. <------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The point
You ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
You said:
It’s not about whether the TV viewers pay to watch, or whether they can skip the commercials.
You suggested that the Olympics needs to “recoup costs somehow” because most of the world watches on TV, But the fact is that the Olympics makes a metric fuckload of money from that TV coverage. They get that metric fuckload from TV networks, who in turn recoup it from advertisers.
TV coverage is not some gift that the Olympics give to the world, and that they then need to cover through the sale of expensive tickets.
I’m not complaining about the cost of tickets. There are, no doubt, sound economic reasons why they are incredibly expensive. But the reason they are expensive is not because the Olympics is giving away free TV coverage.
They get their own laws written by the hosting country, that gives the megacorp preferential treatment in the eyes of the law. The one that brought this bullshit to my attention was when the IOC went after the Legend of the Five Rings game. Despite being named after a 350 year old treatise on martial arts and using a completely different symbol of five interlocking rings, this was enough for these fucksticks and their stooges to go after them.
I agree that ads bring in a shitload of money. But I brought up the television angle in the first place because OP was whining that the tickets were too expensive. Do advertisements and sponsorships make up the full cost of putting on the event? What portion does ticket revenue contribute, relative to ad revenue? I don’t know the answers to these questions. La dee fucking dah. Why are we arguing when we both agree that the ticket price isn’t too high?
I just came in here to say that I just this week realized that this summer would not have been a good time for me to visit southern England :smack:. I guess being lazy about getting one’s passport has its advantages in that I now am planning on traveling there next summer rather than the Lisa Simpson Olympic Summer. I guess the hotel and plane ticket prices would have clued me in if I had started along that path.
Most of the Olympic ceremony mumbo-jumbo (the torch running, the kindling of the Olympic fire, etc.) seems to have come from Nazi Germany-isn’t it time to retire all that stuff?
He got all wanderlusty once he’d made that first breakthrough, though. Running here there and everywhere and cornering people to show them his travel sketches at the drop of a pointy hat.
The Olympics has become a corrupt lumbering behemoth. It needs to collapse under its own weight and come back as a stripped down basic sporting competition.
Not really. Living in a world-class city is the point of living in a world-class city (also, having a job and a place to live and all that). There are an awful lot of people who seem to think that the pride of being in the mere proximity of a major sporting event is sufficient unto itself to justify the expense of hundreds of millions of dollars/pounds/euros/etc. That’s some pretty expensive pride (although I suppose equally expensive wars have been started for the same reason, so this is at least better).
In reality what happens is that the money is taken from the many involuntarily for no benefit other than the aforementioned pride and given to the few that are directly involved in the production of the event (and the tourist industry, of course). The infrastructure development is usually not converted to the benefit of the general public after the games and in many cases is either torn down or left to rot. There is usually more than a little inconvenience involved - for example, some people in east London are getting turfed out of rented accommodation they have lived in for many years so that the landlords can rent out the flats for 10x what they were getting in rent for those 12 days. There’s not even a sporting benefit; the government is spending so much on hosting the games that funding for athletes themselves has dropped dramatically.
Assuming all goes well, when the Games start and for 2 weeks media from all around the world paints the UK, Britain, and London as one of the most fascinating, beautiful, historically-interesting places on earth, everyone’s national pride will kick in and the grumblers will start feeling that swell of love for their place on earth*. Once that happens, the temporary problems and cynicism will melt away and your biggest problem might be that you’ll have to try hard to not let others see tears welling up often
This is one of the (few) things I fucking hate about the SDMB.People should never ever post anything personal about their lives, loves, problems, flaws, tics, etc. because invariably someone at some point is going to use it as a negative in a completely unrelated thread.
Put it in the context of risk then. If you dislike the idea of major sporting events (or any other kind of event, come to that), messing with your life, then move to Bradford, or Bristol, or Birmingham. You no doubt reap the benefits of living in London, suck up the drawbacks too without whining.
That’s certainly how I was playing it (and actually, I initially assumed that Equipoise was just continuing the joke by complaining how we’re using our “personal knowledge” of Bilbo’s voyaging experiences to pick on him, so maybe we’re being whooshed?). I figured that “travel sketches” and “pointy hat” would be a tipoff if any were needed.
For the record, in case it needs to be said, I hereby affirm on the Perfect Master’s ballsack that I am not personally acquainted with any facts whatsoever concerning Doper Bilbo1967’s RL personal history or characteristics, and that includes the stamps in his passport, if any.
However, I have heard that he will be visiting North America shortly, so howdy there Bilbo1967 and have a nice day!
I’d get rid on any sport that has its own, more significant international competition/s. That means, for me, no tennis and no soccer.
I would also delete any competition requiring subjective judgments about performance. This would eliminate diving, gymnastics, synchronized swimming, and trampoline.
As for the whole traffic/congestion/inconvenience thing:
I left Sydney to live in the United States about two months before the 2000 Olympics started, and i was very happy to be leaving, because i had no interest in being there for the chaos i was sure would follow. Many of my friends were not looking forward to it at all. And yet most of them who were in Sydney for the Olympics said the same sort of thing that JohnT said about Atlanta: that it was actually not a problem at all.
