Visitors to be kicked out of Olympics for... Wrong brand of water?
 

OK, this is about the most blatant example of corporate whoring I have ever seen. Seriously, this is total bullshit. It seems that the Olympic committee has deemed that those who are bearing products from companies who did not "see fit" to sponsor the Olympics will be turned away. Thats right. Come in the door with the wrong brand of fucking *bottled water*, and you will be asked to throw it away or leave. Come in with a T-shirt with a logo on it of a company that didnt sponsor the Olympics or is a competitor of one of the sponsors, and you will be told to turn it inside-out, take it off, or leave.

From http://www.halifaxherald.com/stories.../f202.raw.html

Also referenced on BoingBoing: http://www.boingboing.net/2004/08/12...ndwhoring.html

This is the Olympics, not Woodstock. What the fuck is wrong with people? If I was there, I'd wear pants with a nice big Pepsi logo on them and no underwear. Take it off or leave? I think I'll leave my pants at the door and sit my bare ass down in my overpriced seat, thanks.

Hey, look on the bright side, it could generate renewed interest in the Olympics because of all the naked people who will be walking around... :rolleyes:

first... it's in Greece, they have different freedoms and rights when it comes to "expression"

Second, it's corporate missives gone haywire.

Note, that MTV blurrs out any logos or drug references from the videos it does air. IMHO if that's what they are worried about they can make those fuzzy block things and fuzz them out on the fly, but that's expensive and time consuming.

Thats just stupid, what the hell is the world coming to?

You watch, that will start happening at all major sporting events......................

Suprised? We shouldn't be. Disgusted? Damn right!

Everybody, and everything is owned to some extent by somebody, or something...But the Olympics ? Jesus H. Christ!

Well I can't tell you the last time I was watching the hammer throw and I saw a guy wearing a "Quiznos" shirt 34 rows up and I just had to have one.

Companies need to cool off. First, Coke gets pissed because a NASCAR driver covers up their precious Powerade with a logo for his own sponsor. It's not like they're already the biggest fucking beverage maker in the world.

God forbid someone enjoy a Pepsi and Coke loses $0.50.

....I expect an event such as this wouldn't give in to this kind of bullshit, but instead, they take it to the next level. That's just disgusting. ughhh....

it will be interesting to see how this affects advertising in the winter olympics in 2 years.

I hope the womens gymnastic team likes to wear outfits with the pepsi symbol on them:)

lol, but gymnast girls are so young that they'd be broadcasting child porn!

Supposedly this is in an attempt to stop ambush marketting where a company pays a thousand people to sit together with a logo shirt or spell out a logo. They end up getting free advertising. If fine with them tossing people for doing that but don't extend it to everyone.

People should find a way to get past in anyway. Pepsi could feasibly purchase enough seats for their employees, and have them sit in a gigantic Pepsi-logo pattern with the right color shirts. Would probably cost just as much as a real advertisement campaign and would get much more publicity.

That's pretty ridiculous. I can't believe that they're actually serious, this is a soda we're talking about...

I think this is absolutely disgusting. I also think this is a very serious issue, as it is obviously getting out of hand. I am scared to think of what we are heading towards as things like this continue to happen. Things that do not matter are beginning to matter more than things that matter, if you know what I mean. If this isn't an example of attempted "Mass-media mind-control" then I don't know what is.

It's no different than what most movie theatres do - "No outside food please". If it pays the movie theatre, the movie theatre will make the rules.

Anyway, why should someone get free advertising? Didn't the article say that if you take the labels off your bottle, it's okay to bring it in? People can always do that. I don't really care if the pepsi I'm drinking says Pepsi on it or not.


If anything, though, this limits the "mass media mind control" by limiting the amounts of advertistements you are exposed to when you watch the Olympics.

While it might be annoying to have to only buy certain brands, I think you guys are making too much of a big deal out of it.

