The Olympic movement is a formidable money-making machine. In the four years culminating with the Beijing Summer Games, it will generate revenues of more than $5bn – as much as a respectably sized multinational corporation. In the four years ending with the next Summer Games in London in 2012, this could swell to, or even exceed, $7bn.

But to explain where this money comes from and where is it spent we need to go back to the last completed Olympic four-year period, or quadrennium. This period began after the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and concluded after the Athens Games of 2004, also taking in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.