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

59 The business of athletics In the words of London Marathon founder Chris Brasher at the 1984 AGM of the AAA, “ athletics had won the pools ”. And so it seemed. In their accounts for the year ended 31 March 1985, the AAA and the BAAB had included income from television rights fees of £57,332 and £190,876 respectively. ITV’s winning bid meant that the AAA and BAAB’s combined income from television leapt more than eightfold, to £2.1 million per year, guaranteed for five years. And this was not all as the deal with ITV greatly improved the potential for income from sponsors, which should be the icing on the cake. The sponsorship selling rights were contracted to Alan Pascoe’s company APA as he had guaranteed that the net income over the same five year period would be not less than £3m. Thus the sport had an assured income for five years, provided that it continued to promote televised events of the right quality. Athletics was now riding the crest of a wave (what Tony Ward, in his book of the same name, described as The Golden Decade ) with superstar athletes and undreamed of income. What could possibly go wrong? Let’s go back a while. In 1985, with the advent of big money from TV and sponsors, the AAA and BAAB could be rightly satisfied that they had capitalised on the renown of Britain’s successful athletes in a big way. But such a huge expansion in the commercial activities of the sport needed a totally new approach to its management. Arthur McAllister and Bill Evans, who were the chairmen of the AAA and BAAB respectively, recognised this but lacked the business and management skills to introduce an effective system. They did at least realise that Andy Norman, the brains behind the increasingly popular events, needed to be tied in with a formal contract (indeed, ITV had demanded it) and he became the paid Promotions Officer, engaged jointly by the AAA and the BAAB. To manage what were quite complex contracts with ITV and APA, the AAA and the BAAB established the Joint Standing Committee (JSC), a (thankfully small) group comprising the three officers of the AAA and the BAAB respectively.