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Commercialization of the Olympics has been around for a long time.
I remember when the Olympics came to Los Angeles in 1984. It was a really big deal locally. I was only 12 at the time, but even then I noticed how comical it was that everything was "the official product of the 1984 Olympics".
And I'm talking about some really ridiculous things, like "the official disposable razor of the 1984 Olympics".
On a side note, how did this great 2012 Dream Team barely manage to defeat Spain?
Greece handled the finances of building an Olympic-caliber city just as badly as they have every other financial issue in recent memory. Don't know why you would think otherwise. Especially when there's like no evidence of it anywhere.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_Hershiser
The Athens 2004 Games played a part in fueling Greece’s enormous debt, the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said yesterday, blaming the overhead on the organisation’s notorious delays.
“You can fairly say that the 2004 Games played their part,” Jacques Rogge told Kathimerini daily during a visit to Athens earlier in the month.
“If you look at the external debt of Greece, there could be up to two or three percent of that which could be attributed to the Games,” he said.
But Rogge insisted that the competition “could have been staged at a much lower cost, as there were delays that rendered double shifts necessary, and having people work at night does cost more.”
Many of the installations were completed just weeks before the competition with a change of government five months before the Olympics compounding delays. Rogge had later praised organisers for hosting “unforgettable, dream Games.”
The Athens Games cost around 13 billion euros, including an estimated one billion euros spent on securing the first Summer Olympics held after the Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States in September 2001.
Several of the venues constructed for the Olympics never found a viable use in the years that followed.
The Greek government is still trying to lease many of these facilities to investors to help trim a national debt of over 350 billion euros (USD 457 billion) but has not ruled out tearing down some of the stadiums if necessary.
http://www.macaudailytimes.com.mo/sp...-debt-ioc.html
Like I said before, blaming the Olympics is a much better option than admitting you can't run your country.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe DiddlyGreece handled the finances of building an Olympic-caliber city just as badly as they have every other financial issue in recent memory. Don't know why you would think otherwise. Especially when there's like no evidence of it anywhere.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_Hershiser
Did you see advertising at an Olympic venue? Soccer pitch, arena etc. Yes or no?
What kind of debt do you think countries would face without advertising dollars?
Yeah, but you also saidQuote:
Originally Posted by Anal_HershiserLike I said before, blaming the Olympics is a much better option than admitting you can't run your country.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe Diddly
Athens is the obvious example of you being wrong. There are others, but Athens was the blatantly obvious example that directly contradicts your statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_Hershiser
Montreal and Calgary both put themselves into about 30 years worth of debt each for hosting their games. These aren't things that are in dispute, as far as anything I've ever seen.
I said they were blaming the Olympics, I never stated that I actually believed money was lost. I don't believe money was lost. But I believe it was easier to blame the Olympics than admit they simply had no idea what they were doing. If you were in their government would you say, "We were incompetent and bankrupted our nation through idiotic economic policies" or "IT WAS THE OLYMPICS FAULT!"Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe DiddlyYeah, but you also saidQuote:
Originally Posted by Anal_Hershiser
Athens is the obvious example of you being wrong. There are others, but Athens was the blatantly obvious example that directly contradicts your statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_Hershiser
Montreal and Calgary both put themselves into about 30 years worth of debt each for hosting their games. These aren't things that are in dispute.
I simply don't believe that a nation can go into debt for 30 years because of the Olympics. It's a convenient excuse, but I don't buy it. I'm not calling you stupid or ignorant for believing it. I'm just saying I think there is more to it than what is being "reported".
I found these Olympics the most boring of my life. All Olympics post-Cold War are a shadow of the games previously. The weight of each competition between the US and the Soviet Bloc was palpable back then. I've never cared as much since.
I think the reason I found these Olympics particularly boring just stems from the fact that the locales for the various competitions were limited by what's available. There isn't a great disparity in geography in Great Britain like a lot of countries. A pool is a pool anywhere, but a lot of the outdoor events just lacked any flavor. Also the opening and closing ceremonies were really bad imo. Rio in 2016 should be killer, as it has a lot of what these games lacked.
