[ARETE] The Gold in the Rings

Sun Nov 21 13:58:23 CST 2021

All,
Please find below and attached Jeff Seagrave's review of Stephen Wenn and
Robert Barney's *The Gold in the Rings*.
Duncan

Reviewed Jeffrey O. Segrave

Department of Health and Human Physiological Sciences

Skidmore College

Saratoga Springs, NY 12866

Email: jsegrave at skidmore.edu

Word count (body): 1012

Wenn, Stephen, and Robert Barney. *The Gold in the Rings: The People and
Events that Transformed the Olympic Games.* Champaign, IL: University of
Illinois Press, 2020, 336 pages.

*The Gold in the Rings* is the suitable companion to the authors’ two other
books on the topic of the “business” of the modern Olympic Game,
namely *Selling
the Five Rings: The International Olympic Committee and the Rise of
Commercialism* (2004) and *Tarnished Rings: The International Olympic
Committee and the Salt Lake City Bid Scandal* (2011).  Taken collectively,
Wenn and Barney’s trilogy represent some of the very best Olympic
scholarship, clearly cementing the reputation of both as two of our most
distinguished and accomplished Olympic historians.

At heart, *The Gold in the Rings* is about Olympic “money matters,” and,
given the fact that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is awash in
money of late, the book captures in fascinating detail the intricate story
of the transformation of the Olympics from an early 20th century financial
curiosity into a 21st century commercial behemoth, from a prominent global
sports enterprise into an equally prominent global commercial phenomenon,
an expression of what Olympic historian Jules Boykoff calls celebration
capitalism. From a more ideological perspective, *The Gold in the Rings*
traces the ways in which the Olympics have emerged out of a system of
international politics and diplomacy undergirded by a liberal capitalist
world order. More specifically, *The Gold in the Rings* traces the growth
of the Olympics as a contemporary commercial mega-institution from Avery
Brundage’s IOC Presidency (1952-72) to the Presidency of Jacques Rogge
(2001-2013). The more recent Thomas Bach years (2013-date) are only dealt
with in brief.

The book has two primary goals: first, to isolate and discuss milestone
events that illuminate the financial history of the IOC in terms of revenue
generation, and second, to offer insights into some of the significant and
influential characters that powered the story. In short, the book seeks to
identify and assess the key people and moments that shaped the IOC’s role
as guardian of the Games and its brand in the age of increasing
commercialization and globalization.

As a narrative vehicle to anchor their analysis of the IOC’s transformation
from a once financially constrained organization into what is now an
organization of significant wealth and corporate power, the authors
identify ten key events, events generally linked to growth in television
rights and corporate sponsorship. The ten events include those that: (1)
triggered or further solidified the power of the Olympic brand, namely, the
dispute between businessman Paul Helms and Avery Brundage, the watershed
1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the privatization of the local organizing
committee, and the establishment of the highly successful “Total Olympic
Program”; (2) involved policy formulations that heralded meaningful and
lasting change in the “bottom line” of the Olympic Tripartite (the IOC, the
International Federations of Sport and the National Olympic Committees),
namely, Melbourne 1956 and media rights negotiations, the adoption of the
Rome Formula, and negotiations concerning the European Television Market;
(3) challenged the IOC’s authority with respect to the distribution of
commercial revenue, namely Willie Daume and the television legacy of 1972,
and the Broadcasting Marketing Agreement; (4) forced the IOC to confront
the ethical conduct of some of its members and its own managerial failures
to protect its image and revenue-generating capacity, namely, the Salt Lake
City Bid Scandal; and (5) launched the discussions that resulted in the
resolution of the IOC’s contentious and long-contested relationship with
the Unites States Olympic Committee (USOC) concerning the distribution of
commercial revenue, namely the 2009 IOC Copenhagen Session.

What flavors the account of these defining moments is the authors’
description of some of the pivotal personalities who animated and defined
them. The authors depict both events and characters and integrate them in
ways that both entertain, instruct and bring to life the epic saga of the
emergence of the modern Olympic Movement as a corporate colossus. Among the
many personalities that the authors depict may be included well-known
celebrities such as NBC Olympic Impresario Dick Ebersol, ABC’s Roone
Arledge, Adidas’ Horst Dassler, and Los Angeles Olympic Games Organizing
Committee President Peter Ueberroth, and less well-known figures like
Brundage’s legal advisor John Terrence McGovern, the President of the
Melbourne Olympic Games Organizing Committee Wilfrid S. Kent Hughes,
Intelicense’s President and CEO Stan Shefler, and the USOC’s Barber
Conable.

In order to offer insights into the financial side of the Olympic
operation, the authors rely on a variety of sources, including IOC Archives
and numerous interviews with North American and English-speaking
personalities, most notably IOC member, Canadian Richard Pound, Director of
IOC Marketing Services Michael Payne, former USOC CEO Scott Blackmun, and
IOC Director of Television and Marketing Services Timo Lumme. Moreover, the
book is heavily documented with 50 pages of endnotes, a 27-page
bibliography, and a 9-page index.

Needless to say, the authors had to make necessary strategic decisions
about which moments and which personalities to include in their extensive
analysis. They could easily have landed on other critical moments in the
revenue-generating story of the modern Games, including IOC President Juan
Antonio Samaranch’s successful campaign to open up the Olympics to
professional athletes in the 1980s, or, the passage of the Amateur Sports
Act by the United State Congress in 1978 and the emergence of the quarrel
between the IOC and the USOC, and there are a plethora of other crucial
actors that they could easily have focused on, such as Salt Lake City’s
Mitt Romney. But, in the end, it is hard to fault the choices the authors
make in their efforts to reveal the detailed mechanics of the IOC’s
financial success story.

The ultimate result is a meticulous and absorbing account of one of the
most intriguing and interesting dimensions of the modern Olympic Games,
namely their transformation into a commercial mega-bonanza. For those who
are less interested in the minutia of business and finance, *The Gold in
the Rings* may well be tiresome and tedious. But, for those of us who are
drawn to the historical inner workings of the world’s most successful
international multi-sport mega-event and the world’s single most important
global ritual, it is engrossing, brilliantly constructed and told, and
profoundly informative and edifying, a most worthwhile read.

Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
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