Has the Olympics brand jumped the shark?

The Vancouver Olympics open today. What’s your reaction? Is it yay!, yawn, or yikes?

 

Watching the endless hype and hoopla as NBC prepares to broadcast the Games, I’m wondering whether the current Olympics concept remains right for these times.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I love my country and enjoy healthy competition among nations. I appreciate the ancient Greek credo of healthy mind/healthy body. I subscribe to Sports Illustrated. I’ll watch some of the Games.

 

It’s none of that. It just seems to be an awkward time for excessiveness.

 

• The current estimated cost for the Vancouver games is $6 billion – that’s nearly $6 billion of Canadian taxpayer money. Experts expect the final number to climb as high as $8 billion. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the Beijing Olympics which racked up $50-60 billion (U.S. dollars).
•  According to the Vancouver Sun, the cost of security alone will be $800 million more than the budgeted $175 million.
•  NBC paid $2.2 billion for rights to the 2010 and 2012 Olympics. Meanwhile, Dick Ebersol, Chairman of NBC’s Sports Division said the network will lose money on the deal.

We observe (and sometimes experience) this mind-blowing spending every two years, in different cities/countries every time.

 

One month ago today, over two million people became homeless in Haiti and more than 200,000 people died. It may take that country 25 years to recover from the earthquake.

The Great Recession is in full bloom. More than 10 million Americans are unemployed. Home mortgages are being abandoned. Consumer confidence is low. Canada’s New Democratic party says 15,000+ British Columbia residents are homeless as the frivolity begins. It’s a climate of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

To make the point, some folks organized the Vancouver Poverty Olympics this past Sunday, protesting the billions being spent.

 

With this undercurrent, do you think it’s time to steer the Olympics in a new direction? Yes, a lot of it is funded privately, but does it feel like it’s too much spend for too little gain? Billions and billions of dollars for 17 days?

 

Aside from the massive spending, there’s also the issue of Olympics brand erosion.

 

Did the Olympics jump the shark when it shifted from every four years to every two years? Does the adage, “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” apply? Did dividing the winter and summer games dilute the brand?       

 

This is supposed to be a global event, but Anheuser Busch, for example, is using the Vancouver Olympics as a “regional play,” according to Ad Age, strategizing the World Cup delivers a more global platform. Is it just this particular Olympics? Winter games always draw less than summer games (80 nations in Vancouver vs. 200+ in summer). Is this a growing trend for penny-pinching advertisers?

 

I’m all for fun and games. I like the Olympics concept. But is it time for this gargantuan bi-annual undertaking to be simplified and re-imagined?