SportBusiness.com

Olympic head in new London 2012 funding row

Andy Hunt, chief executive of the British Olympic Association, has criticised the "horrible constraints" imposed by the organisation's £30 million joint-marketing agreement with the organisers of the London 2012 Games.

An agreement between the BOA and the London organising committee (LOCOG) in 2005 effectively signed away most of the BOA's rights to strike deals with sponsors. BOA chairman Lord Moynihan said publicly in June that the LOCOG agreement "was not a good deal".

"I am horribly constrained. I describe it as my hands are handcuffed behind my back," Hunt told insidethegames.com.

"They are then tied with bailing twine over the top of my head. And then I'm bound in a straitjacket, put in a metal cage and it's called the joint marketing programme agreement with LOCOG. It was done before I got there and it is horribly constraining."

LOCOG said it had renegotiated parts of the deal, leading to an increase in income to the BOA and British Paralympic Association.

The BOA made a £1.5 million pre-tax loss in 2008.

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