Sport: Eve of a New Olympics

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So it was a straight business proposition, and it began, as all sports ventures do today, with television negotiations. The record $87 million price that NBC had attached to the U.S. rights at the Moscow Games in 1980 seemed a lot, but apparently not to Movie Producer David L. Wolper, chairman of the L.A.O.O.C.'s TV committee. "Getting the Games does two things for a network," says Wolper. "One, it sells sponsorships and gets its initial investment back. But also, the Olympics has by far the highest rating during that period of July and August. So the network has the opportunity to publicize its upcoming programs." According to Wolper, ABC in 1976 jumped from third to first in the ratings war on the springboard of Montreal. "They used the Olympic Games to sell their fall season," he says.

Obviously, a domestic Olympics is the most desirable of all. Because the U.S. is host, several American teams that ordinarily might have difficulty qualifying—soccer, field hockey, team handball—are admitted automatically. The U.S. is also entitled to select "demonstration sports," and has chosen baseball and tennis. With American competitors in such abundance, Wolper thought $200 million would not be unreasonable. Outbidding CBS, NBC and an independent consortium that included Norman Lear, ABC paid $225 million. Including foreign rights, broadcast revenues should exceed $300 million, one-third of which goes to the International Olympic Committee.*

Many of the advertisers TV put the bite on had already been severely bitten by Ueberroth. In past Olympics, corporate sponsorships ran $150,000 to $200,000 at most and were something less than exclusive. Montreal associated itself with 168 official products; Moscow signed up 200. Ignoring everything Baron de Coubertin had said about dignity, the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., found 381 buyers for the Olympic label, including an official chewing tobacco. By contrast, the L.A.O.O.C. has held down the number of sponsors to 30, but the charge is a minimum $4 million for each (Lake Placid collected $9 million total), and in most cases that represents just a down payment.

"They also have to provide their services, if they have a service we can use," Ueberroth says. "IBM is going to do the computerization of the Games; AT&T is helping with communications." Since the L.A.O.O.C. had no need for hamburgers, McDonald's built the swimming pool, one of only two major new constructions. The other is the cycling velodrome, contributed by the Southland Corp., owners of the 7-Eleven stores. "We were told that only two facilities needed to be built, a swim stadium and a velodrome," says Southland Executive Bill Scott. "We wanted to build the swim stadium, but when we got back to the Olympic Committee we were too late. We thought about it and then told them, 'All right, we'll build the other thing. What do you call it again, a velodrome?' "