The Sochi and Rio Games brought the global Olympic movement’s financial growth to a sudden halt, according to figures recently released by the International Olympic Committee.
After at least 20 years of double-digit growth, the four-year revenue generated by the international movement’s five primary sources of income declined in the period ending in 2016. The two main culprits were domestic sponsorship in Brazil, where the run-up to the 2016 Summer Olympics coincided with a profound recession, and ticket sales in both Brazil and Russia.
The five buckets in question — broadcast rights, global sponsorship, and Games organizer-sold sponsorship, licensing and tickets — generated $7.8 billion from 2013-2016, down 3 percent from the Vancouver-London cycle ending in 2012.
In each of the previous four quadrennials dating to 1996, that figure grew by between 11 and 47 percent, expanding the global sum from $2.6 billion after the Atlanta Games to more than $8 billion after London.
Officials knew the Sochi-Rio cycle would post less aggressive growth, because by then the IOC had begun to exchange lower growth in broadcast rights in exchange for longer-term deals, namely with NBC. But while broadcast rights fees still grew by 8 percent, ticketing fell through the floor during the last cycle. Sochi and Rio combined to sell $527 million worth of tickets, down 57 percent from the high-water marks of the Vancouver-London cycle.
For the first time, a final figure on domestic sponsorships in Rio has been published: $848 million, which is far short of its own target of $1.2 billion and the lowest total for a single Games since Athens 2004. Also, Rio organizers claimed in 2015 — apparently falsely — that they’d reached the $1 billion threshold.
Looking ahead, there is reason to believe the Olympic movement will return to growth in the quadrennial ending in 2020.
Organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Games say they’ve already raised $2.8 billion in domestic sponsorships, which would more than double previous records. Pyeongchang 2018 officials have reached their $840 million target. Also, the global TOP (The Olympic Partner) program has added several new portfolio members since the IOC repriced the program, suggesting strong coming growth in that category as well.
The newly released figures do not reflect the consolidated financials of any single organization, but rather reflect the dominant sources of income for the IOC and its primary partners, the local Games organizers. The figures do not include commercial operations from the U.S. Olympic Committee and other national committees, which generally keep their domestic revenue (though the U.S. did contribute $10 million to the IOC to help offset Rio costs and $5 million for Sochi).
