"We have got a dedicated team here who are focusing on the 2013-2016 sale of rights.

"We have spent a significant portion of time on developing a strategy and plan for those rights sales.

"We have hired two great individuals from LOCOG.

"We have had strategic consultants working with us on it during the period before they joined us and we have a clear plan about selling those rights to ensure that going forward out of 2012 we have got a much more sustainable revenue stream and...that our revenue is as well-planned as our delivery.

"So we are not having to year by year go out and try and invent properties and create assets to fulfil our need.

"We have got a four-year plan, an eight-year plan which delivers a continuous stream of revenues.

"We have done substantial work on that and we go to market in September.

"Our plan is to make Team GB a much more week-in-week-out brand than one that the British public think about every two or four years.

"I think we are going to find ourselves with a great legacy of much more sustainable revenues, which allow the organisation then to focus even more of its efforts on delivering fantastic services for our athletes and sports."

This is not to say that covering the costs associated with the biggest British Olympic team for a century is not a challenging prospect.


In an in-depth interview at the BOA's Charlotte Street headquarters, Hunt (pictured) acknowledges that, having just announced a better-than-expected profit of £235,873 ($379,664) for 2010, the body is likely to sink back into the red this year.

"We have [the European Youth Olympic Festival in] Trabzon; we just had [its winter sports  counterpart in] Liberec and we're also planning obviously for [the inaugural Winter Youth Olympic Games in] Innsbruck in January as well...so we've got another almost three Games running before we get to 2012," he says.

"We look at 2012 in the round.

"In the round, when you look at those two financial years, our business plan actually says it will break even.

"Our plan is to break even over the 2011-2012 period...

"If you think about the activation programmes that we will be running up to the [London] Games, a lot of them actually only kick in in 2012...so there's a bit of a phasing issue.

"If you look back historically...it is very much cyclical across the quadrennium."

He puts the cost of sending the British team that enjoyed such success in Beijing three years ago at about £8 million ($13 million).

The price-tag for London 2012 will be higher.

"[It] is more because the scope and remit of what we are going to deliver is substantial," Hunt says.

"We are going to have 550 athletes, 450 accredited officials and 300 volunteers...

"I'm supporting an overall delegation of 1,300 people."

He says this is nearly double the size of the party that went to Beijing.

"The most important thing is we have spent the last two-and-a-half years making sure we absolutely have a plan for how we get it done," he goes on.

"A lot of that is through the activation programmes with sponsors, through the fundraising work we are doing.

"Those activation programmes with sponsors are critical to our success, as is the fantastic generosity of the high-net-worth individuals who support Team 2012.

"I pretty much know on a week by week basis when contracts are going to land, what they are going to deliver to get us to the endgame that we need in the round across 2011 and 2012 to deliver a balanced budget along the lines that we described."

I put it to Hunt that the aggression with which the BOA set about its dispute with the London 2012 Organising Committee earlier this year could be interpreted as another sign that the BOA expected to find it difficult to make ends meet post-2012.


Under a peace deal reached only after an embarrassingly bitter dispute, BOA chairman Colin Moynihan (pictured with Hunt) was forced to accept defeat in his argument that any surplus from the Games should be calculated before the costs of the Paralympics were taken into account.

"The directors of this organisation had a fiduciary duty to ensure that any contractual obligations were going to be adhered to," Hunt responds.

"Importantly, what the dispute has done is bring real clarity around a number of areas.

"It has brought clarity around how the surplus will be distributed and it has allowed us to agree a range of ways in which we can work more closely with LOCOG in supporting our commercial programmes to get us through to the Games, in operational benefits that will help us ensure the success of Team GB at the Games and, importantly it has lifted the bar on us being able to go out and sell the rights for 2013-16.

"The 2013-16 rights, under the Joint Marketing Programme Agreement [under which commercial sponsorship rights up to and including London 2012 have been sold to LOCOG], we actually couldn't commence sales on those until I think nearly the middle of next year...

"It wasn't actually embedded into the agreement within the dispute, but LOCOG have been incredibly supportive.

"There are commitments they have made around supporting our 2013-16 rights sales which absolutely come out of the settlement of the dispute.

"That is important because one of the legacies I want from this...is continuity.

"Continuity of revenues allows the organisation to focus on what it really needs to do."

So did the upside from the dispute outweigh the very evident downside?

"I think I have said consistently that it would always be good to have had that clarity without having to have had the dispute," he says.

"We strived for about 15 months to absolutely deal with this as stakeholders and partners together.

"It's unfortunate it came into the public domain.

"It was unnecessary that it came into the public domain in that way.

"I think almost every single letter of communication that ever passed between us made it very clear we wanted to deal with this in a spirit of partnership, sitting around a table with whatever stakeholder it might have been and we consistently upheld that view.

"But, look, it's kind of behind us and we have very much moved on from it.

"The partnership with LOCOG is stronger than ever, absolutely stronger than ever."

As the countdown to the London Games enters its most critical phase, Lausanne will expect nothing less.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938