Aggressive America: Media nationalism and the ‘war’ over olympic pictures in sport's ‘golden age’

Abstract

During the 1920s the Olympic Games became a valuable commodity in the burgeoning global sports market. Sensing an opportunity to increase revenues dramatically, theorganizing committees for the 1924 Paris Games and 1928 Amsterdam Games created exclusive monopolies to sell still and motion picture rights of Olympic events. This new arrangement radically altered the traditional relation between the media and sportspromoters. Media conglomerates in the US and in other nations vociferously protestedthe new practice. In the US newsreel companies and press agencies sought the help of thefederal government to break the new monopoly on picture rights. The resistance failed. Olympic organizers seized ownership of visual images of the modern Games, paving the way for the lucrative television contracts that later enriched the International Olympic Committee.