ASC, AOC might see lucky numbers come up in lottery

A British-style Olympic lottery may be on the cards after Australia recorded its lowest medal tally in 24 years in Rio.

A British-style Olympic lottery may be on the cards after Australia recorded its lowest medal tally in 24 years at the Rio Olympics last year.

Tomorrow’s budget is expected to see another cut in funding for the Australian Sports Commission which had its funding cut in the last budget by $3.73 million to $118m.

Money for high-performance Olympic sport was down by $1.7m to $85.4m.

The Australian Olympic Committee and the ASC are likely to work together to explore the lottery idea.

AOC president John Coates supported the idea, which has been strongly advocated by ASC chairman John Wylie, but said there were issues which would need to be resolved with state governments which have the right to revenue from lotteries held in their territories.

He said it would have to be an online lottery which could see some revenue going to state governments provided they agreed to allocate the money to sports funding.

The federal government-funded ASC provides the lion’s share of funding for many Olympic sports which have no chance of attracting the corporate sponsorship of major non-Olympic sports such as AFL, NRL, cricket and netball.

But the AOC, which pays for the Australian teams to travel overseas for the winter and summer Olympics, fiercely protects its independence from government interference, citing the heavy pressure from the Fraser government for the Australian team to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

After his election on the weekend, Coates offered to extend an olive branch to Wylie, to work closer together on Olympic sports funding.

But he drew a line at the ASC having any involvement in the selection of the Olympic chef de mission as Wylie suggested some months ago.

Coates said on the weekend that he was prepared to work with the ASC, including Wylie, on the issue of sports funding, despite their personal clashes in the past.

He said he was prepared to ring Wylie directly in the near future after he returned from a visit to International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne.

The government-backed ASC argues that it deserves more say in how Olympic sport is run as it is spending $340m funding the 28 summer Olympic sports.

The AOC has a four-year budget of about $88m.