What is the USOPC?
The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee is the body that enters teams from the United States at the Olympic Games and, since a 2019 rename, at the Paralympic Games as well. It is a non-profit corporation with a federal charter, and it is the only National Olympic Committee in this group whose authority is statutory rather than resting on the Olympic Charter alone.[4] [2]
That statute is the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, codified at 36 U.S.C. ch. 2205. Among the purposes it gives the corporation is "to exercise exclusive jurisdiction, directly or through constituent members of committees, over ... all matters pertaining to United States participation in the Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games, the Pan-American Games, and the Parapan American Games, including representation of the United States in the games".[1]
For anyone reading a competition record, the practical consequence is that a United States entry at those Games passes through the USOPC and through the national governing body it has certified for the sport. The governing bodies this site pages as separate organisations — USA Swimming, USA Track & Field, USA Wrestling and the rest — hold that status because the USOPC certified them under the same Act.[8] [9]
What does it do?
Three functions dominate. The first is entering and selecting the team, which the Act frames as exclusive jurisdiction and which the Olympic Charter frames as the "exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games and at the regional, continental or world multisports competitions patronised by the IOC".[1] [7] Selection itself is largely delegated to the national governing bodies, which makes national team selection a two-layer process in the United States rather than a single decision.[4]
The second is certifying and overseeing those bodies. Section 220521 provides that the corporation "may certify as a national governing body an amateur sports organization, a high-performance management organization, or a paralympic sports organization", that it "may not certify more than 1 national governing body" for a sport on the Games programme, that it must hold "at least 2 public hearings on the application", and that it must conduct a first review of all certifications within eight years of the 2020 Act and at least every four years thereafter, reporting each review to Congress.[2] The most recent certification this page located is lacrosse's, announced on 15 April 2026 ahead of the sport's return to the Olympic programme.[9]
The third is control of the marks. Section 220506 gives the corporation the exclusive commercial right in the United States to the Olympic and Paralympic symbols and to words, among them "Olympic", "Olympiad", "Paralympic", "Paralympiad", "Pan-American" and "Parapan American", which is also the engine of its income.[4]
When was it founded and when was it recognised by the IOC?
The committee states that it was "founded in 1894".[5] That is its own account and this page reports it as such; it did not locate an IOC or other independent instrument dating the founding, and it could not establish from a primary source the year in which the IOC first recognised the American committee as an NOC. Those two dates are routinely conflated and are reported here as unresolved rather than merged. The committee's own sources are not consistent: its About page gives 1894, while the Congressional Research Service records that the USOPC "considers the 1921 creation of the AOA to be the birth of the organization", citing the committee's own history page.[5] [4]
Two later dates are firm. Congress granted a federal charter in 1950 — the charter that first carried the exclusive right to the Olympic trademarks — and the charter was rewritten by the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, amended in 1998 (when the statute took Senator Ted Stevens' name and parasport was brought into the framework), and amended again by the Empowering Olympic, Paralympic, and Amateur Athletes Act of 2020.[4]
The rename is the third date and is the most precisely documented. The board of directors approved the change from United States Olympic Committee to United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee at its quarterly meeting on 20 June 2019, effective immediately, with signage at Colorado Springs and elsewhere changed over into 2020.[3] The 2020 Act subsequently wrote the new name into the statute.[4]
How is it funded and governed?
The USOPC is unusual among the committees on this site in taking no routine state money. The Congressional Research Service puts it plainly: the committee "does not usually receive federal funding to support its operations", and Congress instead "enabled it to generate revenue from other sources" — principally the trademarks.[4] The committee's own description is that it "is entirely privately funded" and "does not receive governmental funding".[5] The exception the CRS records is $16 million appropriated after the 1980 Moscow boycott, which Congress had authorised in 1978 but not funded until the boycott had damaged the organisation financially.[4]
The scale is visible in the tax filings. For the fiscal year ended December 2025 the committee reported total revenue of $264.3 million against expenses of $313.1 million and net assets of $347.4 million, with royalties making up about 48 per cent of revenue and contributions about 41 per cent.[6] The committee states that about 82 per cent of its budget "has a direct impact on its mission" of supporting athletes and their governing bodies.[5]
Governance carries statutory conditions that most NOCs do not face. The 2020 Act requires that athletes hold at least one-third of the voting power on the boards of the USOPC and of each governing body, requires $20 million a year to be paid to the US Center for SafeSport, and gives Congress power by joint resolution to dissolve the board or decertify a governing body — a power the CRS records as never exercised.[4] These are athlete representation and safeguarding requirements imposed by national sports law, not by the Olympic Charter.
Which Games does it enter, and what does it organise?
The statute names four: the Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games, the Pan American Games and the Parapan American Games, in each case both for participation and, where they are held in the United States, for "the organization of" them.[1] The Winter Olympic Games and the Youth Olympic Games fall under the same Olympic heading.
Through Panam Sports the committee is a member of the continental association for the Americas, and through ANOC of the worldwide one. The Olympic Charter adds the separate power that matters for hosting and bidding: NOCs "have the exclusive authority to select and designate the interested hosts which may apply to organise Olympic Games in their respective countries".[7] Los Angeles is the 2028 host, which brings the organising limb of section 220503 into play alongside the participation limb.[4]
The committee does not own a national multi-sport games of its own on the model of some NOCs; its domestic footprint is the training centre network at Colorado Springs and Lake Placid and the affiliated training sites.[4]
Which federations are its members?
Membership is built from the certified national governing bodies, one for each sport on the Olympic, Paralympic, Pan American or Parapan American programme.[2] The bodies this site pages separately are all on that list or on the related list of recognised sport organisations: USA Swimming, USA Track & Field, USA Basketball, USA Hockey, US Soccer, USA Baseball, USA Gymnastics, USA Wrestling, USA Boxing, US Ski & Snowboard, US Figure Skating, USA Triathlon, USA Volleyball, USA Cycling, USA Fencing, USA Judo, the USGA and the USTA.[8]
This page could not establish a reliable total. The committee's own governing-bodies page lists the organisations but states no count and renders the list only with scripting enabled, so no figure is given here rather than one taken from a secondary source.[8] The composition rule in the Olympic Charter — that "the voting majority of an NOC and of its executive body shall consist of the votes cast by the national federations" — is in any case overlaid in the United States by the statutory one-third athlete vote.[7] [4]
The NCAA is not a governing body and is not part of this structure, although it governs much of the competition from which US Olympic teams are drawn.[4]
References
- Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School — 36 U.S.C. §220503, Purposes of the corporation. Accessed September 2026.
- Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School — 36 U.S.C. §220521, Certification of national governing bodies. Accessed September 2026.
- International Paralympic Committee — Historic name-change for USOC (board approval 20 June 2019). Accessed September 2026.
- Congressional Research Service — The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee: A Primer, report R47850, updated 1 December 2023 (PDF). Accessed September 2026.
- United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee — About the USOPC. Accessed September 2026.
- ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer — United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, EIN 13-1548339, IRS Form 990 data. Accessed September 2026.
- International Olympic Committee — Olympic Charter, in force as from 30 January 2025, Rules 27 and 28 (PDF). Accessed September 2026.
- United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee — National Governing Bodies & USOPC Managed Sports. Accessed September 2026.
- United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee — USOPC certifies USA Lacrosse as official NGB ahead of Olympic return, 15 April 2026. Accessed September 2026.