Informer: Postal Service sponsored pro cycling team from 1996-2004
Published 12:45 pm Monday, October 31, 2011
How many years did the U.S. Postal Service sponsor Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France, and did the agency sponsor anyone else?
The U.S. Postal Service sponsored the professional cycling team from 1996 to 2004.
The deal was initially worth $1 million a year. But by the end, the post office was investing tens of millions of dollars in the team — about $32 million for the 2001-2004 seasons.
“Armstrong signed with the team before the 1998 season, and won the first of his record seven Tour de France titles in 1999,” Shaun Assael writes on ESPN’s website.
“By 2000, the contract, renewed yearly, had grown to $3.3 million. In 2004, it was more than eight times the original amount.”
A 2003 audit report by the Postal Service’s inspector general listed several of the agency’s other sponsorships.
The amounts list in the report, which is available on the inspector general’s website, are redacted. But The Informer was able to read them by simply highlighting the lines, copying them and pasting the figures into another document.
Some of the deals listed, along with their durations and amounts:
Chicago Bears, 1998-2002 — $632,500.
New York Yankees, 1999-2002 — $3.65 million.
New York Giants, 1998-2002 — $1.93 million.
University of Notre Dame, 2001-2002 — $338,000.
Tampa Bay Devil Rays, 1998-2000 — $630,500.
Masters Tournament, 1999 — $14,000.
Ryder Cup, 2001 — $79,000.
The audit, which the inspector general’s office undertook on its own, found “no significant exceptions with sponsorship expenditures,” the report says.
But auditors took issue with the way the post office managed the sponsorships.
“Specifically, the Postal Service was unable to track or verify revenue associated with sponsorships, lacked goals and objectives for some sponsorships, and did not manage tickets and invitations appropriately,” Ronald Merryman, an acting assistant inspector general, wrote in the memo accompanying the report.
“As a result, the Postal Service could not determine return on investments, measure the effectiveness of its sponsorships, and take advantage of networking opportunities to generate revenue.”
Similar problems with verification of numbers bedeviled the agency when it sponsored the 1992 winter and summer Olympic Games in Albertville, France, and Barcelona, Spain, according to a 1993 General Accounting Office report.
The report, compiled at the request of a Senate committee, concluded that “because the amounts at issue are unknown, we were not able to determine whether the Olympic sponsorship produced a profit or loss.”
• Online:
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www.uspsoig.gov/FOIA_files/OE-AR-03-003.pdf
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The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email
