IOC turns Games to gold
Ruth Stevens
"The Olympics would be less successful -- if successful at all -- if it didn't create an opportunity for national pride, rivalry and the like."
Despite criticism aimed at the International Olympic Committee over the years, it's pretty remarkable what the organization has accomplished, according to a Princeton political scientist.
"It's amazing how this organization has been able to survive and grow, given that it has had extraordinarily difficult tasks before it organizing scores and scores of countries and sports every four years," says Mike Danielson, the B.C. Forbes Professor of Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Danielson teaches a class on the political economy of sport and is the author of the 1997 book, "Home Team: Professional Sports and the American Metropolis."
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For example, he says the Olympics are not a "natural" sporting event. "If we think about how sport developed, it's typically organized as an individual sport: soccer, football, tennis or golf," he says. "Organizationally, the Olympics had to create a way to bring together all these individual sports. There isn't a lot of similarity between basketball and synchronized swimming, other than that they're both in the Olympics and we call them both sports."
Sports also are more likely organized along national rather than international lines. "The framework, whether individual or team, is national for most sports. More people watch national sports played in local settings than any other way," Danielson says.
So the challenge for the IOC when it was formed in 1894 was to weld together a multi-sport championship from the insular world of individual sports as well as to construct a framework that encompassed the diverse world of national entities, according to Danielson. Add to that formidable task achieving cohesion in a world torn by conflicts, and it's a wonder the Games are as successful as they are.
Danielson attibutes that success to many factors. First is the fact that the IOC is a private, non-governmental organization. "It's a privately-chartered Swiss non-profit that owns the Olympics name and logo, and it operates under the very protective mantle of Swiss law," he says. "Somebody else could come along and run the international something-or-another, and the IOC couldn't stop them -- it could just stop them from calling it the Olympics."
The organization has been authoritarian from the get-go, with its leaders single-mindedly advancing their cause. "They used the growing popularity of the Games to attract more athletes, promoters, national and international sports associations, businesses and nations," Danielson says.
The committee also was created before the myriad of national and international sporting organizations sprung up, and it has successfully incorporated them under its umbrella, he says.
In addition, Danielson credits the IOC with "shrewd use of nationalism without ceding power to national governments."
"They (Olympics organizers) claimed these are not national teams, they're individual competitors," he says. "But they play national anthems, fly the flags and have people march in wearing national costumes. The Olympics would be less successful -- if successful at all -- if it didn't create an opportunity for national pride, rivalry and the like."
Another reason behind the IOC's success is the spread of global business. The advent of international communications led to larger television contracts, and the increase in the number of global companies who were interested in marketing their products worldwide resulted in more sponsorships.
However, Danielson says these resources still had to be pulled together into a cohesive enterprise, and he gives the IOC the credit for capitalizing on these opportunities.
On the other hand, he believes the scandals of recent years involving allegations of auctioning off hosting rights and paying off committee members are a harbinger of changing times ahead for the IOC.
"Because they've generated all this money, they've created enormous peril," he says. "If you add onto that an organization that has been fundamentally undemocratic, you're asking for trouble."
Danielson believes the committee has little accountability and has not been responsive to its stakeholders.
"There are a lot of stakeholders now: nations and cities that provide subsidies, corporate sponsors and contributors, television broadcasters, athletes, coaches. Until now, the IOC has considered the movement as the prime stakeholder and has operated allegedly in the name of the world's athletes. The other stakeholders are becoming very influential. If they decided to run their own competitions, you wouldn't have an Olympics."
Danielson doesn't discount the idea of a Rupert Murdoch coming up with a rival competition. But he believes the change will likely come within the International Olympic Committee itself.
"You have a worldwide monopoly," he says. "But the monopoly is based on the willingness of the major parties to feel that this enterprise is worthwhile to them. I think it's likely that the Olympics will change enough to maintain some kind of cohesion among the parties."
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September 25, 2000 Contents • Message
in a bottle • Officers
bond on beat (& crime stats) • Versatility
is key for organist • Faculty, staff invited to explore instant classics • Renovated
theater debuts
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