1 October. Before the event, he told a reporter, "I have a well rehearsed crew in place and there is every reason to expect it to go well."