I have been following the UDRP that was filed against the valuable IOC.com domain name at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The complainant in the UDRP is listed as the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and The International Olympic Committee.
IOC.com doesn’t get its value because it is the acronym for the International Olympic Committee. It has considerable value because it is a 3 letter .com domain name that can be used by any entity or person with IOC as its initials. According to an update on the WIPO UDRP case website, the UDRP was terminated:
The current Whois record for the domain name, as seen on DomainTools, shows the International Olympic Committee is now the registrant of the IOC.com domain name:
Because the UDRP is listed as “Terminated,” my guess is the former registrant was able to reach some sort of financial settlement with the International Olympic Committee to hand over the domain name. If this was not the case, there would have been no reason to not let the UDRP proceeding run its course because a loss would have led to the same result.
Assuming this is the case, we will likely never know if (or how much) the IOC paid to acquire the IOC.com domain name.
At the time of publication, the IOC.com domain name does not resolve to an active website.
It does seem likely that it was in the interests of the International Olympic Committee to resolve this case instead of risking the possible loss of the UDRP. So I think your assumption is correct that a settlement was agreed for the transfer of the domain, and unfortunately you are also correct that we shall never know the details of the deal.