As Brisbane’s Olympics team locks in a $1m man, the perks of IOC membership can be revealed

The latest highly paid member of the 2032 Games team is among those doing the hard yards at the Olympic committee’s key election meeting in Greece. But just how lucrative is it to become an IOC member?

International Olympic Committee IOC President Thomas Bach. Picture: AFP

Kit McConnell is well known in Olympic circles: for a year the New Zealander was part of the Sydney Olympic sports competition team, he then worked with World Rugby before heading to Lausanne, becoming the International Olympic Committee sports director for 11 years.

A few weeks ago the 52-year-old was headhunted by the Brisbane Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, tasked with designing the 2032 Games sport program. McConnell will take up his new post on July 21.

What is not well known is the financial package the Brisbane team have had to come up with to lure McConnell, notwithstanding the attractions of the Queensland sunshine and surf.

Not that the organisation in Eagle Street has been shy about splashing the cash some seven years before the Games take place.

Kit McConnell. Picture: Supplied

Brisbane 2032 chief executive Cindy Hook was paid just shy of a million dollars – $976,000 to be precise – in the last financial year 2023-24, the Brisbane Olympics annual report shows.

The Brisbane organising committee’s 26 employees were paid a total of $6.1m, 46 per cent of total costs, averaging out at $235,000 each.

Organising committee president Andrew Liveris (paid $175,000 in Brisbane 2032 board fees) said: “The fact that Brisbane 2032 has been able to secure the IOC sports director to lead our sport function is a huge coup.

“The time is right for this appointment, as the development of the 2032 sport program is a priority over the next 12-18 months.”

Now, documents unearthed by ProPublica have detailed financial statements filed by the IOC with the US Internal Revenue Service, revealing the eye-watering salaries of the IOC’s top Olympic officials, including McConnell.

McConnell was paid a salary and compensation of $US653,920 ($1.03m in today’s exchange rate) in the 2023 financial year, the document shows.

He is the not the top earner. That honour goes to IOC executive director Christophe Dubi, who earned $US1.81m. The IOC’s top 21 staffers are all on well over $US400,000 in annual salaries.

Indeed, the deep employee costs of running the world’s biggest sporting extravaganza has been laid bare in this buried report.

Mark Adams, the former communications director and Bach’s right hand man, (and a schoolfriend of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and best man at his wedding), was paid $US546,555 last year. Former IOC medical director Richard Budgett, who oversaw the highly controversial IOC policy to allow transgender athletes to compete in the women’s category, earned an annual salary of $US504,832.

IOC director general Christophe de Keper earned $US1.64m.

The document also puts paid to the fallacy that the Olympics is somehow a volunteer-led good-for-the-world endeavour.

Even IOC president Thomas Bach, often lauded for not drawing a salary, was paid $US340,000 in an “annual fixed indemnity”. His Swiss income tax in 2023 of $US172,000 was paid by the IOC.

It has often been communicated that the 109 IOC members are top-rated businessmen, political leaders, diplomatic experts, royalty, and even an Oscar winner, all donating their time to the Olympic Movement and the betterment of world sport.

So how lucrative is it to become an IOC member?

Scenes from the resort in Greece that is housing IOC members.

A clue can be found in the ostentatious seaside resort at Costa Navarino, on the wind swept west coast of Greece, where the current four-day IOC session is being held. It’s here where a successor to the 71-year-old Bach will be elected on Thursday.

The beachfront villa complex boasts 131 infinity pools and a couple of helipads.

Members won’t have to cash in any of the generous daily stipend, for everything is laid on: food, drinks, champagne, golf, minibars, with plus ones even having their own partner program to keep them entertained while the IOC session is sitting over the next three days.

They have arrived at the pointy end of planes with family members and are chauffeur-driven across the country. On Tuesday they were taken to Olympia, the site of the Ancient Olympic Games, for a special opening, but rain meant members had to watch the 30 priestesses at the Temple of Hera from under a nearby tent.

All of the IOC members, including Australian Olympic Committee president Ian Chesterman and athletes representative Jess Fox, as well as honorary members such as Olympic supremo John Coates, receive a payment of $US7000 for “administrative support” from the IOC each year.

Members are flown first-class, and receive $US450 a day for any time they are at the three-week-long Summer and Winter Olympics, the Youth Olympics, at the annual sessions, or working on any of the Olympic commissions, as well as being paid the day before and day after such work.

If members are on the IOC executive board, or chairing a commission, the daily expenses are doubled to $US900 a day.

Most IOC members are on at least one of the 34 different current commissions – dealing with issues such as finance,
e-sports, gender equality and diversity, human rights, sustainability, and liaising with various organising committees for upcoming Games – which require anything from annual to quarterly get-togethers.

John Coates.

Jess Fox.

In the recent presidential campaign, all of the seven candidates vying to replace Bach have indicated that IOC members want to become “more involved” in the major decisions of the organisation.

This would, of course, mean more tax-free stipends.

The report shows the IOC can afford it.

“During my presidency, we have achieved a 60 per cent growth in commercial revenues,” Bach said on Monday, adding there were more media rights and other “interesting opportunities in the pipeline”.

“Already now at the beginning of this (four-year 2025-28) olympiad, we have secured $US7.5bn and an overall commercial revenue of $US7.7bn,” he said.

The IOC trumpets that it distributes 90 per cent of its revenues to global sport in various grants and programs.

Last year the organisation paid out $US432m in grants, of which more than $US57m went to “East Asia and the Pacific”.