Athletics in the UK: The Rise and Fall of the BAF

58 THE BUSINESS OF ATHLETICS Introduction Since the end of the nineteenth century, organised athletics in Britain had been an amateur sport, managed by amateurs. For decades it operated on a shoestring, depending on a mixture of handouts from the public purse and unpredictable profits from international matches. There were some good times, with matches at London’s White City stadium in the 1950s attracting full houses, but interest in athletics started to decline and, despite the introduction of sponsorship (the first sponsored AAA championships were held in 1961), by 1967 the AAA was deeply in the red and facing possible bankruptcy. Some professional expertise had been introduced - the first paid coach, Geoffrey Dyson, had been appointed in 1947 and John Martell was appointed as National Administrator by the AAA in 1973 – but the sport remained dependent on honorary administrators, many of whom, it must be said, were highly capable and experienced. There was a resurgence of interest in the sport in the 1970s with the arrival of larger than life characters such as David Bedford, who set the Crystal Palace crowd alight with his world record breaking 10,000m run in 1973. Brendan Foster and Ian Stewart were winning medals and hard on their heels came superstars such as Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett, Daley Thompson, Tessa Sanderson, Fatima Whitbread, Steve Cram and David Moorcroft. This burst of interest, however welcome, did not immediately translate into commercial success and, although finances were easier, the BAAB was underfunded and, by the mid 1980s, had reserves of only £147,000 to service an annual expenditure of over half a million pounds; and remained dependent on public grants to pay for its professional coaches and international competition. The AAA, with fewer fixed commitments than the BAAB, had managed to accumulate reserves of around £300,000. A major breakthrough came in 1985 when ITV outbid the BBC for the rights to televise athletics in Britain.