The Rio Games Were An Unjustifiable Human Disaster, And So Are The Olympics

"More than anything else, what surprised me during my first Olympics was the sheer scale of the bubble the IOC has made for itself. After arriving at the airport, members and assorted apparatchiks were ushered into private cars, ferried along exclusive highway lanes—look out the window, and there were Rio 2016-branded walls to mask the favelas—and dropped off at their exclusive hotels ringed by security, so only those with credentials could enter. They then took the same private cars to all of their events. Some even got motorcades. Once they got to the various sports venues, they went in the Olympic Family entrances, passed through the Olympic Family security lines, mingled in the Olympic Family club lounges, and watched athletes compete from the Olympic Family seats. When they were hungry, they surely put their $900 per diems to use at the city's most exclusive restaurants and bars, never risking having to interact with anyone who wasn't wealthy. Except, perhaps, for the people serving them.

Indeed, you could hardly dream of a better business model than that of the Olympics: externalize costs and pocket profits. While the Games cost cities billions to execute, the IOC will make more money on Rio 2016 than on any single Olympics ever: about $9.3 billion in marketing revenues and $4 billion in TV deals. Roughly $1.2 billion came from NBC, which spared no expense in putting up many of their employees at Copacabana Palace, the nicest hotel in the city."

read the story by Aaron Gordon​

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