POSTED: March 15th 2011

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JOHN GOODBODY: London cash row is worst of all possible 2012 worlds

THE JOHN GOODBODY COLUMN / An authoritative and exclusive series from Sports Features Communications

LONDON, Mar 14: Oh dear. Just as the preparations for the 2012 Olympics were going so well, key figures in the London Games have plunged into a dispute that will both show Britain in a bad light and also have international repercussions.

It has been nearly six years since London got the Games and with barely 500 days to go to the opening, what has been remarkable is how few controversies there have been, with the exceptions of the budget increase and the dispute over the future of the Olympic Stadium,  both of which have now  been resolved.

Sponsorship is on target, the facilities are on time, the organisation, under the masterly direction of Paul Deighton, has been widely praised and the tickets go on sale this week.

However, the British Olympic Association (BOA) is concerned about the future of Olympic sports in this country after 2012. And it wants some tangible financial legacy.

The BOA, which gets no public funding (unlike most countries), agreed with the London Organising Committee (Locog) that like all national Olympic committees in the country where the Games are being held, it would give up its rights to market the Olympic brand in the period up to the event.

In return, LOCOG gave the BOA £33m in compensation, only £19m of which was in cash.

This was all agreed before Colin Moynihan was elected to the BOA chairmanship and, together with his new chief executive Andy Hunt, he believes that this figure grossly undervalues their worth, pointing out, with some justification, that Vancouver gave the Canadian Olympic Association £71m for the far less valuable rights to the 2010 Winter Games.

The BOA want to renegotiate the deal and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has indeed the power to alter these terms of the Joint Marketing Agreement.

Combined forces

However, instead of leaving the IOC to adjudicate, the BOA is going to the Court of Arbitration in Sport in Lausanne, when it will be facing the combined forces of the IOC, LOCOG and Mayor of London.

What the BOA is also arguing is that it deserves a bigger cut from the surplus from the Games and the case will hinge on whether this should be from the Olympics alone, as the BOA argues, or from the Olympics and Paralympics combined.

The 2012 Olympics might make a small profit but LOCOG is budgeting that the Olympics and Paralympics will only just about break even. The agreement with Locog gives the BOA one fifth of any profit plus a bonus to a maximum of £5 million. The question is: the profit of what?

LOCOG is not happy, pointing out that the two Games were always regarded as one entity when bidding for the two events in 2005, stating they have been “underpinned by a single budget. It is sad that this vision is now disputed by the new leadership of the BOA. We are grateful that the IOC is helping to resolve the issue.”

For the BOA, these Games are a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity not so much  to put an organisation on a sound footing but to help financially many of the poorer Olympic (and Paralympic) sports.

In the past, the BOA has never been flush with money because it has had to rely on sponsors and donations. It wants a “ speedy, final and binding resolution” to the dispute.

Unfortunately, this resolution is likely to be costly, acrimonious and protracted. And then the leading figures of all the organisations will have to work together to ensure the Games next year are a success. It is not a happy prospect.

** JOHN GOODBODY covered the 2008 Olympics for The Sunday Times, his 11th successive Summer Games and is the author of the audio book A History of the Olympics, read by Barry Davies, the BBC commentator. He was Sports News Correspondent of The Times 1986-2007, for whom he received journalistic awards in all three decades on the paper, including Sports Reporter of The Year in 2001

Keywords · John Goodbody · BOA · LOCOG

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