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USOC's Blackmun Hopeful on More Progress over Revenue-sharing Talks with IOC

Olympics - 17 Apr 2012 - Scott Blackmun, the chief executive of the US Olympic Committee, said yesterday that he is hopeful of more progress on long-running negotiations over the share of Olympic revenues taken by the USOC, in talks with the International Olympic Committee.

Speaking at the US ambassador’s residence in London, Blackmun told AP that the issue is complex and will not be easily resolved, but that he is hopeful that the dispute, which has strained relations between the two sides, will soon be over.

The tortuous discussions resumed this year at January’s winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, after Gerhard Heiberg, chair of the IOC’s marketing commission, admitted in December that reaching agreement is “taking longer than what we originally thought.”

Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, had said that he was hopeful that a resolution would be reached before one of three forthcoming executive board meetings during the Association of National Olympic Committees presently under way in Moscow, the SportAccord convention in Quebec in May or the Olympic Games in London in July.

The talks are holding up any prospect of a US bid to host the 2022 winter Olympic Games, with Blackmun reiterating in January that the USOC would not contemplate backing a US bid until the revenue-sharing issue is resolved, despite the enthusiasm for a bid from rival groups in Denver, Reno-Tahoe and Salt Lake City.

The dispute over revenue-sharing with the IOC was partly blamed for the failure of bids by New York and Chicago to host the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. The IOC will award the hosting rights for the 2022 games in 2015.

In January last year, the IOC reopened discussions with the USOC over a possible new revenue-sharing agreement, that could come into effect from 2020, in which the USOC would take a reduced share of Olympic revenues.

Under the terms of the present contract, the USOC receives nearly 20 per cent of global sponsorship revenues and 12.75 per cent of US television revenues.

The present Olympic revenue distribution system is a legacy of the 1984 summer Olympics in Los Angeles when the USOC (via US sponsors) was credited with having helped to bail out the IOC financially.

Sportcal