By John Ruberry
Did you hear about the massive organized protest by American conservatives of the Toyko Olympics?
No?
That’s because there wasn’t one.
The 2020 Summer Olympics, delayed a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, got off to a bad start, unless you are woke.
In a women’s soccer match between Team USA and Sweden, athletes from both sides took a knee rather than stand for the Star Spangled Banner. Sweden won the match, 3-0. The US women’s soccer team was the overwhelming favorite to win a gold medal in Tokyo, it ended up with the bronze.
Earlier this year the International Olympic Committee rescinded its Rule 50, which stated “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”
The Olympics are a dying movement. More on that in a bit. But the woke protests just add accelerant to the fire.
In competitive sports success of course is achieved by winning a game, crossing the finish line first, or lifting the heaviest object, or throwing it the farthest.
The Olympics are a big business, despite being comprised of not-for-profits such as the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, or more commonly in other nations by government ministries of sport.
The big money for the Olympics comes from TV rights and revenue for the broadcasters. If you envision television ratings as a shot put, then that heavy ball appears to have been thrown by a weak child.
From Fox News:
NBC is giving advertisers who bought airtime during the Tokyo Olympics extra commercials due to underwhelming ratings for this year’s 2020 Olympic Games, fueled by a pandemic-weary population and backlash against woke athletes protesting the U.S. flag and national anthem.
NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua insisted to the Associated Press that the network would still make money on the 2020 Olympics – but left out details about how much.
NBC’s primetime coverage of the Tokyo Olympics on July 26 averaged 14.7 million viewers — for a 49% drop compared to the equivalent night from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and 53% less than the 2012 London Olympics. The opening ceremonies saw their lowest viewership since 1988.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, there are more television offerings than ever. And some people will watch Olympics segments on NBC’s YouTube channel and those viewership numbers are not included in the network’s ratings total.
But the viewership numbers still suck.
Wokism likely contributed to the ratings rout. That may change soon as conservatives are mobilizing against Critical Race Theory and the Democrats’ hard shove to the far-left, but conservatives don’t have a boycott apparatus in place, such as the liberals do with medium-sized groups such as Media Matters and tiny Twitter armies such as Sleeping Giants. That’s because those on the American right calmly reach for the remote and watch something else when they are offended. Or they simply stop buying products, such as what I did after Gillette ran its toxic masculinity television commercial two years ago. I loved its Good News razors. But I don’t want to put money into the hands of a company that insults me. And now I use Bic razors–which I like better and I probably never would have considered purchasing until that nasty commercial. Gillette owes Bic a finder’s fee for making me a customer. [Corrrection: a commenter mentioned that it should have been written the other way around.]
People watch sports, or buy tickets to live events, for many reasons, but the drama of a competitive event is likely the primary one. Not for the politics, that’s for sure.
And conservatives don’t need a Media Matters-type group to tell us what not to watch. Again that may change soon but the American right doesn’t possess the kneejerk compulsion to regularly pressure companies to avoid a network, a website, or a television program.
NBC is in trouble because it already purchased the US rights to every Olympics through 2032. Because leftism is a quasi-religion don’t look for the IOC to reinstate its protest ban for its athletes any time soon.
And yes, the Olympic movement is dying. Only two cities bid for the 2024 summer games, Paris and Los Angeles. The French capital was the winner and LA was immediately awarded the 2028 games. There was no other bidder. And for the 2032 Summer Olympics, the “winner” was Brisbane, Australia, the only bidder.
For the 2022 and 2026 winter games there were only two bidders each.
Of course that’s because organizing the quadrennial Olympics are big money losers for host cities. Los Angeles managed to turn a profit with its last summer games–but that was in 1984. The 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were particularly ghastly financial debacles. Allegations of corruption in the bidding process over the years makes one wonder how stupid supposedly smart people can be.
Athens is a city of many notable ruins–and now Greece’s largest city can add numerous sites from the ’04 games for tourists to marvel at.
As the expression goes, when you get woke you go broke.
But the Olympics were already arguably broke.
Next year Beijing hosts the Winter Olympics. I can think of a bunch of reasons not to watch. China is a communist dictatorship, it has a long history of doping among its athletes, there are over two-hundred concentration camps that incarcerate Uighurs in China, and what else? Oh yeah, there’s a good chance that the COVID-19 virus escaped from the Wuhan laboratory, which destroyed the international economy and killed millions.
Woke protests will seal the deal for me and many more in a few months when the Olympic flame is lit in Beijing.
Corporate CEOs need to listen to the millions of quiet conservative protesters like myself and not the dozen or so left-wing screamers who show up at their board meetings. There are more of us than them.
John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
Update: (DTG) Liberty Lanche! Welcome Liberty Daily readers Take a peek around. Discover the Mystery that has befuddled New York Writers , Check what’s under my Fedora this week, watch my occasional commentary, and if you’re a Catholic download our August Indulgence Calendar and if you liked John’s piece, you can find more of his writing here and don’t miss my other Magnificent Seven Writers:
- Pat Austin on Covid Testing in Louisiana
- RH on standards
- John Fournier on Compliance = Never Ending Mandates
- Christopher Harper on Olympic Overload
Oh and if you’re wondering who this guy is and if you should help pay my writers and our bandwidth costs, I’m the guy who is a room full of hostile press during press conferences actually asked Donald Trump neutral or friendly questions.
It hasn’t made me a lot of friends.
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