Conflicts of the Olympic Movement between Globalization and the Existing American Power

Abstract

Globalization of sport has been debated in two opposing directions; one is to refer that sport is a part of the processes of Americanization in the world or westernization in the Third World (Kidd, 1991; Klein, 1991); the other is to mention that sport is getting more de-Americanzied than ever, sport transcends the confines of the United States, and that many nations are getting more actively involved in international sporting institutions including international politics and business than ever (McKay & Miller, 1991). The latter case has been referred to "Diminishing Contrast and Increasing Varieties" (Maguire, 1994). It means that in the international sport world, the weight of the United Stats has been decreased and that of other countries, in particular the Third World countries, has been increased, resulting in increasing international varieties and diversities with regard to politics, business and cultural exchanges in sporting world. The globalization of Olympic Movement, characterizing the expansion of Olympic marketing outside from United States and Western world, seems to be the latter case of globalization mentioned above. It has revealed "Losing weight of US/Western domination and increasing international varieties". Olympic Marketing, in particular, seeks to create continuing long-term marketing programs and to build on and support the successful activities developed by each Organizing Committee, thus ensuring the financial stability of the Olympic Movement (IOC, 2005). And it also seeks to ensure appropriate distribution of revenue throughout the Olympic Movement, including future Organizing Committees, National Olympic Committees, International Federations and other recognized organizations (IOC, 2005). To keep financial stability, one direction has been the dependency upon US corporate sponsorship and US TV network, NBC which has paid more than half of the total broadcasting fee. However, the other direction has revealed the globalization process which is characterized through the increase in Olympic televising countries and hours by each country and the decrease of US proportion in broadcasting revenue structure by continent. The globalization process, de-Americanization and de-Westernization has appeared in the composition change of IOC members by continent; in 1991, IOC members from North America, Europe, and Oceania composed of 63.4% but in 2004, they occupied 56.3% of IOC. This paper was intended to figure out which direction has been developed in terms of the globalization of Olympic movement by reviewing Olympic marketing programs. The trends of broadcasting and corporate sponsorship were analyzed because these two revenue sources are composed of 90% of all Olympic marketing revenues. The document study including internet search was employed for this study. The results show that the globalization away from US is well going on in spite of the existence of the strong influence of US corporation and TV networks. Asian countries, in particular Korea and China are going to make a great contribution to Olympic globalization.