The Olympics: Back in the U.S.A.?

Back in July, I wrote a piece about the Chinese-made Ralph Lauren U.S. Olympic uniforms that also bashed the United States Olympic Committee for its past greed in revenue sharing.  Well, back in May, the USOC and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) resolved their differences, as I indicated in that earlier post.  But my disgust with the slipshod way the USOC has been run, along with the pro-business conservative politics that has infested it, managed to get the better of me in that post.  I wrote that we Americans "don't deserve to host the Games again. I don't even think we deserve to compete in the Games again."

Well, that was an overreaction, and a nasty one at that; I certainly wouldn't have wanted to see Michael Phelps denied the opportunity to win enough medals to become the most decorated Olympian of all time.  So let's forget all that and look to the future. Here's the deal our Olympic committee and the IOC struck: Under the agreement, which takes effect in 2020 and runs for twenty years after, the USOC will retain its current  20 percent share of global sponsorship revenue, but its television rights share will be cut to seven percent (down from 12.75 percent) on any increases in broadcast deals and its marketing share will be halved, down to 10 percent, on increases in sponsorship revenue. The U.S. has also agreed to contribute to the administrative costs for the Olympics.

The deal comes to late for a bid from an American city for the 2020 Olympics.  Chicago, an excellent choice, can't just dust off the material for its failed 2016 bid and resubmit it for 2020; the earlier bid cost $80 million. There's a lot that goes into an Olympic bid! But 2024 might be a possibility for Chicago or New York to consider, and some Sun Belt towns like Dallas have expressed interest as well.

Please - no Sun Belt cities! They barely qualify as cities, as I made clear in my post about Atlanta.  The Atlanta Olympics were so bad that when the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2004 Games to Athens a year later - Athens had bid for the 1996 Games and expected to get them because 1996 was the centennial year of the Olympics - it was as if the IOC was apologizing to the Greeks for giving the '96 Games to Atlanta.  An American city is almost definitely going to host the Games again, though, because, unlike Greece, the U.S. has the resources to pull it off.  Athens spent a lot of euros on 2004, and it left Greece with a heavy burden.  It's simply too small and too weak a country to host something so big, and the Greek financial crisis has accentuated that point, so don't expect national capitals like Dublin, Copenhagen or Vilnius to ever host the Games either. Cities in powerful nations like the U.S., China, Britain or Germany will always be the likeliest candidates.

Talk of another American city in the Sierra Nevada region hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics has also started, so that too is a possibility.  And don't bank on a 2024 Summer Olympiad in the States; French President Francois Hollande has already expressed interest in Paris making another bid for 2024.  But maybe 2028 . . . 

And whom do I think will get 2020? More on that later.

Thanks to Kellie Whiteside of USA Today for the information and statistics used in this blog entry.