Before 1980, many IOC (International Olympic Committee) members paid their own expenses to attend annual meetings. The administrative offices in the Chateau de Vidy had fewer than 10 staff.
World cities had to be begged to apply to host the Games after the financial disaster that was Montreal in 1976.
Then the boycott of the 1980 Games in Moscow.
Then the boycott of the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
Ted Turner started the Goodwill Games as an Olympic alternative. (Unfortunately they were discontinued in 2001.)
Finally the L.A. Games in 1984, out of nothing, made a profit of well over US$200 million.
The money began rolling in. By the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the IOC had a gross income of over US$4 billion for the quadrennial.
How did an organization so undemocratic, so un-businesslike, turn it around?
Much of the credit often goes to Dick Pound from Toronto, the front man in the steady stream of TV contracts and sponsorship deals with the world’s biggest corporations.
The definitive book on the subject is award winning Selling The Five Rings: The IOC and the Rise of the Olympic Commercialism (2002) by Barney, Wenn and Martyn.
But if you really want to get angry about the Olympic Movement, pick up the Lords of the Rings books:
The Lord of the Rings: Power, Money and Drugs In the Modern Olympics.
The New Lords of the Rings: Olympic Corruption and How to Buy Gold Medals
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