TV Negotiations for Seoul Olympics at Impasse

The International Olympic Committee on Friday indefinitely suspended negotiations with the three major U.S. television networks over the rights to the 1988 Games at Seoul, South Korea, giving the networks 10 days to submit higher offers.

No date was fixed for resuming talks with the networks, but IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch told a news conference he remained optimistic the U.S. television contract for Seoul would be signed “before the end of the year.”

The IOC’s Television Negotiating Committee abruptly broke off two days of talks after failing, in more than 20 hours of intense closed-door bargaining, to persuade the networks to raise their bids or the Seoul organizers to lower their expectations.

The offers were kept secret by all the networks and the IOC negotiators, but IOC sources said the difference between the highest network offer and the minimum acceptable to the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee was about $100 million.

(One source said the high bid was $320 million. It was believed that NBC submitted that bid.)

Organizing committee sources indicated earlier that the U.S. television payments--which they had expected to exceed $500 million--had to cover most of the cost of staging the Seoul Games.

Richard Pound of Canada, chairman of the six-member negotiating committee, told the news conference that “the technical complexity and creativity of the proposals put to us were such that we have been unable to come to any agreement.

“To date, we have not received one offer we are prepared to accept.”