ANNIVERSARY GOOD AS GOLD BY TURNING PROFIT, L.A. PROVED IT COULD PUT PEDAL TO THE MEDALS.

Byline: Rich Hammond  Staff Writer

It all started with $100 in a bank account and a cardboard box full of paperwork from City Hall.

That's all Peter Ueberroth and his staff had in early April 1979, a few days after Ueberroth agreed to lead the group charged with organizing the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. He didn't even have the correct keys to his Century City office because the locks had been changed.

Ueberroth had received a few other things, primarily raised eyebrows and questions from skeptical contemporaries, who wondered why he would possibly want the job. Los Angeles essentially was awarded the Games by default because no other city wanted to deal with the substantial headaches.

From that inglorious start, Ueberroth spent the next five years imposing his revolutionary ideas and his will upon the historic event and forever changed it.

The 1984 Olympics were only the second of the 23 modern Summer Games to turn a profit - the 1932 Los Angeles Games were the first - even though the previous four had all been marred by varying levels of strife and the fact that voters rejected the idea of spending public money on events such as the Games.

``History must recount that Los Angeles twice, both in '32 and '84, set a new standard for the Olympic Games and helped them continue,'' Ueberroth said last week.

Ueberroth ran the first privately-financed Games, made bold moves to generate revenue from television rights, sponsorships and ticket sales and, even though doubters were prevalent throughout the process, looked like a genius when his Games turned a historic profit of $232.5 million.

Now, 20 years later, when Ueberroth is asked how much pride he still carries, he defers to his talented organizing committee colleagues and the thousands of volunteers who helped the Games run smoothly.

``I have pride and profound respect for the people of Southern California, who showed the world that the Olympic Games could be well run economically, in the face of nobody else wanting the Games,'' Ueberroth said. ``They showed that, with a big heart and great hospitality for all of the world.

``We were able to basically rescue the Olympic movement when nobody else wanted the Games.''

Ueberroth helped turn the Games from a dinosaur into a dynasty. Now, cities campaign years in advance for the right to bid for the Games, one negative off-shoot being the recent bribery scandals.

``Now the Olympics are every two years. Why is that?'' said David Carter, a Redondo Beach-based sports business consultant. ``Maybe because they know they can make more money from sponsorships and the sale of advertising and broadcasting rights.

``All of these decisions that are made now are based primarily on the likelihood of financial success as much as they are about having a great athletic presentation. You can't separate those two any longer.''

The Games were transformed in Los Angeles. The 1968 Games in Mexico City included dozens of deaths in violent protests before the Opening Ceremonies. The 1972 Games in Munich featured the terrifying murders of 11 Israeli athletes. The 1976 Games in Montreal ran a deficit of $1.5 billion.

Not surprisingly, the 1984 Games were not highly coveted. Los Angeles, which had fallen short in 1976 and 1980, was the United States Olympic Committee's choice again, and the only international opposition was a bid by Iran, which later endured civil unrest and withdrew from consideration.

So it was Los Angeles or bust for the International Olympic Committee, and for a while, ``bust'' seemed a plausible outcome. In 1978, the IOC awarded the Games to Los Angeles on the condition the host city be responsible for any financial shortcomings after the disaster in Montreal.

Things got worse, and not only because of the expected Soviet boycott in response to the American boycott in the 1980 Moscow Games. Two votes, one by all Californians and another by Los Angeles residents, essentially eliminated the possibility of public funds being used to finance any part of the Games.

The IOC wanted the city to ensure the Games' financial stability but eventually came to accept the idea of a private group running the Games. Mayor Tom Bradley and organizing committee member John Argue, both of whom are now deceased, are credited with pushing the idea of privatizing the Games.

Thus, the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee was born, and the USOC also came aboard and assumed 60 percent of the risk or, as it turned out, the profit from the Games.

``We were always focused on the athletes,'' committee member Anita DeFrantz said. ``We never skimped on anything when it came to the athletes during the Games, but we also operated with the knowledge that out of the money we made, 60 cents of every dollar would go to the USOC. So the objection wasn't necessarily to build up a surplus, it was to not spend money needlessly.''

The LAOOC then turned to Ueberroth, who had built a successful travel business but otherwise had a low profile in Southern California, to lead the committee as its CEO.

``The skills of building a business from scratch, and not just taking over a business, helped me a great deal because it was a very similar thing,'' Ueberroth said. ``We were given a cardboard box from City Hall and I opened the first bank account with $100 and we went from there.

``I was convinced that it would work. I never said so because then it would have been attacked. I let the facts represent themselves when we were done.''

Ueberroth set out with a startling bold and direct plan for success that included:

--A three-pronged plan for financing the Games that included placing a premium on sponsorships, plus significantly increased television rights fees and strong ticket sales.

--The use of existing facilities, which reduced construction costs to essentially zero. Companies such as McDonalds and 7-11 put up the money to construct some venues.

--A small and efficient staff that wouldn't develop into a bureaucratic mess.

--No government funding, so as to keep control of the Games centralized.

--A huge volunteer program that eventually attracted about 70,000 people and saved the committee countless dollars on labor payroll.

--Getting the cooperation of citizens to ease traffic concerns.

--Creating perhaps the most athlete-friendly games, especially after the Soviet withdrawal two months before the Games, when Ueberroth sent some of his top deputies to other countries in an attempt to keep other Soviet-friendly nations from boycotting. That move worked as well as any other.

``In Los Angeles, we had nationalities that represented all of the 140 countries that came to the Games, and I knew we could be hospitable to them,'' Ueberroth said.

Ueberroth is most remembered, however, for the television fees and sponsorships.

NBC had purchased the rights to the 1980 Games for $87 million and stopped ABC's nearly two-decade streak of televising the Olympics. Ueberroth then made his bold move.

He had each of the three major networks, plus a young cable outfit known as ESPN, put up a nonrefundable sum of $750,000 - which went directly into the LAOOC's coffers - simply for the right to bid on the Games. Ueberroth then staged a blind bidding process and hoped for the best.

Rich Hammond, [phone]

rich.hammond(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Rafer Johnson lights the cauldron July 28, 1984 during the Opening Ceremonies for the Los Angeles Olympics, which were only the second of the 23 modern Summer Games to turn a profit.

(2) Peter Ueberroth was hailed for his revolutionary ideas that made the 1984 Olympics so successful in Los Angeles.

Courtesy of Amateur Athletic Foundation