USOC Look To Heal IOC Rift

The USOC (United States Olympic Committee) will resume talks with the IOC (International Olympic Committee) today at the first Winter YOG (Youth Olympic Games) in Innsbruck, Austria.

The negotiations will seek to resolve the disagreements on revenue sharing between both parties which have blocked any possible American Olympic bid.

After failing to come to an understanding last year, the USOC chose not to bid on the 2020 Summer Olympics.

The discussions centre around the American share of Olympic television and marketing revenues which the IOC believes is too great and should be redistributed.

USOC chairman Larry Probst has said, “We’re making progress, slowly but surely. I think both sides want to make sure that this gets done correctly. That’s obviously taking some time”.

We’re hoping we can get to a resolution that both sides are comfortable with sometime in the not too distant future – sooner rather than later. There are a lot of moving parts and a lot of different constituencies need to be considered. It’s time consuming”.

USCOC CEO Scott Blackmun added, “We would love to host the Games. It’s important for us to keep Americans connected to the Games. But as we saw with New York’s bid and Chicago’s bid, while we have this dispute out there, it’s difficult for us to put together a bid that’s really going to resonate with the IOC.

We want to put ourselves in the best possible position to win a bid if we do in fact bid for another winter or summer Games”.

American cities have already expressed interesting in bidding for the 2022 Winter Games in anticipation of the resolution of the dispute. Denver has formed an exploratory committee whilst Reno-Lake Tahoe and Salt Lake City are also keen on bidding.