Hey, how else can we expect non professional drug taking athletes to gain fame and fortune?
Gee, they could have the Olympics in the same place every four years. Pick a Summer location that is predictably 75 and dry. Pick a Winter location that predictably has ample snow and highs in the 20s.
I’ve never understood why, with Olympics, and with professional sports, the cities are expected to build facilities for the sports.
Consider the NFL. Every team in the NFL makes an operating profit every year. This is mostly due to the lucrative TV deals and the hard salary cap in the NFL.
Against this backdrop, cities are intimidated by the NFL, and other sports as well, to build new stadiums for teams, otherwise, the teams will move to other cities. They will take their ball and go home.
While many of us enjoy pro sports and like having teams in our home communities, is it really necessary for them to be publicly subsidized????
And why is it that NFL stadiums nowadays cost well over a billion dollars????
And why is the prestige of hosting Super Bowls and having an NFL franchise worth it on some intangible level, when it’s not worth it in dollars and cents?
I heard that Glendale, Arizona, actually lost money hosting the Super Bowl, due to the many costly demands placed by the NFL on its host city. The mayor of Glendale couldn’t even get a ticket to the game in his city.
The NFL implies, but never quite says, that cities should build stadiums because of the prestige of having NFL football. But the threat of moving teams is very real. The NFL plants the seed that it would be unthinkable, just unthinkable for a team to move away. And that such an event must be prevented at all costs.
Beijing will make history, as the first city to host both summer and winter olympics.
It is time for the major sporting countries to give the IOC an ultimatum: downsize the games and use existing facilities, or the major players will from their own, new federation and run rational world championships.
Our taxes and cable bills are paying way too much for baseball, football players.
People love to watch the Olympics, but they don’t love paying for it.
It's not just the cost of hosting these events that has turned people off. I suspect another big factor is that advanced technology has made televised events superior to live events for most sports. If the IOC has any trouble finding a host for the Winter Olympics in the future, they should just hold the events at the South Pole and broadcast them all over the planet -- complete with computer-generated crowds, too.
Another big problem is that for most modern cities, hosting an event like the Olympics -- or even a Super Bowl -- is an enormous hassle and is highly disruptive to the 99.9% of the local population who doesn't attend the event.
What is this about not using existing facilities?
When did that rule come in?