AOC put to shame by ‘poor cousin’

Commonwealth Games Australia provides more money to athletes and sports than the Australian Olympic Committee.

AOC president John Coates.

Commonwealth Games Australia provides more money to athletes and sports than the Australian Olympic Committee, despite operating on half the budget, a comparative analysis of the two organisations reveals.

Published and unpublished accounts of the sporting bodies shows where John Coates receives the equivalent of a full-time executive salary, AGA president Sam Coffa does the job for an honorarium and use of a car. Where the AOC spends more than $500,000 a year to maintain the lease on its modern harbourside headquarters, the CGA until recently was based in a $66,000-a-year terrace house in Melbourne’s inner-north Carlton.

It has since moved to larger digs in Albert Park to the city’s south to accommodate more staff in the lead-up to the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast. The cost of the new office space is understood to be about $90,000 a year.

The cost to the AOC of fielding Australia’s Olympic team in Rio topped $20 million. It will cost the CGA about $7m to field our team on the Gold Coast.

Coffa has chaired the board of the CGA for nearly 20 years and says the guiding philosophy established by former chief executive Perry Crosswhite was simple: “He was a great believer in doing the best he could with the least ­expense.

“I think there is a belief and a culture in the Commonwealth Games that we really exist for athletes and sports and we minimise the costs,” he said.

That approach enables the CGA to provide more financial assistance to emerging and established athletes than they receive from the independently wealthy AOC. The AOC is bankrolled by $47.3m in current sponsorship agreements and a $146.3m investment fund. AOC chief financial officer Sue O’Donnell said average annual revenue of the organisation was more than the $22.25m figure cited by The Australian once deferred income from sponsorship was taken into account.

The AOC’s latest financial statements will be published this week. In the meantime, its funding priorities are a frontline issue in the battle between Coates and presidential candidate Danielle Roche for control of the AOC.

CGA provided $652,400 to track and field, $480,000 to swimming, $324,000 to hockey and $333,300 to gymnastics last financial year and smaller grants to a further 14 sports, with the Australian Institute of Sport ­administering the flow of money.

About $700,000 in funding is set aside for junior athletes to gain experience at major international competitions.

The AOC skews its money to athletes already at the top of their sports, with annual cash payments of $20,000 to Rio gold medallists and $15,000 and $10,000 payments to other medallists. It also provides up to $100,000, over four years, to sports that receive little to no funding from the Australian Sports Commission.

The only Olympic sports that receive more AOC funding than CGA funding are those not on the Commonwealth Games program: fencing, modern pentathlon and winter sports.

Coates last year charged the AOC a consultancy fee of $717,500 for services rendered. Coffa until recently received an honorarium of $20,000 for chairing the board of the CGA. That figure has been increased to $50,000 in the lead-up to Gold Coast 2018.

The national Olympic committees for the US, Britain, Germany, Canada and New Zealand have unpaid presidents.

The British Olympic Association pays its chairman a £20,000 ($33,000) honorarium.