I'm going to take the Olympics' side on this one. They don't come up with all the money to build these massive stadiums and all that come with them (which ::cough:: just happen to stimulate the economies of the areas they are in) all by themselves. They NEED sponsorship, and therefore they have decided to PROTECT THEIR INVESTORS. The comittee OFFERED these protections to their sponsors, the sponsors did not ask for them. This is a goodwill sign saying, "Hey, we REALLY appreciate your support of this international spectacle that costs tens of millions of dollars to host, so we're going to show our appreciation by denying non-sponsors free advertising."

If anything, it should help make the sponsorship contracts MORE competitive, allowing the Olympics to get more bang for their buck. Competition is inherrently better for the consumer (read: the Olympic comittee, which passes the fruits of its labor on to you, the spectator), so why is everyone up in arms over the Olympic comittee forcing more competition into their sponsorship contracts?

Capitalism, oh how I loathe you so.

Wearing a Pepsi t-shirt in public, to a concert or a sporting event or anything else should be within my rights. Period. I am not a competing advertiser. I am a human with a Pepsi shirt.

The day that a sponsor dictates the rules of an event (an event that has nothing to do, in and of itself, with the sponsor) is the day that the event loses all integrity in my mind.

I severely loathe the Olympics for the circus that it has become.

I think they should stop building all these wasted Olympic complexes and start using previously built complexes. Then there wouldn't be the need for so much sponsor bullshit, and the Olympic committee could stop sucking every sponsor's wang.

the olympics is probably the most tightly guarded in terms of what can and cannot be shown on TV cameras. Stations wanting to broadcast the 5-ring logo or the torch have to pay a big fee to IOC. That's why they're being so anal about the corporate logos. There's even one NBC station that gave some miniDV cameras to a couple of the atheletes so the atheletes could take videos of what they do in their down time (touring Athens, etc). IOC called 'em up and told them they absolutely could not broadcast any of it.

If you're caught with a professional camera over there and you haven't paid a huge fee and gotten a special pass, they confiscate your gear. Reporters trying to do a stand up are stopped at least 5 times by various cops asking to see their paperwork. A lot of TV guys over there are getting pissy about the whole thing ;)

I think it sucks but it has been done many times before at big sporting events all over the world. The same happened with both the Rugby and Cricket World Cups.

you'll see an even better instance in the next world cup--it'll be happening in germany, and fifa has sold a monopoly on beer sales to budweiser i think.

some of the earlier matches will happen in munich no less. local breweries are talking about selling other beers from stands just outside the monopoly perimeter.
i expect you'll find similar kind of crap going on in the world cup context, then.

the problem is that fifa (or the olympic committee) agreed to this kind of relationship with corporate sponsors, not so much the outcomes of those agreements.

sports are private affairs. the idea that there is a public dimension to sports is an illusion.

oh those poor germans. surrounded by the some of the best beer in the world but they'll only be able to buy bud.

I know! Shit, if I was surrounded by so many great beers and someone tried to tell me all I could drink was Bud... Things would be ugly. Something tells me that those vendors outside will be making a killing and the Bud vendors inside wont be selling too much...

And nothing should stop you from doing so at the Olympics.

If, however, you are attempting to run across the track to flaunt your Pepsi shirt, or entering with 1000 of your closest friends who also are wearing Pepsi shirts, you will be asked to remove or inside out it.

It's not a great situation, but it isn't as bad as some of you are making it out to be. We have many of the same food restrictions at ballparks and stadiums here in the states.

I feel ill...

Oh joy. I agree that sponsors need to protect their investment, but telling your stewards not to wear any shoes with non-adidas logos? That's too far. Companies are trying to push it and see how far they can get...

I'd like to give the world a Coke

Sounds much like what I heard about NASCAR and how the winners that are sponsored by Pepsi get fined for drinking Pepsi brands and not Coke.

Aw well look at it this way, all I have heard about the olympics so far is that there are a lot of empty seats and ratings are not all that good.

Maybe they'd have a fuller croud if they weren't turning away everyone drinking a Pepsi or wearing the wrong t-shirt away at the door...

