SPORTS AND SOCIETY 513
fact the fi rst privately organized and fi nanced Olympics in the history of
the event. After the IOC named the city the host for the Summer Games
in 1978, the residents of Los Angeles voted against using public funds
to fi nance the Games in a referendum. Very likely, many of them had
been discouraged from voting in favor by the fi nancial disaster that had
resulted in Montreal in 1976. The mayor of L.A., Tom Bradley, as well as
the IOC, had no idea what to do, but then a few private companies came
to the rescue as sponsors. The president of the organizational committee,
businessman Peter Ueberroth, who was the son of German immigrants
from Lübeck and head of a travel company, announced the beginnings
of a “partnership between business and the Olympic Games.”^67 With this
new agenda, the IOC increased its own infl uence, especially in the Third
World, thanks to millions in additional income. As a result, the Soviet
Union was slowly pushed aside as a key player. Financially weak national
Olympic committees, for example, now received additional money from
a solidarity fund established by the IOC, making it possible for a record
number of one hundred forty nations to participate in the Games. The
IOC also generated a considerable amount of income by marketing its
symbols, but more importantly, it made money through its shares of
about a third^68 in the TV license fees for the Games, which had amounted
to about thirty-four million dollars in 1984 alone. The growing power of
capital reduced the infl uence of the Communist sporting world, which
controlled only about 10 percent of the votes in the IOC.
When Mikhail Gorbachev took over the offi ce of general secretary of
the Soviet Communist Party in March 1985, the progressive split be-
tween the Soviet reformers and the East German hardliners also man-
ifested itself in the world of sport. The GDR slowly began to feel itself
left out in the cold by the Soviet Union in the fi ght against the most
important demons in socialist sports propaganda, namely “commer-
cialization” and “professionalism.” Although Ewald originally banked on
the idea that the Soviet Union would hold its stance, East Berlin found
itself the “lone voice” as early as October 1986.^69 In November 1986
at the yearly conference of the socialist sports directors, the minister
of sport, Marat Gramow, stated rather cautiously that the Soviet Union
had nothing against professional elite sports, but rather that it only ob-
jected to the “professional abuse” of competitive sports.^70 The head of
the NOC, Willi Daume, who—like the rest of the Olympic movement—
had opposed permitting professional athletes to compete, quite bluntly
admitted to the GDR sports director Manfred Ewald at a meeting in 1986
that he had now actually come to support the professionalization of the
Games in order to make it more diffi cult for the socialist countries to win
medals.^71