Candidates to lead Olympics body call for a shake-up of its business model

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The International Olympic Committee must shake up its business model or risk losing relevance with sponsors and sports fans, several of the candidates in the race to lead the organisation have said. 

Ideas floated by the seven people in the running to replace Thomas Bach as IOC president include partnering with private equity on a new investment fund, loosening the rigid approach to sponsorship and embracing viewers’ shift to streaming platforms. The IOC posted the candidates’ manifestos on its website on Thursday.

The septet, including a Jordanian prince, Zimbabwe’s sports minister and Lord Sebastian Coe, the British head of World Athletics, will make their pitches in Lausanne at the end of January before IOC members choose the body’s next leader at Athens in March. 

The election follows the Paris Olympics this summer, which drew record audiences after two pandemic-hit editions of the world’s most-watched sporting event. The 2021-24 period culminating in the Paris Games generated revenue for the IOC of $7.6bn, matching the amount brought in from the previous cycle ending with the delayed Tokyo Games.

But the IOC’s long-standing business model built on television rights and sponsorship is also coming under pressure from a rapidly changing media landscape and changing priorities from big corporate partners. Three Japanese companies left the IOC’s highest sponsorship tier this summer. 

David Lappartient, the French head of the International Cycling Union, said in his manifesto that the loss of Toyota, Panasonic and Bridgestone was a “stark reminder that we should take nothing for granted and that we need to constantly look for areas for improvement and embrace diversification”.

The IOC tightly controls the display of sponsors during Games, with no visible advertising allowed on or around the field of play. However, Samsung and LVMH were both allowed to promote their products on the medals podium during the Paris Games.

Coe, who chaired the London 2012 Games, said commercial partners wanted to see “modernisation” on the business side of the Olympics. 

“This is a changed landscape”, he told reporters last week. “You do need to have a much more flexible approach to the marketplace. More businesses, more people and more organisations in and out of sport have to touch the Olympics and Paralympics.”

Juan Antonio Samaranch, whose father of the same name led the IOC for two decades, said the organisation must find new sources of revenue in order to remain on a sustainable financial footing.

Describing sport as “new investment asset class”, he suggested tapping wealthy donors to help finance initiatives such as the Olympic Museum and the Olympic Refugee Foundation, and setting up a $1bn investment fund with money from private equity that could “produce significant income” for the IOC. 

“The IOC is uniquely positioned to work with the financial community to create and support innovative investment opportunities”, Samaranch, whose background is in investment banking, said in his manifesto. 

Johan Eliasch, the British-Swedish head of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, warned that the IOC business model faced “clear challenges”, as viewers prefer to watch content on online platforms rather than TV. Traditional broadcast deals account for about 60 per cent of IOC revenue, with the biggest slice coming from its $7.65bn deal with US network NBC, which runs until 2032.

“If we want access to fast-growing audiences and to amplify our storytelling, then we must open the door more widely to streaming services such as YouTube, Netflix, Apple and Amazon,” Eliasch said in his manifesto. “We must soon make a strategic decision on our future broadcast policy.”