Anyone based in Europe who has managed to lift the income of a multimillion-dollar business by more than 50 per cent over the past four years of economic turbulence must be doing something right.

So the International Olympic Committee (IOC) must be delighted with its achievement in raising revenue of $3.914 billion (£2.515 billion/€3.108 billion) by selling broadcasting rights to the Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 Games – up a remarkable 52 per cent from the $2.57 billion (£1.65 billion/€2.04 billion) generated from this source in the previous quadrennium.

More than four years away from Rio 2016, it is already possible to deduce that Lausanne will achieve nothing so spectacular this time around, when domestic marketing revenues from hosts Russia and Brazil look set to be the main growth engine.

Yet broadcasting income in 2013-2016 is still set to smash comfortably through the $4 billion (£2.7 billion/€3.2 billion) barrier.

This in itself is quite a feat, given that the eventual total will include essentially no increase in the contribution from the United States, which chipped in no less than $2 billion (£1.2 billion/€1.6 billion) of that 2009-2012 figure and will replicate that in 2013-2016.

An insidethegames analysis of 11 broadcast deals for 2013-2016 that are already concluded, shows that the IOC has already raised a cool $3.62 billion (£2.32 billion/€2.87 billion) from the United States, Europe (minus Great Britain which has just gone to tender), Japan, Korea, Brazil and the Arab states.

Look at this another way, and they are less than $300 million (£193 million/€238 billion) short of the total achieved in the current quadrennium with deals covering perhaps four to five billion people still to negotiate.

Such is the global appeal of Olympic sport – and the appetite of broadcasters for content that is guaranteed to draw a mass audience even in an age when we can, increasingly, watch what we want when we want - that the Movement has been rendered impressively recession-resistant.

Part of the secret of the IOC's commercial success in recent times has come from its ability to extract more cash from growth markets such as Brazil and China.

But it is securing more from some mature markets too.

Take Europe: by separating out the biggest markets, rather than – as in 2009-2012 – doing a single deal covering 51 countries with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), it looks very much as though the IOC will succeed in 2013-2016 in pushing European broadcast revenues through the $1 billion (£642 million/€794 million) barrier.

With only the UK still outstanding, European broadcast income stands at $929 million.

This is comprised of Italy $203 million (£130 million/€161 million), Germany $171 million (£110 million/€136 million), France $115 million (£74 million/€91 million), Spain $94 million (£60 million/€75 million), Turkey $31 million (£20 million/€25 million) and others (except for the UK) $315 million (£202 million/€250 million).

The 2013-2016 period looks set to bring another commercial milestone for the Olympic Movement: the first time in many, many years that less than 50 per cent of broadcast revenues will be generated from the United States.

As recently as 2001-2004, the quadrennium culminating with the Athens Games, but also featuring the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, the US accounted for 60 per cent of income from broadcasting rights, so this is an important shift.

The IOC would no doubt have preferred to reach this milestone with US revenues still rising, rather than pausing for breath as they will do temporarily in 2013-2016, prior to resuming their upward march in 2017-2020, as spelled out in the latest four-Games deal with NBC.

Nonetheless, the improved geographic balance in broadcasting revenues, with the overall sums raised still heading in the right direction, can only be healthy for the Movement.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed by clicking here