Summer Feds Pass on Money Review -- On the Scene

(ATR) ASOIF will not request an IOC review of the positions of member federations within the hierarchy of revenue distribution until at least 2020.

The summer federations are divided into five categories - A through E - for the purpose of distributing their share of the money earned by the IOC through staging the Games. These rankings are typically reworked after each Summer Games.

"Everyone expects to move up, so when they get the letter saying they’ve gone down … it’s very painful," said ASOIF executive director Andrew Ryan.

ASOIF will avoid that pain this Games cycle. At its general assembly on Wednesday, the federations agreed not to request an evaluation from the IOC after Rio 2016.

"We believe that, because we describe ourselves as ‘the house of the common position,’ it’s divisive for us to get involved, so we request the IOC [for help in determining the categories]."

The idea is to move toward a model where each sport is judged on a broader cycle - perhaps three Games, according to Ryan - rather than subject to the variations to which individual sports can be subject from Games to Games.

"One of the criteria used is demand for tickets," said Ryan. "The demand for tickets for hockey in London was huge. In the country of Brazil, there is one hockey pitch … one hockey pitch of any kind. One school hockey pitch.

"I don’t imagine the demand for tickets will be quite on the same scale."

After the last Summer Games, nine sports moved up and four were dropped a level. Swimming and gymnastics joined athletics in the A tier for the first time. Athletics will still out-earn the two others for the time being, but the gulf between the three A sports will shrink over time.

Rugby and golf, both of which return to the Olympics in 2016, enter in the E tier.

After the 2012 Games, the IOC allocated around $515 million to the federations. That number is expected to reach $530 million after Rio, though ASOIF says it would need $550 million just to maintain each federation’s take with two new federations joining in.

Written by Nick Devlinin Sochi

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