The Thursday, September 25, 2008
edition of the Wall Street Journal reports that due to the success of the 2008
Beijing Olympics, businesses are already looking forward to investing in future
Olympic Games. While the quarterly reports of the main sponsors have yet to be
released, this report clearly tells us that the Olympics were very profitable
for advertisers, sponsors and vendors, despite the boycott calls.
Much of the success was despite the efforts of China
to make things difficult for the broadcasters. For example, broadcast crews
were restricted where they could broadcast from, as well as the hours. China
made sure that broadcasters only saw what they wanted the world to see. While
the television broadcasters had restrictions, they also did a poor job in
broadcasting, claiming events were live when they were not, sometimes just
rebroadcasting events they just aired. Additional events were available on some
extra cable channels, but were not advertised. To complicate matters, schedules
were not advertised well, and many people did not know that
YouTube was posting many
events not available otherwise.
On the Political
Correctness front, events such as the Biathlon, which included sport shooting,
was not aired, despite breaking news at the event. Sport shooters will tell you
they are shooting paper which is "already dead," so there is no real sense of
violence the networks claim, especially considering the fact that boxing
actually requires inflicting injuries on ones opponent. While television
network executives do not want to openly state they believe these sporting guns
encourage violence, it is clear this is what they believe, despite the fact
that the guns and ammunition involved are simply made to put a hole in paper,
and not much more. Last we checked, human skin is tougher than paper, and the
concentration needed to shoot like an Olympian is far greater than is used in
the commission of a crime. In comparison, this would be like not airing NASCAR
auto races because it encourages people to drive fast.
Despite all the restrictions and problems, the
Olympics broadcasts made money for everyone involved. It also lends credibility
to the video survey Boycott Watch assembled, in which we asked
people if they were boycotting the Olympics. In that video, people who were
watching the Olympics were generally not boycotting the games or advertisers,
despite knowing about the boycott, which also confirms our other reports.
Also,
Boycott Watch
predicted the Olympics boycotts failed more than a month before the
Olympics started. As usual, Boycott Watch was right when it came to predicting
consumer trends related to consumer actions. |
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