Once a showcase for amateur athletics, the Olympic Games have become a global entertainment colossus powered by corporate sponsorship and professional participation. Stephen R. Wenn and Robert K. Barney offer the inside story of this transformation by examining the far-sighted leadership and decision-making acumen of four International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidents: Avery Brundage, Lord Killanin, Juan Antonio Samaranch, and Jacques Rogge. Blending biography with historical storytelling, the authors explore the evolution of Olympic commercialism from Brundage's uneasy acceptance of television rights fees through the revenue generation strategies that followed the Salt Lake City bid scandal to the present day. Throughout, Wenn and Barney draw on their decades of studying Olympic history to dissect the personalities, conflicts, and controversies behind the Games' embrace of the business of spectacle.

Entertaining and expert, The Gold in the Rings maps the Olympics' course from paragon of purity to billion-dollar profits.

| Cover Title Copyright Contents Preface Introduction 1. Paul Helms versus Avery Brundage 2. Melbourne, 1956 3. The Rome Formula 4. Willi Daume and Munich, 1972's Television Legacy 5. Los Angeles, 1984 6. "Total Olympic Programme" 7. The Broadcast Marketing Agreement 8. The Salt Lake City Bid Scandal 9. The European Television Market 10. The 2009 Copenhagen IOC Session Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index Back cover |"Stephen R. Wenn and Robert K. Barney's latest book The Gold in the Rings: The People and Events That Transformed the Olympic Games makes its timely entrance. . . . A well-refined book that traverses the border of well-known historical terrain and fresh intellectual ground. . . . The authors point to the continued need to interrogate the money matters that lay at the IOC's heart." —Journal of Sport History
​"A meticulous and absorbing account of one of the most intriguing and interesting dimensions of the modern Olympic Games, namely their transformation into a commercial mega-bonanza. . . . Engrossing, brilliantly constructed and told, and profoundly informative and edifying, a most worthwhile read." —Sport Literature Association
"Wenn and Barney convincingly portrays the progression and development within the IOC and they manage to do so without the nostalgic perspective of how the Olympic Games used to and ought to be." —idrottsforum.org
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|Stephen R. Wenn is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education at Wilfrid Laurier University. Robert K. Barney is professor emeritus and founding director emeritus of the International Center for Olympic Studies at the School of Kinesiology at Western University. They are the authors (with Scott Martyn) of Tarnished Rings: The International Olympic Committee and the Salt Lake City Bid Scandal.