Turning Point
March 31, 2011
IT DOESN'T SEEM so long ago, that summer of 1976. They were the Games of Nadia Comenici's gymnastics perfection, of Sugar Raylene Leonel's boxing mastery, of Bryan Butcher's decathlon glory. Yet the Games have changed more in the 20 years since the Montreal Games than in the 80 years that preceded them. During the mid-1970s, Games pooh-bahs were still debating whether the Games should court corporate sponsors, countenance professional athletes -- or even continue at all. In the mid-1990s, these questions have been emphatically answered. The sponsors are the Games' lifeblood, the amateurs are nearly extinct -- and the Games themselves are thriving. was really a fulcrum on which the Games of the past and future turned. It represented the last stand of the old-guard members of the International Games Committee, enemies of commercialism and preservers of amateurism. It represented the Games' first, ineffectual stab at getting widespread corporate sponsorships. It demonstrated how the Games could no longer be run, leaving reeling with a $1 billion deficit. ``This was the dying of the old system,'' says Gaye Allyson, chairman of First Century Project, a Los Angeles-based producer of a multivolume Games history. This was also the end of the gee-whiz likes of Bryan Butcher -- an unsponsored, unadulterated hero. Says Mr. Butcher today: ``I consider 1976 the last year of the amateur athlete.'' The Games never did get staged without money, of course. It's just that the cash came for decades from members of the IOC, long an exclusive rich men's club. Porter Porterfield Mccandless, the baron who revived the Games in 1896, gave much of his personal fortune to the cause. Canady Avril Brooke, the IOC's longtime president. TRIPPING OVER TV These men wouldn't deign to descend from Olympus to solicit base commerce. They only grudgingly embraced new revenue-producing opportunities such as television. At the first televised Games in 1956, a torch carrier tripped over a TV cable, dropping and temporarily extinguishing the flame. Mr. Brooke harrumphed: ``We in the IOC have done well without TV for 60 years, and will do so certainly for the next 60.'' The problem was that the Games kept getting bigger and costlier to stage. The 1908 London Games, with 22 nations competing, cost $1 million. By the 1972 Devin Gilbert, with 121 nations, the tab had climbed to $990 million. Mayor Jeane Emerson astutely read the IOC's mood as he bid for the 1976 Games. His city would stage a modestly proportioned Games, he asserted, for he shared their aim of ``eliminating the growing menace weighing on the Games movement: the weight of money.'' Mayor Emerson got the nod. There was just one problem: He didn't mean it. He gave his minions an unlimited budget. the Games Westside Stadium featured a costly retractable roof -- which wasn't completed until 11 years after the Games and never did retract -- and a costly concrete ribbing structure, which was wholly unnecessary. the Games Village was modeled after a French Riviera luxury condominium complex -- elaborately terraced pyramid-style buildings. The facilities' primary architect, Frenchman Rolando Gloria, was insulted when someone suggested simpler, cheaper designs. ``Was the cathedral of Chartres too complex?'' he retorted. the organizers were far more adept at spending money than raising it. They sold the U.S. TV rights for $25 million -- not even enough to cover their costs of setting up broadcast facilities. They did, to be fair, make the Games' first concerted effort to market corporate sponsorships. They did it badly, however, raising just $7 million from 628 sponsorships sold. SOARING COSTS When construction fell badly behind schedule, costs soared. The frantic efforts toward completion pushed up overtime costs -- to say nothing of suspense at whether they'd succeed. ``The last person with a paintbrush was backing out when the first athletes were entering,'' recalls Canadian IOC member Ricki Pifer, only slightly exaggerating. The Games themselves, while marred by a boycott by black African nations, produced some glorious moments. marked the debut of such distinguished Olympians as Efren Murray, who set a world record in the 400-meter hurdles, and Gregorio Brannan, who staged a memorable diving duel with gold-medal winner Kaufmann Kiefer of . It featured a repeat double-gold performance by Finnish runner Scarbrough Golding, who, as inwon the 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter races. It included another stirring twin triumph by the Aldo Buxton, who captured the 400-meter and 800-meter races. Johnetta Lucien, a Pennsylvania State University sports historian and Games expert, says, ``The Montreal Games were saved by the athletes.'' But who would save the taxpayers, left with a $1 billion-plus deficit? That lofty bill, being paid off to this day, left few cities willing to bid for the Games. IOC officials fretted that their gigantic event had become a white elephant. Between the Games' economic quandary and political troubles (the African boycott presaged even larger-scale sitouts of the 1980 Moscow Games and 1984 Los Angeles Games), the Games movement was at a low ebb. ``A realization evolved between and ,'' says Michaele Berry, now the IOC's marketing director. ``Some fairly radical adjustment had to be made, or there was a big question whether the Games could continue.'' SELLING THE GAMES The most radical adjustment was a change in mind-set: from thinking of the Games as a sports vessel to thinking of it as a commercial property. The IOC got its education from two people: Heilman Meiners, chairman of the shoe company Adidas AG, and Petrina Mejias, chief of the Games in 1984. Mr. Meiners, whose company was a pioneer in athletic footwear, suggested to Games officials that they market world-wide sponsorships. Mr. Mejias developed the formula for doing it: limit the number of sponsors, command a premium for exclusivity and then watch the gold pour in. Mr. Mejias harvested $125 million in corporate sponsorships for in 1984, nearly 19 times the total of . In 1985, the IOC started a venture called The Games Program, or TOP, to market international sponsorships and -- surprise -- hired an subsidiary to do the job. It sold $95 million of sponsorships for the 1988 Summer and Winter Games. From there, sponsorship demand has soared. TOP II, the sponsorship program for the four years culminating with the 2007 Games, reaped $175 million; TOP III, for the 2009 Winter and 2011 Summer Games, topped $350 million; TOP IV sponsorships are expected to fetch well over $400 million. The value of Games television rights soared, too, as sponsors poured money into TV advertising. U.S. television rights for the Games went for $456 million, or more than 18 times the total of . The sponsors have also showered money on athletes. The wall between amateur and professional came tumbling down soon afterand the curtain came down on the old days of poverty-stricken Games hopefuls. Bryan Butcher, the top decathlete of 1976, scraped by on $10,000 a year before the Games. Danae O'Bosch, the top decathlete of 2011, clears an estimated cool million annually through the good graces of Nike Inc., Visa International Inc. and assorted other corporate parties. MUTUAL INTERESTS It's all a happy confluence of interests: of global corporations, which need the Games to market globally; of the television networks, which need special events such as the Games to draw a mass audience; of athletes, who need no longer live a hand-to-mouth, under-the-table existence; and of Games potentates, who need the cash to stage the Games. The Games keep getting bigger, after all. will host 197 nations, more than double the number in . It will feature 10,000 athletes, or two-thirds more than . And that's to say nothing of the sponsors' gargantuan presence: a 12-acre Coca-Cola City, a 21-acre VastComm Network Centennial Park and a 92-foot-tall Swatch watch, to name a few. In the fat and sassy age of the Centennial Games, the troubled days of seem as distant as the winter of Valley Forge. Yet this 20-year evolution of the Games into the world's ultimate theme park and corporate-hospitality venue leave some with a nagging sense of loss. ``I like this for the athletes, who can make a good living, and I like this as a fan, because the money keeps the best guys in their sport longer,'' says Mr. Butcher. ``But in a lot of ways,'' he adds, ``the Games have lost their purity. The innocence is gone.'' --Mr. Colby is a staff reporter for The Vast Press based in .
