USA TODAY International Edition
USOC fears ripple effects from no Games on U. S. soil
how much sponsor and donor money the USOC raises to train Olympians. Over time, it could diminish how well U. S. athletes perform.
“When we have a Games in the United States, it really connects us to the American public in a way that’s good for us and for our athletes long term,” Blackmun says.
On a larger scale, not staging an Olympics in the country that produces more sponsor, television and fan interest in the Games than any other could be bad business for the International Olympic Committee, whose largest single revenue source is U. S. broadcast rights payments.
“If the IOC is smart, it must realize that from time to time there should be Games in the United States,” says Canadian IOC member Dick Pound, former chairman of the IOC’S marketing commission. “It’s still the most important country for the Olympics.”
The USOC will wait to bid at least until it resolves a revenue- sharing dispute with the IOC, which chooses Olympic hosts, Blackmun says. Some IOC members bristle that the USOC, as part of contracts good through 2020, receives 20% of worldwide Olympic broadcast rights fees and 12.75% of global sponsor money — citing those tensions as a reason Chicago lost in the first round of voting for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Discussions on the revenue issue began nearly three years ago, when the USOC tried to defuse it before the 2016 vote. The sides talked last month, but there is no timetable for a resolution. IOC spokesman Mark Adams says, “There is a real will to accelerate the decision process.”
A changing landscape for bids
U. S. officials also are trying to navigate changes in the bidding landscape, which has seen the IOC take risks on less technically sound bids to make history in recent votes, including the one that awarded the 2016 Games to Rio de Janeiro, the Olympics’ first South American host.
“As an American, I would love to see us get the Games again,” says Angela Ruggiero, a four- time Olympic ice hockey medalist who is now a member of the USOC board of directors and the IOC. “But it depends on when’s the right time to bid.”
Since the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, which sold unprecedented corporate sponsorships and turned hosting the Games into a profitable enterprise, the USA has not gone longer than 12 years without staging an Olympics.
A long drought is worrisome because “we rely on our sponsors and our donors and our television donors to support and train all of our Olympic athletes,” says Blackmun, noting the USOC is one of few Olympic committees around the world that do not receive government funding.
The boost from a home Games goes beyond the bottom line.
The USA’S rise as a Winter Olympics power — U. S. athletes won the medals race in the 2010 Vancouver Games for the first time since the 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid — started in Salt Lake City.
“Anytime you have that opportunity ( to host a Games), it is a focusing moment for sure, summer or winter, just simply because everyone’s looking at it, going, ‘ We’re going to compete at home; how do we best get prepared?’ ” says Alan Ashley, the USOC’S chief of sport performance.
U. S. athletes won 13 medals in the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. In Salt Lake City, they won 34.
Among those were Flowers’ bobsled gold, won with driver Jill Bakken, and second- and third- place finishes in four- man bobsled, all of which ended a 46- year U. S. medal drought in the sport. Having a second home bobsled track — before the 2002 Games, U. S. bobsledders had only the Lake Placid track — made a big difference, says Darrin Steele, chief executive officer of USA Bobsled & Skeleton.
“Having a home Games just has a ripple effect that’s hard to measure,” he says.
The 2002 Olympics forever will be associated with the scandal in which Salt Lake City bid officials gave more than $ 1 million in cash, scholarships, gifts and other inducements to IOC members and their relatives.
The USOC was nevertheless in a bidding mood when the 2002 Games ended. It advanced New York as its candidate for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Dogged by anti- U. S. sentiment over the war in Iraq and a last- minute unraveling of its stadium plan, New York lost in the second round of IOC voting.
Chicago’s bid had no technical difficulties and enjoyed heavyweight backing, with President Obama and Oprah Winfrey in Copenhagen for the 2009 vote. Chicago was the first eliminated.
The revenue- sharing tensions played a part. So did difficulties over securing the government financial guarantees the IOC now requires, as well as the IOC’S shift toward wanting to award the Olympics to new hosts — a trend that began with the 2008 Beijing Games, the first time the Olympics were held in China.
“That is the current flavor of the month in awarding all these international events,” says Pound, alluding to soccer’s World Cup finals going to Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022.
As lucrative as the U. S. market is, sponsors also like gaining a foothold in a dawning market such as China, says Terrence Burns, president of Helios Partners, a consulting agency that worked on Beijing’s bid.
“It’s much harder for the U. S. to compete in the current bid environment,” Burns says.
The USA also no longer has any perceived edge from TV rights negotiations, which used to award one Games at a time, after host cities were selected. In June, NBC paid $ 4.3 billion for the rights to the 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 Olympics, when only the 2014 and 2016 hosts were known.
What the future holds
The USOC sat out the bidding for the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics — which went to Sochi, Russia, and Pyeongchang, South Korea, respectively — and will be absent from the race for the 2020 Summer Games, which will be awarded next year.
Denver and Reno- Tahoe have approached the USOC about bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has said he is having discussions about Salt Lake City bidding to host again in 2022.
If the USOC were to bid for 2022, it would need to choose a candidate next year in order to get a campaign in place for the 2015 vote. For now, it has told all interested to wait until the revenuesharing issue is resolved, which could push the USOC to hold off until bidding for the 2024 Summer Olympics begins.