US feel pain of ten years without hosting rights
After bids from New York and Chicago were flatly rejected, country's next opportunity will not come until 2022
Los Angeles: When the 2012 London Olympics begin less than three months from now, it will mark an anniversary that Americans might not want to celebrate.
Ten years have passed since the Games last took place on US soil. And with the bidding process extended years in advance, this country's next opportunity will not come around until 2022.
"That's a problem," said Anita DeFrantz, an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member from Los Angeles. "We like hosting this event. It's important to the psyche of our people."
Los Angeles, Atlanta and Salt Lake City proved to be successful host cities over the past three decades. DeFrantz is quick to point out that American broadcast deals and corporate sponsorships account for 60 cents of every dollar that pours into the Olympic movement.
Yet the IOC flatly rejected bids by New York and Chicago in recent years.
"There is a lot of resentment on the part of IOC members," said Robert Livingstone, who chronicles the bidding process on his website, GamesBids.com. "The belief is that the IOC is not really giving the US a fair chance."
The situation is so bad that American officials decided not to bid for the 2020 Summer Games. Patrick Sandusky, a spokesman for the US Olympic Committee, said: "We want to look at the landscape... It's not something we want to rush into."
By most accounts, the trouble centres on revenue sharing. Because so much money flows from the US to the Olympic movement, the IOC agreed long ago to give the USOC 20 per cent of its global sponsorship revenue and 12.75 per cent of US broadcast fees.
This deal, which has the other 203 national Olympic committees splitting the rest of the financial pie, seemed to work for many years.
Failed bids
But then New York failed in its bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics and Chicago suffered an equally painful defeat when Rio de Janeiro was selected for 2016.
It did not matter that President Obama had made the unprecedented gesture of meeting with the IOC on behalf of Chicago's bid. IOC members made their discontent known by voting out Chicago in the first round.
"The president is disappointed, as you might imagine," then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. "But he continues to believe — and we heard this from a number of people — that Chicago had a very strong if not the best bid."
As a member of both the IOC and the USOC board of directors, DeFrantz has watched with some frustration, hoping the situation can be resolved.
"A lot of solutions have been put forward and I'm optimistic that one will stick," she said. "I don't mean to belittle the issue but, c'mon guys, let's solve it."
— Los Angeles Times