Neither Montreal nor Calgary are nations, and Canada (a nation) didn't foot the bill for either place.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_HershiserI said they were blaming the Olympics, I never stated that I actually believed money was lost. I don't believe money was lost. But I believe it was easier to blame the Olympics than admit they simply had no idea what they were doing. If you were in their government would you say, "We were incompetent and bankrupted our nation through idiotic economic policies" or "IT WAS THE OLYMPICS FAULT!"Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe DiddlyYeah, but you also said
Athens is the obvious example of you being wrong. There are others, but Athens was the blatantly obvious example that directly contradicts your statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_Hershiser
Montreal and Calgary both put themselves into about 30 years worth of debt each for hosting their games. These aren't things that are in dispute.
I simply don't believe that a nation can go into debt for 30 years because of the Olympics. It's a convenient excuse, but I don't buy it. I'm not calling you stupid or ignorant for believing it. I'm just saying I think there is more to it than what is being "reported".
Fingers were faster than my brain, but my position doesn't change.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe DiddlyNeither Montreal nor Calgary are nations, and Canada (a nation) didn't foot the bill for either place.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_HershiserI said they were blaming the Olympics, I never stated that I actually believed money was lost. I don't believe money was lost. But I believe it was easier to blame the Olympics than admit they simply had no idea what they were doing. If you were in their government would you say, "We were incompetent and bankrupted our nation through idiotic economic policies" or "IT WAS THE OLYMPICS FAULT!"Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe Diddly
I simply don't believe that a nation can go into debt for 30 years because of the Olympics. It's a convenient excuse, but I don't buy it. I'm not calling you stupid or ignorant for believing it. I'm just saying I think there is more to it than what is being "reported".
I pretty much agree with this. Although the commercials have gotten to a point where they are almost unbearable, I ended up watching most of it on DVR and ff'ing thru the all the bs advertising. Big win.Quote:
Originally Posted by limitlesAre you talking about tv commercials? What do you think pays for the cost of bringing those games to you. Otherwise the Olympics goes to great lengths to keep secondary advertising out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_Hershiser
And for the op's point. No, every four years the Olympics is must see tv. Where ya been?
I have been a huge fan of the Olympics ever since I was a kid and have been as into them since the 70's as I am today. Can't wait for Sochi!!!
Willie is right though, the social media aspect of it has probably made it more popular with the general public.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe DiddlyYeah, but you also saidQuote:
Originally Posted by Anal_Hershiser
Athens is the obvious example of you being wrong. There are others, but Athens was the blatantly obvious example that directly contradicts your statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_Hershiser
Montreal and Calgary both put themselves into about 30 years worth of debt each for hosting their games. These aren't things that are in dispute, as far as anything I've ever seen.
Are sure that the economic collapse of Athens and Greece had nothing to do with the government covering up debt, the country having no real exports or manufacturing capability, and the overall failure that is the euro?
Wait nope, must have been the olympics.
Was a great game to watch. Spain pulled out all the tricks, much like a JV team trying to beat the varsity in a scrimmage, they knew they couldn't win on talent alone, so they had to gameplan all the way and take advantage of anything they could. Their bigs (the Gasols and Ibaka) played well against our small lineup, and Spain would also intentionally foul on any fast break opportunity for the Americans to slow the game down, which worked to their benefit. Spain also switched to a box'n'one zone in the 4th quarter which seemed to take us by surprise, and we had a lot of possessions of kind of standing around until someone jacked up a 3.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Durant, LBJ, and Kobe all had good games, but it was Chris Paul who sealed the deal for us at about the 5:00 left point in the 4th, by nailing a 3 and then making a great driving layup in consecutive possessions to push the lead to 9.
Lets say you owned a rather large plot of land, and a really big band decided to come out for one time only, for a weekend festival on your land. Being a smart capitalist, you would probably construct a basic stage, and some other rudimentary seats and whatnot, just enough to make the concertgoers happy, and then let the other paying companies/vendors who would want in pay for any upgrades.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_HershiserI said they were blaming the Olympics, I never stated that I actually believed money was lost. I don't believe money was lost. But I believe it was easier to blame the Olympics than admit they simply had no idea what they were doing. If you were in their government would you say, "We were incompetent and bankrupted our nation through idiotic economic policies" or "IT WAS THE OLYMPICS FAULT!"Quote:
Originally Posted by Crowe DiddlyYeah, but you also said
Athens is the obvious example of you being wrong. There are others, but Athens was the blatantly obvious example that directly contradicts your statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_Hershiser
Montreal and Calgary both put themselves into about 30 years worth of debt each for hosting their games. These aren't things that are in dispute.