Eh, I think we can do without all this crappy sponsorship. I mean, really, little sounds worse to me then "US cellular Field" or the Burking 500, or the 'X-Brand Event.' Not only is calling sporting places and events these names just plain retarded, it makes it seem soul-less (and I'm not a religious person or anything).

If I had enough friends, Id take em all to the oympics wearing red, white and blue shirts, and then sit in the pattern of the pepsi symbol, not because I particularly like pepsi, but to spite the craziness.

Corporate fascism at it's finest.

I was watching the opening ceremony on TV, and by the time it reached the end, I was so fed up with the constant every-5-minutes commercial breaks that I wondered if I was just watching one big commercial, with the Olympics shoved in here and there.

Then I realized that I was right - the main purpose of the Olympics these days is NOT to showcase the cream of the crop in human competition, but to attract sponsors and advertisers with lots of money to spend. It is in the interest of the host country, and the cable channels to whore out everything they have, to maximize profits, Olympic tradition or not (especially the biggest whore of all, NBC, who has exclusive license to skip over all the really interesting bits, and air the ever-annoying commentary of Katie Couric and Bob Costas).

This is no surprize - its all about money, and when lots and lots of money is involved, people will gladly and selflessly sacrifice some liberties (namely, yours - not theirs) in order to beef up their bottom line. I'm not saying its wrong - this is the way business works - but I don't exactly feel joy getting screwed out of the REAL Olympics...

Maybe in a few decades, we won't be seeing teams like Portugal vs. Italy anymore, but rather ADIDAS vs. Sony. All about profit...

You should actually do some research prior to posting. The sponsors did not instigate this situation. The Olympic comittee offered the sponsors this sort of protection.

Don't really see how comments like this contribute to the discussion a whole lot.

It's not the companies issuing demands. The [size=5]OLYMPIC COMITTEEE[/b] is the one that made the offer and set down the guidelines.

Do you people even read the articles or just fly off the handle without thinking? Honestly.

And they'd be well within the realm of reason to escort you from the premises en masse.

NBC itself is NOT a cable channel, but rather one of the few channels that broadcasts on basic television. MSNBC is a different story.

As far as the Olympics being in the interests of the sponsors and host countries, last time I checked neither of those two entities operated outside the bounds of normal economics, and thus don't do anything for free. There were a few nations who tried that sort of idiocy, and it failed. If the Olympics had nothing to offer host nations, they wouldn't have host nations. If the Olympics had nothing to offer sponsors, THERE WOULD BE NOTHING PROVIDED. The Olympics cost millions of dollars to host, even without the stadiums and ceremonies. Simply allocating enough space, the travel arrangements, hotel arrangements, feeding arrangements, transportation to and from the events, and so many other logistical nightmares happens to cost quite a bit of money.

Many of these athletes ARE NOT professionals, and thus don't have millions of dollars/d-marks/pounds/francs/etc. to throw around on their own lodgings. How would you tell a 16 year old gymnast she had to pay her own air fare, hotel and food expenses, as well as find a ride to every event on her own? Doesn't that defy the spirit of the games? So the host country is duty-bound to provide accomodations for the athletes, from rooms to motorcades to food, and that stuff doesn't come free.

Yes, the amount of money is insane. But if the money didn't flow, the games wouldn't happen. Alot of you may not have watched the opening ceremonies, where they told of the dispute over the Greek Olympic Comittee chairperson role. One lady started there, and was removed. For three years afterwards, no money was spent, sponsors were not signed, stadiums were not built, and nothing was accomplished worth mentioning. So they brought back the original chairwoman, and within a year, everything that has been completed was accomplished. The world is lucky that mismanagement didn't cost the world the Olympics.

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.

Mabye the reasoning behind this article has something to do with the topic of this thread.

Sadly, the olympics has been on a downward slide for some time now- at this point its a phyric victory at best to "win" the rights to be an olympis host- its all money, and no signs of it changing, just getting worse ratings.....