SOME SAY THE OLYMPICS, now underway, are all about politics, a coming out party for China's ruling regime, eager to show that its rise to world-power status is no threat to anyone--except for the Taiwanese, Tibetans, domestic Christians, and the few millions of others who might behave in ways the regime finds unacceptable. Others, including the president of the United States, say it is all about sport and the athletes who compete--except for the athletes from China, who know it is all about accumulating more medals than the United States--the original crowns of wild olives will no longer do--and Zhou Yongkang, the Communist Party's security chief who sees the games as giving "full play to the superiority of the socialist system". Still others say the games are about business--the grubby art of turning a worldwide attraction into hard cash.
All of these observers are probably correct, but this economist, no geopolitician and with an interest in Olympic sports limited to the efforts of the U.S. basketball to re-establish its rightful hegemony, tends to see dollar signs where others see political jockeying and the glory of athletic competition.
And with reason. Worldwide broadcast rights will bring the International Olympic Committee (IOC) $1.5 billion. Not bad, but not a huge sum when compared with the $3.7 billion the National Football League charges for a season's broadcast rights. Sponsorships ($1.2 billion), ticket sales ($240 million), and miscellaneous sources ($60 million) bring the total to $3 billion, from which the IOC takes 8 percent for the care
and feeding of its staff. You know, the guys who originally promised reporters that the Beijing government would not block their access to the web (it did), and who initially barred Iraqi athletes on the ground that their government was too heavily involved in athletics--unlike their Chinese hosts!
But back to business. The Olympics teaches, first of all, that great sporting events are one of the few happenings that can attract a mass audience in a media world in which hundreds of channels and multiple delivery platforms fragment audiences. Experts are guessing that the games will attract a global audience of some four billion people (who will watch at least one event), perhaps one billion of them glued to broadcasts by CCTV.com, the owner of the broadcast rights for mainland China and Macau.
For two reasons. Like the much-maligned reality television shows that so offend elite members of the chattering classes, the end-game is unpredictable. We more or less know that in sitcoms the good guys will get the girls, and that in shoot-'em-ups the last man standing will be our favorite star. Of real suspense there is very little. Sports are different: The contest isn't over until the fat man tosses his hammer.
Second, as David Hill, Fox Sport's brilliant chairman, CEO and impresario whose Super Bowl broadcast this year attracted almost 100 million Americans, once explained to me, sports are tribal. It is rare that groups of friends will come together to watch some sit com or film. But put a sporting event on the screen--the Super Bowl, the World Cup, a heavyweight boxing match--and the only question is to whose home do we go for the best snacks, probably the product of a sponsor such as Coca-Cola or McDonald's.
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