I simply don't believe that a nation can go into debt for 30 years because of the Olympics. It's a convenient excuse, but I don't buy it. I'm not calling you stupid or ignorant for believing it. I'm just saying I think there is more to it than what is being "reported".
Now imagine if you decided to go build a whole subdivision of million dollar houses for people to rent for this one weekend festival...because if you don't build all these million dollar homes, the festival will go elsewhere. Then after the festival is over, you gotta figure out some way to make money on these homes, even though there's nothing appealing about these homes or the land that they are on. Thats what happens to these olympic cities.
:sftrueQuote:
Originally Posted by BCR
Nothing will ever come close to the USA hockey team beating the hated Soviets at Lake Placid in 1980. It was the single greatest sporting event I have ever witnessed.
In the UK we had 24 HD TV channels on the BBC dedicated to Olympic coverage. Enough that every single sport could be broadcast live for the entire duration of the games. These channels were completely free of charge, you don't even need to register, or subscribe to anything. Best of all they were 100% free of advertising. So from our viewpoint the Olympics didn't seem commercialised at all.
The whole UK went Olympics crazy. It completely dominated all day-to-day conversation. TV, newspapers, Facebook and Twitter went on Olympics overdrive. The entire country got swept up by the excitement and most people got overwhelmed by a national feel-good factor, including those who'd been critics of the Olympics during the 7 year run-up.
The unanimous view is that the games were a big success, just about everybody is feeling very patriotic and proud. GB athletes performed above expectations, which helped obviously. Team GB shipped 29 golds in London 2012. As recently as Atlanta 1996 they managed only 1 gold. Lottery funding has made a huge difference to performance. All amateur sports here used to be run on a shoe-string budget. Nowadays facilities have been greatly improved and all promising sportsmen are granted funding to let them concentrate on their sport full-time. If you proportion medals to population GB out-performed both USA and China.
By the way, basketball is considered a minority sport over here. Very few people paid much attention to the gold medal match, most probably didn't even know it was on and wouldn't be able to name a single player in the USA team. At best all it got a brief mention at the end of a few sports news summaries.
I enjoy the Olympics but it's no different than Beijing, Athens, whatever. I'm certainly not an Olympics hater but the coverage from NBC has grown stale, like 2 Olympics ago. It's the exact same shit every year: Bob Costas, Andrea Kremer, pool guy, gymnastics guy etc.
Lots of US athletes will be in the public sphere for the next month (Phelps, Lochte, Missy Franklin, Allison Felix, women's gymnasts) and then will fade away simply because we don't care THAT much. The only ones that will have lasting impact are Michael Phelps and Gabby Douglas, the latter because she's black. Nobody gave a shit about Nastia Liukin until the Olympics started up a couple of weeks ago and she did the same thing Gabby Douglas did.
It's a fun shindig every four years and we'll have new athletes to root for in 2016.
There was zero advertising at any of the venues for the games and of course watching it in the UK on the BBC we had multiple live channels running all day covering every event with not 1 single ad break. It was probably the least commercialised and least cynical sporting event i've ever seen, and had a profound feel good effect around the UK and has given us many priceless memories.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anal_HershiserThe Olympics have become a giant joke. You can't watch a single event without seeing a Coke, McDonald's, Visa ad splashed everywhere. That is the very much abridged list. I even saw an article about a US sprinter who hoped to medal in his event, not because he wanted to represent his country, but because he wanted to "secure an endorsement deal with Gillette." I admire the sacrifices these athletes make, but despise what the Olympics have turned into.Quote:
Originally Posted by JUSTIFIEDhomicide
I will now "fuck off back to DD".
The Olympics is a crock of shit really.
IOC are a bunch of greedy crooks, the athletes are mostly drug enhanced hypocrites who we put up on pedestals for all the wrong reasons.
I find it hard to watch knowing the majority are drug cheats... athletics for example 60% drug cheats is conservative, cycling 90%.
Feed the machine!
http://deadspin.com/5931226/was-this...ng-match-fixed