The reference comes in the minutes of a BOA board meeting in July that have been seen by insidethegames.

One of the participants at this gathering is noted at one point as querying whether budget figures include "an expectation of receiving the $8 million (£5 million) currently in dispute with LOCOG as mentioned earlier in the meeting".

Neither the BOA nor LOCOG would comment directly on what the dispute relates to, with the BOA telling insidethegames it was a matter between itself and LOCOG.

However, a number of clues within the minutes suggest that it has something to do with both the surplus that may be generated by the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Joint Marketing Programme Agreement (JMPA) under which commercial sponsorship rights for the period up to and including the Games have been sold to LOCOG.

The BOA chief executive Andy Hunt has in the past been particularly eloquent in describing how this agreement - under which it is understood that the BOA should receive something like £30 million ($48 million) over the period between 2005 and 2012 – hems him in.

Hunt once told insidethegames in an interview that he was "horribly constrained".

He went on: "I describe it as my hands are handcuffed behind my back.

"They are then tied with baling twine over the top of my head.

"And then I'm bound in a straightjacket, put in a metal cage and it's called the Joint Marketing Programme Agreement with LOCOG.

"It was done before I got there and it is horribly constraining."

The July 2010 minutes also refer to "the dispute with LOCOG regarding the 2012 surplus", with Hunt noted as requesting BOA board approval to "keep the dispute with LOCOG separate from the plan to raise additional revenue through the ARP programme".

The board agreed to this.

Finally the minutes allude to a question as to whether the board should decide if the $8 million (£5 million) in dispute was "a legacy fund or to be spent pre-2012".

Hunt's response is rendered as follows: "AH suggested you could argue that it would be part of the JMPA revenue so could be spent before 2012 as is currently the case, but it would be for the Board to discuss at whichever point the dispute is resolved."

Hunt and his team have had to battle to get the BOA out of the red in recent times.

In its latest results, the body made a third straight operating loss, although a gain related to the sale of its former headquarters enabled it to report a post-tax profit of more than £550,000 ($887,000), after losses of a cumulative £2.84 million ($4.58 million) in the previous two years.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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