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Juan Antonio Samaranch, one of the leading contenders to run the International Olympic Committee, has called for immediate reviews of the Games’ sponsorship and media deals as he pitches private equity firms on an unprecedented $1 billion investment partnership.
The Spanish investment banker and son of a former IOC president of the same name is one of seven contenders to succeed Thomas Bach, who has led the organization since 2013. He’s presenting himself as the candidate with the strongest business experience to run an organization whose revenues reached $7.6 billion in its last four-year cycle. Samaranch, currently an IOC vice president, is seen as one of three frontrunners ahead of the March 20 vote in Greece, alongside Olympic medalists Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe and Sebastian Coe of Great Britain.
The IOC’s marketing program, which governs more than $2 billion in sponsorship from brands including Alibaba, Coca-Cola, and Samsung, “needs immediate attention,” Samaranch told Semafor.
He wants to allow a wider array of companies to associate themselves with the Olympic rings, including from industries and countries that were not previous sponsors, saying “we have to be an extraordinarily efficient business machine to raise the money to be able to do what we do.”
His manifesto proposes creating “new levels of ‘partnership’ with more dynamic opportunities for companies to engage with the Olympic Movement,” including new types of promotional exposure.
Three Japanese sponsors — Bridgestone, Panasonic, and Toyota — decided last year not to renew their deals, but Samaranch said appetite from companies wanting to associate with Olympic values was “higher than ever.” The 2024 Games in Paris drew record television and digital audiences after disappointing figures for the Tokyo Olympics, which were delayed from 2020 to 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The next IOC president will also have to renegotiate broadcast deals that bring in more than 60% of the organization’s revenues at a time when traditional broadcasters are losing viewers to digital streaming services and social media sites. The largest of the IOC’s broadcast deals — a $7.65 billion agreement with NBCUniversal — expires in 2032.
The IOC could not renegotiate those contracts immediately, Samaranch acknowledged, but he said the next president should convene its media partners to see how technologies that were “not thought of when we signed those contracts” could be used to improve Olympic broadcasts. “We have to make sure that all renewals and all new efforts have to take into consideration that we all take advantage, jointly as partners, of the opportunities that AI and other technologies bring,” he said.
“The model is not broken,” he added, “so I don’t see a revolution [is] needed.” At the same time, he said the Olympic movement should stay ahead of what could be a “brutal” pace of change.
Samaranch, a founder of Madrid investment bank GBS Finance, said he had tested his idea of partnering in a $1 billion private equity fund with finance industry contacts and it had been “pretty well received.” Under the plan, the IOC would contribute its knowledge and rally the sporting community behind investors looking to put capital into under-monetized leagues.
“Sport is becoming an investment class” in which the IOC could help institutional investors direct funds “in a very intelligent way,” he noted. The IOC would participate in the fund’s returns, he added, but would not favor one sport over another in its administration of the Games based on its investment decisions.
Samaranch’s proposals on advertising, media rights, and private equity funding are part of his pitch to the IOC’s 109 members that he has the experience to manage and expand the organization’s multibillion-dollar budget.
“I’ve been negotiating deals for 40 years,” he said. “I have the relationships with the corporate world, and I’m used to dealing with them at the highest level.”
Step Back
Samaranch, a former perfume salesman who worked for First Boston and SG Warburg in the 1980s, co-founded GBS Finance in 1991, where he said he advised clients on deals ranging from $100 million to above $5 billion.
The longstanding member of Spain’s National Olympic Committee, whose father led the IOC from 1980 to 2001, said he was proud of his last name. But “I don’t expect anyone to think that I would make a good president because my father was a president 25 to 45 years ago,” he added.
The elder Samaranch — a former sports official in Franco’s Spain — was credited with transforming the IOC’s finances and deftly handling diplomatic challenges after a period marked by boycotts. But his 21-year tenure also saw doping scandals and allegations of bribery over the choice of Salt Lake City to host the 2002 winter Olympics.
Samaranch said he was a different person from his father, and the world was different now from his father’s era. “Nothing that was done then and there, which was very remarkable, is going to be of any relevance or help for the new generations of leaders at the IOC,” he said.
Now What?
Whoever the IOC members choose as president will face a host of challenging decisions ranging from the treatment of transgender athletes to whether restrictions on Russian athletes should be lifted. Samaranch contends that the IOC needs to stay true to its values of universality and neutrality while navigating culture wars.
“We’d better succeed in doing that, otherwise, we are doomed,” he said. “We are like a little boat in the middle of the ocean. So we better be good diplomats in order to try to have the necessary connections and the alliances … because we don’t have big bank accounts and big armies or big anything. But we have a set of values that work and are necessary in the world.”