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

70 The BAAB goes bust But, in 1985, it seemed that a guardian angel had arrived that would solve all the sport’s financial worries. The commercial broadcaster ITV decided that it wanted the athletics contract and was prepared to pay well to get it. A bidding war between the BBC and ITV saw ITV making an offer of £10.5 million for a five year contract. The BBC would not match this and so, for the first time in its history, the broadcasting of athletics went commercial. On the back of this TV contract, former Olympic athlete Alan Pascoe set up a marketing company (Alan Pascoe Associates Limited - APA) to challenge the likes of Mark McCormack’s American giant IMG for the rights to sell sponsorship and other marketing deals. Pascoe offered to guarantee at least £3m of sponsorship over the 5 years and was awarded the contract. ITV had made it clear that they must have exclusive rights over all the televised athletic events in Britain for the duration of the contract. In the face of such unimagined riches, even the diehards could see sense and the deal was consummated by the AAA and the BAAB jointly contracting with ITV. By a twist of fate, David Shaw, the former General Secretary of the BAAB who had resigned in frustration and who had also served on the Turner Committee, was now the General Secretary of the ITV Association and, in this capacity, responsible for tying up the formal contract with athletics. In those days ITV was composed of numerous separate regional commercial broadcasters and the ITV Association was needed to co- ordinate all their interests. This deal, which ran for the five years from April 1985 to March 1990, forced the BAAB and the AAA to find an entirely new way of co- operating and, as we have seen, the JSC was established for this purpose. The JSC then made the classic mistake of finding a complicated way of sharing the income and leaving the costs of staging the events to take care of themselves. It is true that an attempt to estimate the likely costs had been made but this was new territory for the sport and it could be expected that, for the price paid, ITV and sponsors would want commensurate (and expensive) quality. There was also the question of who would actually handle the cash and it was agreed that all monies would be paid to the AAA who would distribute it in line with the agreed formulae. Even before the ink on the contracts was dry, the AAA had announced in its January 1985 Newsletter to clubs that it would be