The contract for Munich to host the Olympic Games was just a few months ago when it leaked out in autumn 1966: the planned budget of 497 million Deutschmarks could not be met, it would be at least 23 million more. Price increases for building materials, unfortunately nothing to do. The critics of the Munich bid could feel vindicated. It started like before in Tokyo or Mexico City, where the Olympic budget had exploded. But then things went differently.
In the end, the games cost 1.9 billion Deutschmarks, almost four times as much as originally calculated. But not only the expenses of the organizing committee (OC) had increased dramatically over the years – but also the income in an almost miraculous way. The organizers came up with the most original ideas to finance their games. Fifty years apart, some of them seem rather odd.
First, however, the OC had to overcome political resistance. In the CSU, the Bavarian governing party, there was growing concern that generous social democrats like Munich’s mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel were ruining the state with their Olympic adventure. As early as the application phase, five CSU members of the Bundestag had called for Vogel to withdraw from Munich because of the “tense financial situation at federal and state level” in a telegram to Vogel: “A waiver would be an act of political insight and modesty that should be appreciated in the world.”
When Bavaria’s finance minister sees the cost of the roof, he calls for the games to be returned
In the years that followed, skeptics declared the bold stadium design by architect Günter Behnisch to be a symbol of Olympic waste. Behnisch and his partners had calculated the costs for “the roof” rather freely, and the project became more and more expensive. Konrad Pöhner of the CSU, Bavaria’s Minister of Finance and a specialist building contractor, called for the games to be returned to the International Olympic Committee. But the organizers knew that the two most important CSU representatives were on their side: Prime Minister Alfons Goppel and party leader Franz Josef Strauss had recognized the great opportunities for the city and state, they called the rebels to order.
The debates about the finances subsided when Willy Brandt’s social-liberal government agreed to increase the federal share of the Olympic budget to 50 percent. This meant that the state and city only had to pay a quarter instead of a third of the total costs. And then there was this Bavarian tax official who suggested to the OC the sale of ten-mark Olympic coins: At a cost of 2.50 marks, each individual coin brings in a profit of 7.50 marks. The success of the campaign amazed even the biggest optimists: 100 million coins were sold, 750 million Deutschmarks flowed into the OK coffers. Apparently, at the beginning of the 1970s, hardly anyone in Germany celebrated their birthday without being given a few Olympic coins.
Birthday gift set: At the beginning of the 1970s, every German seemed to get Olympic coins.
(Photo: imago sportfotodienst/Werek/Imago)
A range of Olympic stamps also proved to be a hit, as was the “Olympia lottery”: for ten pfennigs, the “Olympic penny”, every normal lottery ticket took part in an additional raffle. The pennies added up to a whopping 252 million Deutschmarks. Meanwhile, the “Glücksspirale” lured on television with a record profit of one million marks, which was fabulous for the time, ARD and ZDF were allowed to use the official radiant emblem of the games. “You’re in for five marks,” was the slogan. In addition to Franz Beckenbauer, British actor Patrick Macnee, known from the TV series “With umbrella, charm and melon”, also advertised – to the amusement of the audience in lederhosen. The luck spiral brought in 187 million marks.
Also very coveted: the official stamps of the 1972 Games, presented by Olympic hostess Silvia Sommerlath, who later became Queen of Sweden.
(Photo: imago sportfotodienst/Werek / Imago)
Another very profitable idea of the Olympic director Willi Daume was the first sale of television rights abroad, which brought in 33 million marks. The OC also developed great skill in begging for donations in kind. An “Olympic Promotion Association” provided furniture for the press center, technology for the stadiums, food for the canteens and cosmetics for the hostesses. The true value of some advertising transactions was never determined: Mercedes was allowed to put its star on the tickets, of course to the annoyance of the Munich competitor BMW. Siemens was very present as an IT partner; the sporting goods manufacturers Adidas and Puma were allowed to offer their goods in the Olympic Village.
Daume had hoped to turn the games into some sort of national community project. The plan worked, managers and citizens did their part. The bottom line was that the federal government was left with a comparatively manageable 311 million Deutschmarks in costs, the state and city each contributed 154 million. Many years later, Mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel could proudly report how between 1966 and 1972 he budgeted around 20 million marks for the Olympics each budget year – “an amount that never clearly exceeded one percent of the city budget”. That, said Vogel, made a significant contribution “to the acceptance of the games among the population”.