IOC expected to hold off on TV rights bids

December 11, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

With the current economic climate, the committee may wait until October.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — The International Olympic Committee is prepared to postpone the bidding on lucrative U.S. broadcast rights until after next year’s selection of the 2016 host city due to the economic downturn, the IOC’s top TV negotiator said Wednesday.

“In this economic climate, I don’t see us moving forward quickly because all the prognostications we are seeing are that advertising will be down,” IOC finance commission chairman Richard Carrion said. “I doubt very much this is a good time to begin talking. ... I don’t see us being very active on this right now.”

Carrion said it’s quite possible the IOC will hold off until after the Oct. 2, 2009, vote in Copenhagen, Denmark, on the host city for the 2016 Summer Games. The four candidates are Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo.

“In that sense, it removes some of the uncertainty which may work to our advantage or not,” Carrion, a banker from Puerto Rico, said during a break at IOC executive board meetings.

The IOC will be selling the broadcast rights in a package for both the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, and the 2016 Olympics.

Traditionally, the IOC has negotiated the rights before the host city is known, but the recession has changed the approach this time. The networks would also rather wait to know if the Olympics will be on home soil in Chicago.

“They always prefer to wait,” Carrion said.. “It’s a matter of eliminating uncertainty. It’s much easier to formulate a bid if you know exactly where the two places are going to be.”

The Summer Olympics haven’t been held in the United States since Atlanta in 1996. If Chicago gets the games, the IOC could expect much higher bids from the U.S. networks.

Carrion said he has spoken only informally with U.S. networks, including NBC, ABC-ESPN and Fox, about the next round of bidding.

“Right now I think the whole mood is very negative on the economy and the advertising market is scheduled to go down,” he said.

Due to the nine-hour time difference with the U.S. East Coast, the Sochi Winter Games are not particularly attractive to the American networks. Among the 2016 finalists, Tokyo and Madrid would pose big time differences, while Rio would be just one hour ahead.