The IOC Is Urged To Discuss Changes For The 2028 Olympics
Olympic sports bodies want urgent talks with the IOC about possible cuts in their revenue shares and athlete quotas at the 2028 Los Angeles Games because cricket and other newcomers were added to the program. The International Olympic Committee last month approved cricket, baseball/softball, flag football, lacrosse and squash for 2028 and kept boxing, modern pentathlon and weightlifting, three sports whose status had been in doubt. Most Olympic sports got $13 million to $17.3 million from the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021. For some, that was about half of their total income over four years. Adding four team sports in 2028 also will push the IOC to extend its preferred limit of 10,500 athletes at a Summer Games and likely will put pressure on the core Olympic sports to cut their allowed number of athletes. The IOC has set a target of early 2025 to confirm final quotas. ASOIF’s ruling council agreed Monday “to raise these urgent matters with the IOC leadership” after meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland. Track and field got $38.5 million after the Tokyo Games, while gymnastics and swimming each got about $31.4 million of the IOC’s total revenue from broadcasters and sponsors of $7.6 billion from 2017-21. Optimization is the current Olympic buzzword for trimming costs and services to help organizers control spending. “These are the issues that hugely impact (international federation) operations and have far-reaching effects on the entire Olympic movement,” Ricci Bitti said in a statement. “I would like to reiterate that the federations of the new sports proposed by the (Los Angeles) organizing committee do not have to be included in the ASOIF revenue sharing model,” Bach told them. ASOIF cautioned its members Monday about their involvement in a potential rival to the Olympics. The Russian Olympic Committee remains suspended by the IOC but individuals can still be invited by some sports to compete as neutral athletes in international events if they don’t publicly support the war in Ukraine and don’t have ties to the military or state security agencies.