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Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

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Re: Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

#81

Post by johannes1234321 »

polack wrote: post #65
PaulHoule wrote: post #7

The model of "go to a new place every four years, build an Olympic village and a bunch of athletic facilities" doesn't work economically. It doesn't make enough money in the short term, and the facilities don't get enough use in the long term to justify it either. That makes it hard for a city in a free society to want to be the host. The costs are very real but the benefits are elusive. Probably the last time the Ol…

You are disregarding the fact that there is a competition to get the Olympics, where perfectly normal democracies also participate each time. There have certainly been offers from competitors to arrange Olympics on tighter budgets too. The question is why those locations don't win? I'm sure it's due to corruption within the Olympic organization, but who am I to judge. I just stop watching the crap.

> The question is why those locations don't win?

Partially it is corruption, partially it is that most democratic places want to limit IOC's powers and then many areas try, but are held back by the population by large campaigns against it.

Re: Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

#82

Post by gyre007 »

el_nahual wrote: post #40

I don't know where you live, but my experience is that in the US, the network coverage just ruined the Olympics because they don't "get it." I grew up in a different country--not the US, China or Russia. We typically hope to get a half dozen medals and a gold would be a Big Deal. As a result, if you turn on the TV, you get random coverage of any of the hundreds of individual competitions. Modern pentathlon! The one w…

I tend to agree with this. I live in the UK and they don’t have too many athletes at the winter Olympics which makes the coverage more diverse in terms of sports and more importantly, athletes. This is very different from summer Olympics where the UK have more active participants making the coverage way less enjoyable.

Re: Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

#84

Post by drivingmenuts »

My thoughts:

When I was a kid, seeing Olympic-level athletes (or any high-level athlete) was a Big Deal, even in the news. Now, we’re surrounded by news; we can learn intimate details of their private lives. Familiarity breeds ennui.

The Olympics aren’t for talented amateurs anymore. They probably never were, except in the beginning, now now we realize this. Everyone is aware of the commercialization surrounding every aspect of it. At worst, I t’s a scam on a global basis. At best, it’s just another commercial enterprise slowly being stripped of any national pride.

The Olympics are expensive. The first thought is how much they cost now, not whether we’ll win anything. What is the return on the Olympics? A ton of debt, mainly, and unused venues, slowly rotting, rarely to be re-used.

Going places is expensive. Cheaper than it used to be, for sure, but it still eats a ton of expense that few people have access to. So, we can watch them on video, but it’s easier to just get the highlights than absorb the whole event, since there’s less time availability. But there are other things to be done so we can just plan to get the highlights later.

Finally: it’s sports and I have other amusement available. Sports don’t matter like they used to. I, personally, don’t make connections with people thru discussion of sporting events. So, the Olympics are something that a bunch of people are involved in that has no connection to me.

Re: Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

#85

Post by pySSK »

As others have said, you got older. Olympics have also been about politics.

Also, we're too used to on-demand TV now, and many people are on-demand only now. There were only a few channels in the past and your options when you sat down to watch TV were limited to what was on. The Olympics had primetime coverage and so that is what people watched.

Re: Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

#86

Post by Ekaros »

I think it is just reality that we have more entertainment available than ever. And it is not consumed like it was before. Before streaming the Olympics were the big TV event. Everyone spend week or two following them as main entertainment on TV. Or radio, or news. Now we just have so many other options available that there is no more the whole community focusing on single event for time period.

Re: Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

#87

Post by bane »

I'm not sure what country you're in, but in the U.S. the problem is in how it's broadcast now. The broadcast rights never should have been sold exclusively for such a long time and NBC is a terrible steward of sports and the Olympics in general for many years. The truth is though that the heart of the problem is the IOC, who agreed to these kinds of deals.

To me the Olympics used to be about the discovery of heroes, as they emerged through the greatest competition in their event that the planet could put together. Great moments of sportsmanship and overcoming what most people think are limitations of the human body. There was always a sense of discovery and the pioneering of new horizons in the events.

Now it's about making and manufacturing "heroes", with commercial deals going out to athletes years before they're ever even proven to be winners. Selective broadcasts, 30 minute human interest stories, commercials commercials commercials commercials, and after the games branding tie ins. Athletes used to be "Olympic gold medalist!" now they're just celebs with less clout than the many "influencers" who aren't known for having much talent in anything in particular.

edit I just heard the phrase "industrial sports" applied to the problem and couldn't agree more.

Re: Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

#88

Post by jmclnx »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #21

Are they terrible? I was tuned into mens figure skating last night in time to see an incredible flawless performance from a young 19 year old man from Japan. Some time later they were doing snowboarding slope style which was really fun to watch. There might be less energy with less people in the crowd due to the pandemic, but the performances from the athletes are nonetheless fantastic. Maybe I'm having a different e…

> Maybe I'm having a different experience as I'm in Canada and its broadcast differently.

Yes, far different. Where I use to live, I use to be able to get one of the Montreal Stations. Even though I could not speak French, their coverage was far above what the US would offer. So when I could, I would watch that station. I moved away from there are years ago, and the US coverage is so bad I no longer care about the Olympics.

Re: Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

#89

Post by distribot »

polack wrote: post #65
PaulHoule wrote: post #7

The model of "go to a new place every four years, build an Olympic village and a bunch of athletic facilities" doesn't work economically. It doesn't make enough money in the short term, and the facilities don't get enough use in the long term to justify it either. That makes it hard for a city in a free society to want to be the host. The costs are very real but the benefits are elusive. Probably the last time the Ol…

You are disregarding the fact that there is a competition to get the Olympics, where perfectly normal democracies also participate each time. There have certainly been offers from competitors to arrange Olympics on tighter budgets too. The question is why those locations don't win? I'm sure it's due to corruption within the Olympic organization, but who am I to judge. I just stop watching the crap.

But if democracies put together modest bids that their citizens can accept and authoritarians promise to make it spectacular + offer larger bribes, who will win?

Re: Ask HN: What caused the Olympics to become so terrible?

#90

Post by el_nahual »

pySSK wrote: post #74
el_nahual wrote: post #40

I don't know where you live, but my experience is that in the US, the network coverage just ruined the Olympics because they don't "get it." I grew up in a different country--not the US, China or Russia. We typically hope to get a half dozen medals and a gold would be a Big Deal. As a result, if you turn on the TV, you get random coverage of any of the hundreds of individual competitions. Modern pentathlon! The one w…

Agree completely. The reasons I think are: - America has just so many participants so it makes some sense that 100% coverage is on US athletes - too much focus on personal side of things (X just had a baby etc.) is becuase US gets regular news-people/non-expert commentators. Since they don't often know much about the sport, they make everything into a personal interest stories. How other countries do it: - focus on t…

US coverage is less fun because they focus on US athletes all the time, even when they are not participating. So if there's no swimming on, instead of watching some random-ass sport--which is fun--we have to watch a random human interest story--which is not fun.

Obviously they should cover US athletes when they are participating but they cover them all the time. It's just more boring.

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