● From our sister site, TheSportsExaminer.com ●
There are no formal celebrations planned, no gathering of former staff members, not even a documentary to re-run on cable television. But 39 years ago – 28 July 1984 – was the date on which the Olympic Movement pivoted to the future.
The Games of the XXIIIrd Olympiad was held in Los Angeles, although many predicted it would not be held at all. Consider:
● 1968/Mexico City: The post-men’s 200 m protest by Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos was a civil rights protest icon from the moment it happened. Less well remembered was the 2 October Tlatelolco massacre just 10 days prior to the Games, in which hundreds of protestors were killed and more than 1,300 injured by elements of police and army units.
● 1972/Munich: The most technically advanced and brilliantly-organized Olympic Games so far was halted by Palestinian terrorists who invaded the Olympic Village and killed or took hostage 11 members of the Israeli delegation, all of whom were later killed.
● 1976/Montreal: The Games was held successfully, but ran a deficit of more than C$1 billion that was not paid off for 30 years, and was symbolized by the Stade Olympique, whose planned roof wasn’t installed until 1987.
It was against this backdrop that the Southern California Committee for the Olympic Games, a private group formed in 1939 after the successful 1932 Los Angeles Games, bid once again, barely getting the U.S. Olympic Committee designation over New York. Los Angeles had bid and lost to Montreal in 1970 and Moscow in 1974, but was ready to go again for 1984.
In response to the Montreal financial disaster, bid chief John Argue famously wrote in his introduction to the sports technical questionnaire, “Arrangements are to be Spartan,” and at the 31 October 1977 bid deadline to the IOC, no one else wanted the Games.
The tense negotiations that followed finally ended with the IOC awarding the Games to Los Angeles in October 1978, followed by a November vote by Los Angeles citizens banning any City expenditure on the Games that was not reimbursed, by 78%-22%.
The Games would live or die with the private sector. It thrived. Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee President Peter Ueberroth, quietly advised by famed film and television producer David Wolper, astonished the sports and business worlds with the $225 million sale of U.S. television rights to the Games to ABC in 1979; the most any U.S. broadcaster had previously spent was $87 million.
Ueberroth, working with former Mattel marketing exec Joel Rubenstein, designed a new approach to corporate sponsorship that narrowed the number of affiliates from hundreds to a mere 35 sponsors and 64 suppliers, and attracted a then-unheard of $127 million in cash and hundreds of millions more in in-kind support to the LAOOC. The LA84 experience created the modern corporate sponsorship model used today.
The Montreal finances made Argue and Ueberroth determined to build as little as possible and only three new venues were constructed: a velodrome at Cal State Dominguez Hills that later became what is now the multi-sport Dignity Health Sports Center, a swimming pool at USC that is still heavily used today and a shooting range in Chino that is also still going strong. And that was just the beginning:
● Neither the IOC or any international sports organization believed in the concept of volunteers to help operate events, but volunteerism was already deeply rooted in Los Angeles. Some 33,500 came out to assist in 1984 and changed the way large sporting events are run forever.
● An experiment shepherded by Executive Vice President/General Manager Harry Usher turned into the wildly-successful “Festive Federalism” design scheme that replaced the expected red, white and blue theme with miles of utilitarian fence fabric, streamers, Sonotubes, tents and scaffolding in aqua, magenta, yellow, orange, lavender, blue and more that gave the Games an exciting, uplifting feeling.
● A first-ever national Torch Relay took the Olympic flame from New York to Los Angeles across 82 days and raised $10.95 million for the Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCA and Special Olympics.
● Instead of the required cultural sideshow during the Games, a massive Olympic Arts Festival was staged for 10 weeks, starting 1 June and energizing the dance, music, opera, theater and visual arts scene in Southern California, drawing more than 1.25 million.
● New technologies came to the Games, including early versions of voice mail and electronic mail and even one of the first mobile telephones available in California.
All of this, plus memorable opening and closing ceremonies orchestrated by Wolper, led to a brilliant Games that drew a then-record 5.72 million ticket sales, with tickets priced as low as $3. The competitions produced stars such as Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses and Mary Lou Retton that sent ABC’s ratings into the stratosphere.
The true beginning of the soccer revolution in America? FIFA’s stunned reaction to the 101,799 who attended the Brazil-France final at the Rose Bowl, which led directly to the U.S. being awarded the 1994 FIFA World Cup, followed by the founding of Major League Soccer.
A record 140 nations attended the Games, even with a Soviet-led boycott by 14 countries, in retaliation for the 1980 U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Games. At the end, the LAOOC had produced an aesthetic success that also created a $232.5 million surplus – the first for an Olympic Games since Los Angeles in 1932 – that created the still-in-operation LA84 Foundation, with 60% given to the U.S. Olympic Committee and the national governing bodies, monies still supporting athletes today as the U.S. Olympic Endowment.
It was a success beyond all expectations, except to those who worked on the project and saw it grow. Despite the efforts of revisionist historians over the following 20 years who tried to play down the Los Angeles success, the 1984 Games is seen as validating the Olympic concept and changing the direction of the Olympic Movement toward its financial juggernaut status of today.
Ueberroth is now 86; Argue, Usher, Wolper and then-Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a key player in getting the Games and then ensuring the City bureaucracy worked with the LAOOC instead of against it, have all passed. But the health of the Olympic Movement, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and so many other groups that support sport today was made possible by the success of the Games that opened 39 years ago today.
~ Rich Perelman
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