Winter Olympics: The Big Bust

Forbes ^ | December 16, 2009 | Michael Ozanian

[george76]

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is going to be a financial disaster that should serve as a wake up call to sports executives ...spending on sports sponsorships and advertising--is very bad.

NBC... is going to lose about $200 million on Vancouver... Over the past five years the operational costs of the 2010 Winter Games has mushroomed from $1.3 billion to almost $2 billion.

Vancouver is going to take it on the chin as declining sponsorship and tourism revenue ...

[Scrambler Bob]

The Rules: Pictures!!

[Abathar]

And yet poor Mayor Daley swears Chicago would have ended up making a fortune if he and his cronies could have had a chance to run the games here.

[RexBeach]

Yeah. Where’s the big bust?

[Abathar]

Here you go, a big bust.

[netmilsmom]

[cherry]

I remember a time when we kids would stay up late to watch the moon landing, when "The Wizard of Oz" was a yearly event, and we brought blankets and pillows downstairs to watch it on black and white tv, when the Jerry Lewis telethon was the "in" thing, and when the Olympics were something you watched LIVE with passion:...of course there were no professionals, just barbers or construction workers who could throw the javelin or lift weights or run fast.....there was limited commercialism....there was no politically correct broadcasts....

its sort of like the Thanksgiving Day parades....in the east, they were a MUST watch, but I haven't been able to watch them since they made them basically a broadway show with frequent stops....

sometimes one just wants to see and hear the HS bands....

[BBell]

[ClearCase_guy]

It's not clear to me that too many people cared about the Olympics until about 1936. Then Jesse Owens went to Munich, Leni Reifenschahl (sp?) made a film out of it, it all became political theater and people sat up and took notice. And after WWII we got Olympic struggles as proxies for the Cold War and everyone wanted to make sure we got more medals than the commies.

Now? The French judge is on the take, the swimmer is earning millions, the woman from Africa is a man, and 100% of the coverage is focused on the sad and pitiful background of each athlete.

Who the heck cares about the Olympics??

[duckworth]

Why will NBC lose $200 million? Because they’re stupid. They think people watch the Olympics to see Bob Costas give us some sob story about a poor athlete who overcame great obstacles to become an Olympic athlete. They’ll have camera crews at the kid’s house, interviewing his mother and at the kid’s high school interviewing his high school coach, and maybe some doctor who fixed his knee. Who gives a crap? Show us the fricking ski jump! One guy with a camera at the top, one guy with a camera at the bottom. Then we need a guy running a tally board showing how many medals the Americans won. That’s it! Three guys, maybe six in case the first three get frostbitten. What’s the fricking problem?

[Sir Gawain]

Good I hope NBC loses everything.

[DemonDeac]

Women seem to love those human interest segments but I hate them. I love watching Olympic sporting events and wish they’d just show those and not fluff pieces about how Joey’s dog ran away three days before the Olympic Trials.

[Alberta's Child]

Winter Olympics are like Super Bowls. Networks are willing to take big losses on them because they're broadcast early in the year -- and the television ratings they generate can be used to garner higher advertising rates for the rest of the year.

Not sure if that's going to work out for them this year, but that's usually why these events are "loss-leaders" for networks.

One thing that will certainly have an adverse impact on the Vancouver events is the weaker U.S. dollar combined with the economic malaise here in the U.S. They're going to have a harder time getting Americans to travel up there.

[scrabblehack]

Taking *big* losses is a rather recent phenomenon, no? It’s not like they haven’t had time to prepare. If sponsorships weren’t selling, that should have told them they weren’t doing something right.

[catnipman]

You know, I just never could relate to the winter Olympics, so never watch them. Oh sure, when I was little, we kids were always getting a pickup game of curling or ice dancing going in the backyard, but the biathlon was forbidden to us because little kids kept getting killed by errant shots. Plus, our neighborhood luge, bobsled, and skeleton tracks were seriously sub par, so it was quite difficult to consistently get up a decent team. And, for Christmas, we boys usually received a football, basketball, or baseball. So, we were frequently short of essential equipment like a good curling stone (though brooms were rather easy to come by) or decent costumes for ice dancing. Besides, we always had the sneaking suspicion that curling was really just shuffleboard on ice, and while there were usually plenty of girls up for ice dancing, there weren’t very many boys. Plus, we always had a funny feeling about those few little boys that really liked to ice dance anyway, if you know what I mean.

So, quite naturally, ball sports it was for us. And to this day, for some reason that’s a bit of puzzle to me, I still prefer American football to curling and all the rest.

[buccaneer81]

The ABC coverage of the Olympics was the best. Hard to believe it’s been almost 30 years.

[dfwgator]

What made the Olympics was the East vs West thing. With the fall of Communism it doesn’t quite seem the same.

Now basically, most of the athletes, regardless of which nation they represent, pretty much live and train here in the US.

[buccaneer81]

You’re from Colorado. I would expect you were exposed to hockey and skiing as a kid, no?

[catnipman]

You’re from Colorado. I would expect you were exposed to hockey and skiing as a kid, no?

Grew up in the Carolinas and moved here in '75.

[buccaneer81]

Gotcha.