From CBC News, a great article, “Winner’s Curse? The Economics of Hosting the Olympic Games” – we might’ve re-titled it, “Loser’s Blessing”! – includes this video of a news segment reporting how the major corporate sponsors of the games, who pay around $100 million each, make huge profits from their association with the games and by …
An article from The Guardian on the 2012 London Olympics is titled “Will the Olympics get the economy growing again? Don’t bank on it.” It points out the academic research that shows (and showed back in 2008) that hosting mega-events is a stupid economic develpment plan. The article concludes “Professor Stefan Szymanski, a specialist in …
A packed meeting of Counter Olympics activists agreed last night to march through Bow on Saturday 28 July in protest at the corporate takeover of the London 2012 Games. The protestors will defy an attempt by Transport for London to ban the demo. The meeting, representing an alliance of 43 campaign groups (see below), plans …
The Counter Olympics Network “is a network of groups and individuals who have come together to organise around the London 2012 Olympic Games. The Counter Olympics Network links people and organisations critical of some or many aspects of the 2012 Games. We also want to hold the organisers of the Olympic Games to account, to …
From The Red Pepper, a UK publication. “Resistance to the 2012 Olympics has been widespread and under-reported, starting with London’s bid to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to host the Games back in 2004. Protests are planned to continue through to after the sporting events finish, in order to challenge the ‘legacy’ of a corporate …
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/586262941/the-olympic-city/widget/video.html The Olympic City is a photography project by Jon Pack and Gary Hustwit that looks at the legacy of the Olympic Games in former host cities around the world. Hosting the Olympics has become a way for a city to show itself off on an international stage and generate toursim dollars, and cities spend …
From The Mail of London, “Every day, the organisers of the 2012 Olympics must thank their lucky stars for unending global economic disaster. ‘Pheweee,’ they mutter as another basket-case economy in the Eurozone demands another trillion on pain of implosion. Because if times were normal and stable, there would not just be an outcry about …
NBC Chicago aired a “documentary” on the 2016 Olympic bid tonight, “Making Big Plans: The Story of Chicago’s Olympic Dreams.” The film was made by Mark Mitten, who was the Chief Brand Officer of the 2016 Committee, and Jim Schmidt, a creative director for Downtown Partners/Chicago – which did marketing work for the bid. WATCH …
The February 2010 issue of the American Planning Association’s magazine, Planning, gives a brief postmortem on the 2016 bid. The article asks the questions that no one in Chicago seemingly wants to face: “What does a city gain, or lose, by hosting the Olympics? Did Chicago lose? Or did it win?” The author then goes …