ANOC Filling its Coffers

(ATR) The Association of National Olympic Committees ended 2015 with an operating surplus, keeping its expenses more than $1 million under the approved budget.

A total surplus of $2.1 million was fueled by the last $1 million installment of the International Olympic Committee’s subsidy for ANOC’s new headquarters in Lausanne. The association spent a total of $10.7 million in 2015, nearly doubling ANOC’s expenditures from 2013.

While ANOC’s expenditures have increased steadily over the past three years, so have its coffers. Operating surpluses in each of the past three years, due largely to the IOC subsidy, have raised ANOC’s funds from $25 million in 2013 to more than $36.8 million today.

Outside of the subsidy, ANOC’s ability to stay under the budget has been driven by savings from its annual General Assembly. The 2015 edition of the event hosted by the United States Olympic Committee in Washington, D.C. was $800,000 under budget primarily due to the USOC’s contributions to reduce costs.

ANOC Finance Commission chairman Richard Peterkin tells Around the Rings he expects to remain under its $12 million budget in 2016.

"We weren’t sure exactly when the World Beach Games would be staged, so in the budget for 2016 we have a little more money than we’ve actually spent," Peterkin says. "In addition, 2016 was a year of the Games so some of the things we would have liked to have done we realized would have been a distraction."

The association planned for nearly a half-million dollar increase in spending for the inaugural World Beach Games scheduled to take place in San Diego, California in 2019. With the games originally planned for 2017, ANOC added nearly a half-million dollars to its budget for the WBG and took money out of other international events that were unnecessary during an Olympic year.

Peterkin says ANOC will continue to make room in the budget for the WBG over the next three years. He says the overall outlook for ANOC finances is solid.

"The future is wonderful," he says. "As the IOC once said about the future, it’s an embarrassment of riches. Obviously we are getting into a big risk for the World Beach Games, and when you’re in charge of games management, things can go wrong. But we are not concerned."

Written by Kevin Nutley in Doha, Qatar.

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