Rivals and Revolutionaries: Avery Brundage, the Marquess of Exeter and Olympic Television Revenue

Abstract

Avery Brundage and David Cecil (the Marquess of Exeter) were the two key figures who established the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) first series of policies on the distribution of Olympic television revenue in the late 1950s and 1960s. An analysis of their efforts, gleaned through an examination of their correspondence in the Avery Brundage Collection, demonstrates that television money served as a source of conflict for member organizations of the Olympic Tripartite (IOC, national Olympic committees [NOCs] and international sport federations [ISFs]). The first formal policy devised in order to accommodate all three parties, known as the ‘Rome formula (1966)’, satisfied neither the ISFs (who believed they deserved a larger share) nor the organizing committees (OCOGs), who believed that too large a percentage had been reserved for the Olympic Tripartite. The ‘Rome formula’, argued OCOGs, revealed the IOC's failure to recognize the growing financial burden of hosting Olympic festivals. This episode was the first chapter in the continuing story of discussion and debate concerning the manner in which Olympic television money is divided, and it foreshadowed the reality that conflict would be a consistent theme in these discussions. This paper explores the manner in which Brundage and Cecil facilitated the IOC's embrace of the television industry and its revenue potential, as well as their concerns about changes that it would bring to the IOC and amateur sport.