roachboy

this kind of relationship between umbrella organizations that structure sports events and their sponsors is relatively new: i think it an index of the growing subordination of live sports events to their televised versions. i was inclined to think that the new paradigm for the total subordination of live sports to television emanated from americans, but no---in european football coverage, there are very few commercials---the obvious spaces for advertising apart from commerical time would be the stadium itself--from there it is a logical step only to treating the crowd as advertising medium.

the olympics are strange beasts--they operate in a particular economic sphere--like huge, transient international convention centers that are also extended commercials for the host cities--they are occaisions for shifting around populations within the host cities (you do not want too many nasty poor people around the sites as they might bum out the tv viewing public for example--mexico city was a particular egregious example of this use of the olympics as instrument of urban policy)--the motives for participation on the part of a host city/country are therefore mostly publicity oriented in a way that is disconnected from any particular commercial interest and toward presenting the host city/area internationally as a framework for those interests.

the olympic committe did better raising money during the period when it was more possible to present the olympics as a kind of pure sporting event--which by now is ridiculous--the boundary professional/amatuer is out the window--allan iverson is playing on the us olympic basketball team alongside other nba players, for example--amatuer status is irrelevant. and the same pattern has obtained in many wealthier countries. the only level at which amatuer status seems to still matter is for countries with less "developed" commercial sports infrastructures.

the olympic committee, like fifa, like american professional sports leagues, made particular choices in their relationship to television and to sponsorship within that general context. they could have made different choices--there is nothing given in advance or necessary about them. i think it is perfectly legitimate to attack the results of those choices.

i am not watching the olympics, because i cant stand american coverage--the mediocrity of the commentary, the refusal to cover sports in which the americans are not prominent, the wasting of time that could be devoted to covering these sports on human-interest stories with cheesy johntesh music, soft focus and the idiot triumph-over-adversity narrative...the american television spirit of the games is jingoism...the spirit of the games is advertising delivery...you get enough of this wandering about in the states every day--no need to tune in to watch the same get wrapped tight around sporting events--particularly not those which could and should be interesting on their own, but which are wrecked by the lowest-common-denominator coverage.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite