The Olympics are supposed to be an opportunity for the finest athletes from all over the planet to gather together and compete in an atmosphere of international cooperation and goodwill. Every four years the Olympics bring together the nations of the world in a global spectacle of epic proportions.  In a perfect world, the games would be about friendly competition uniting the world in the Olympic spirit for two short weeks.

Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world. There is a darker, more sinister side to the Olympic Games.

One of the more negative aspects of the Olympics is the increasingly jingoistic TV coverage surrounding the games; particularly in regards to the globalization agenda. Behind the façade of friendly competition is the specter of growing nationalism and corporatization of the games. Over the years, American TV coverage has become less about the international competition and more about marketing, promoting xenophobia, and feeding American ‘exceptionalism.’

The organization of the Olympics begins with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), a vast commercial enterprise dominated by a small, elite group of sports executives and representatives from major corporations.

Former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch said that the purpose of the games was to “contribute to building a peaceful and better world,” but the Games themselves are saturated with symbols of nationalism and corporate fascism. Indeed, studies show that media coverage of the event actually serves to increase nationalistic pride and – in America at least – enhances feelings of “smugness.”

The Olympics are a gigantic commercial endeavor designed to reach the largest possible audience. The spectacle of athletic competition is secondary to the billions of dollars in advertising revenue generated by the games.

The location of the Olympics is carefully chosen to match a favorable time zone in order to reach the most economically dominant countries like North America and Europe. The host city is temporarily the focus of the entire world’s media attention.

The site is also a strong indicator of a country’s economic influence – especially in growing economies in places like Tokyo, Brazil (which hosted the 2016 Summer Games), and South Korea (2018 Winter Olympics). If current economic trends continue there won’t be many cities left that can afford to host the Games!

The level of trust granted to specific regions by the global elite depends on the potential host country’s level of commitment to the ideals of globalization. The Games go where the money is.   

The IOC is responsible for choosing the city where the Games are to be held. The politically-charged decision to award the games to the Russian city of Sochi was highly controversial amidst the usual complaints of corruption, incompetence, and accusations of human rights abuse. Critics rebuked Russian president Vladimir Putin, who spent more than 50 billion dollars to create the Olympic facilities in Sochi – virtually from scratch.

The same can be said for many of the venues built especially for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro. Sadly, most of those multi-million dollar facilities – paid for through economically devastating tax revenues – now sit abandoned and decaying. A sad and ironic reminder of what the games have become.

Using the IOC as cover, our corporate rulers suck the economy of the targeted nation dry and then move on to the next victim in a never-ending search for new revenue streams.

Contrary to the lofty goals espoused by the IOC, the ultimate purpose of the Olympics is to generate the highest corporate visibility and the highest monetary returns for the multi-national conglomerates that control the global economy. Rather than promote global kinship through sport, in the USA the Games have been transformed into an effective propaganda weapon, used to inspire feelings of exceptionalism – and increasing isolation from the outside world.

The IOC is also in charge of allocating broadcasting rights among the major American TV networks, and it selects the official sponsors for the event. Lining up for the gravy train are some of the largest multinationals on earth: Proctor & Gamble, Amazon, Disney, GE, Google, Apple, IBM, AT&T and GM among others. 220 million Americans tuned in for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, making it the most watched television event in US history. Ratings have fallen since then, but that hasn’t stopped NBC from selling more commercial space than ever. The network had to recoup something like 40 million dollars in advertising after the cancellation of the 2020 games.

And here it is, 2021 – and yet the games must remain ‘Tokyo 2020’ strictly for marketing purposes – because, like, it would cost way too much to have to produce all new merchandise, reprint everything and paint a big ‘1’ over the zero…that’s not cost effective to the people who run the show!

The mainstream media [MSM]’s coverage of individual events is meant to instill national pride and promote feelings of patriotism. Naturally, the media from each country is most interested in the ‘home team’ – especially when local athletes are favored to win. This formula produces the highest possible ratings. Important national characteristics are emphasized and national symbols and rivalries are played up for the sake of home audiences, as in the case of the USA vs RUSSIA.

National broadcasters, keen to profit from the merger of competition and nationalism, supplement Olympic coverage with heart-warming narratives about local athletes and their achievements. While global superpowers can emphasize winning and ‘going for the gold’ and focus on the overall medal count, smaller nations with less representation may choose to highlight the ‘good sports’ ethic of their athletes or other non-performance based criteria.

American audiences see things differently.

In the ‘Americanized’ model of Olympic media production, successful athletes are marketing symbols, meant to inspire national pride and patriotism. But in reality they are simply mediated propaganda images which demonstrate corporate control over the Games. The one-sided coverage in effect becomes a tool that sanctions a veiled model of globalization. Nationalistic TV broadcasts focusing on the ‘home team’ juxtaposed with 4 minute commercial breaks featuring global mega corporations seamlessly embrace the contradictory dynamics between sport and commerce.

And the sheer volume and frequency of the commercial breaks is mind-boggling. Google, Amazon, AT&T and all the the rest spent millions of dollars producing slick, cinematic commercials portraying a false reality where everyone is happy and healthy and safe – and if we can all simply join together for the sake of buying more products we can put an end to all of the world’s problems.

But in a society where ‘net-worth’ is the only thing that matters, you certainly can’t blame the athletes for profiting off of their image.

Certainly, most TV audiences are more interested in the performance of athletes from the ‘home team.’ Maybe the average moron American only wants to see American athletes perform at the Olympic Games.

But for me personally, as an avid viewer of Olympic coverage for over thirty years – it is blatantly obvious that network coverage has become skewed more and more toward shameless nationalism. Watching NBC’s appallingly bad coverage this year, you’d think that Americans were the only athletes at the goddam Olympics! Sad.

I used to enjoy watching the games because you’d get to see athletes from all over the world and you’d get to discover things about other cultures and learn to appreciate the truly global nature of Olympic sport.

Not anymore. Now the focus is exclusively on American athletes, unless there is a premier event which Americans aren’t expected to win. The coverage rarely features anyone else unless they pose a challenge to the US favorite. Instead of showing the actual competition, our propaganda ministers have decided that we would rather watch a 20-minute ‘feel good’ segment about the latest over-hyped American athlete, using the same tried and true programming triggers proven to instill patriotic fervor in the Unwashed Masses.

US Television coverage emphasizes US athletes because the MSM believes that is what the people ‘back home’ want to see. Commentators refer to ‘our team’ or ‘our athletes’ which reinforces in TV audiences that they, too, should be identifying with ‘their’ national representatives. Media helps viewers form a connection with specific athletes. Slickly produced graphics, like national flags in the corner of the screen are also used to make Olympic coverage distinct.

While coverage of the Olympics can highlight the differences between cultures, it can also narrow the definition of what it means to belong to a particular group, which further undermines the Olympic rhetoric of uniting people. By presenting only one version of the nation’s Olympic story, media coverage reinforces ideological power relations within individual countries or ethnic groups. The lop-sided coverage serves to reinforce preferred cultural values of class, race, sexuality and athletic ability.

NBC’s coverage of the Tokyo 2020 games is “American Exceptionalism” at its absolute worst – particularly the heavily edited ‘prime time’ highlights show: it’s a travesty, really, but you’d be hard pressed to find a better example of a sporting event co-opted as state-sponsored propaganda…except for Berlin, 1938, I suppose…

Heil herr Korporat Masters!!