Olympism knows no crisis. Money is (still) flowing freely. With, rare thing, double-digit growth. The success of the London Games will result in a 75% jump in revenue redistributed by the IOC to the international summer sports federations compared to the 2008 Games. The Olympic institution announced this from Saint Petersburg, in Russia, where the SportAccord convention is held.
In detail, the international federations will pocket around 400 million euros ($519,6 million). Four years earlier, the results of the Beijing Games had allowed them to share 296 million dollars. The difference leaves you speechless.
The sharing in question smacks of capitalism. The richest get the best shares, the less media-minded get the crumbs of the cake. The distribution of the jackpot is done according to a very precise system which takes into account tickets sold, television audiences, pages visited on the Internet and press coverage of the discipline. The IOC thus composed four groups of sports, named from A to D, then allocated a sum in millions of dollars to each.
In this game, athletics plays first in class. Unsurprisingly, the IAAF appears alone in Group A. Revenue from the London Games will bring it $47 million. In Group B, swimming, basketball, cycling, football, gymnastics, volleyball and tennis will each receive a check for $22 million. The third hat, which includes horse riding, handball, field hockey and rowing, will be allocated 16 million dollars by international federation. Finally, the IOC will pay 14 million dollars to each of the sports in Group D, the least well off: archery, badminton, boxing, canoeing, fencing, judo, modern pentathlon, sailing, shooting, tennis table, taekwondo, triathlon, weightlifting and wrestling.
But things will change. Jacques Rogge, the president of the IOC, announced it: the distribution of the jackpot will no longer be done in the same way following the Rio Games in 2016. The groups have been reviewed. And the hierarchy shaken up. Main changes: Athletics is no longer alone in the lead, where it is joined by swimming and gymnastics, and a Group E has been created, made up of the modern pentathlon and the two new entrants to the program, the golf and rugby sevens.
The group composition for the Rio 2016 Games is as follows:
Group A: athletics, swimming, gymnastics
Group B: basketball, cycling, football, tennis and volleyball
Group C: archery, badminton, boxing, judo, rowing, shooting, table tennis and weightlifting
Group D: canoeing/kayak, horse riding, fencing, handball, field hockey, sailing, taekwondo, triathlon and wrestling
Group E: modern pentathlon, golf and rugby.
