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JT Jag posted:I mean I don't want to sound insensitive here but maybe countries who can't afford the Olympics shouldn't build Olympic facilities, especially in cities that don't need them long-term. That's the trouble with the spell the Olympics has cast over everyone. It's just so "prestigious" to be an Olympic host that countries just don't think about how little they will actually benefit from hosting them. Even big rich countries tend to lose money hosting the Olympics - the only difference is that they can afford to eat the loss. FIFA has the same problem, although in their case it seems to be catching up to them, at least. *edit* Samopsa posted:I hate to break it to you, but sometimes governments don't have the best interest of the country or the population at heart. See: China, Brazil, South Africa, Russia, Qatar, etc Yeah there's also this. If it personally benefits the people in power then who gives a poo poo how much it's actually going to cost the country?
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May 27, 2015 21:06
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I think it also has to do with the level of facilities being demanded by the IOC. At every iteration of the games, they have ramped up the technology behind the facilities as well as specialization. Down the line, that leads to higher upkeep costs and fewer uses due to the specialization. The trick is trying to meet requirements while designing the structures so that they can be converted into other use later. But that's likely proving cost prohibitive.
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May 27, 2015 21:07
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Yeah, even the general idea of building a completely new world-class facility every four years is insane. It'll never happen, but they should only change hosts every 20 years or so. Or never.
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May 27, 2015 21:19
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JT Jag posted:Is Atlanta the only city that has actually made good use of its circa-1996 Olympic facilities? The '84 facilities in Los Angeles are still used, I guess. London's come out pretty well, too. We're lucky in that we already had so many great stadiums that were used (Wimbledon for tennis, Wembley etc. for football.) The Olympic pool is now a public pool and the main stadium is going to be reduced in capacity and used by a football club, as well as for Athletics. I know that one of the stadiums was built in a way so that it could be deconstructed, shipped to Brazil and built up there again. I'm not saying all of this was cheap, but at least they seem to have put proper thought into all of it and nothing's just decaying.
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May 27, 2015 21:38
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JT Jag posted:Is Atlanta the only city that has actually made good use of its circa-1996 Olympic facilities? The '84 facilities in Los Angeles are still used, I guess. Salt Lake City made money, if that's a metric to go by. I believe a bunch of their facilities are used for training a lot by the US teams still. Russia was going to use their Olympic stadiums for the World Cup I think, same setup in Brazil but the other way around. Which doesn't make them a whole lot less wasteful in the grand scheme of things given what I'm sure it will take to modernize/maintain them to those standards (not that Russia's poo poo was ever up to par - roaming wild dogs.jpg).
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May 27, 2015 21:43
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SurgicalOntologist posted:Yeah, even the general idea of building a completely new world-class facility every four years is insane. It'll never happen, but they should only change hosts every 20 years or so. Or never.
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May 27, 2015 21:43
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The whole scale of the Olympics is just an obscene triumph of modern day industriousness. Countries fight for the "honor" of hosting them, under the pretense that tourism will make up the cost (I don't think it ever does), and then they erect these massive structures and put on a great show to show off to the rest of the world. The sheer spectacle of the whole thing reminds me of what the World's Fair used to be, except instead of celebrating culture or science and providing lasting monuments, it's just a brief, fleeting celebration of how good each country's dudes are at running and jumping along with weird international rivalries and ludicrous amounts of money being spent.
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May 27, 2015 21:56
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sweek0 posted:London's come out pretty well, too. We're lucky in that we already had so many great stadiums that were used (Wimbledon for tennis, Wembley etc. for football.) The Olympic pool is now a public pool and the main stadium is going to be reduced in capacity and used by a football club, as well as for Athletics. I know that one of the stadiums was built in a way so that it could be deconstructed, shipped to Brazil and built up there again. I'm not saying all of this was cheap, but at least they seem to have put proper thought into all of it and nothing's just decaying. The Velodrome is I think the only arena stuck with nothing to do outside the Anniversary Games, London put a big thing on what everything was going to do after the games. The basketball arena was inflatable and even the giant Mcdonalds in the Olympic Park was built so it could be taken down after the games were over.
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May 27, 2015 22:08
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JT Jag posted:Or be like the Super Bowl and have a rotation of 5 or so cities that they always use, with someone new occasionally slipping in. The Super Bowl is coming to my city next, and it is just shocking how much free work the NFL expects people to do. I know people who did volunteer work for various Olympics, but it generally wasn't "do a full-time, highly professional project management job for 12 months" volunteer work.
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May 27, 2015 23:27
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Pinky Artichoke posted:The Super Bowl is coming to my city next, and it is just shocking how much free work the NFL expects people to do. I know people who did volunteer work for various Olympics, but it generally wasn't "do a full-time, highly professional project management job for 12 months" volunteer work. Do they still expect the musical guest for the halftime show to perform for free?
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May 27, 2015 23:36
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muscles like this? posted:Do they still expect the musical guest for the halftime show to perform for free?
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May 27, 2015 23:49
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Pinky Artichoke posted:The Super Bowl is coming to my city next, and it is just shocking how much free work the NFL expects people to do. I know people who did volunteer work for various Olympics, but it generally wasn't "do a full-time, highly professional project management job for 12 months" volunteer work. Also doing volunteer work for the London Olympics you got fed and got free tickets to a couple of events.
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May 28, 2015 00:39
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njsykora posted:The Velodrome is I think the only arena stuck with nothing to do outside the Anniversary Games, London put a big thing on what everything was going to do after the games. The basketball arena was inflatable and even the giant Mcdonalds in the Olympic Park was built so it could be taken down after the games were over.
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May 28, 2015 01:16
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njsykora posted:The Velodrome is I think the only arena stuck with nothing to do outside the Anniversary Games, London put a big thing on what everything was going to do after the games. The basketball arena was inflatable and even the giant Mcdonalds in the Olympic Park was built so it could be taken down after the games were over. The Velodrome is holding competitions and it's also open to the public, including the BMX track and all. http://www.visitleevalley.org.uk/en/content/cms/london2012/velo-park/
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May 29, 2015 12:31
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JohnSherman posted:This would be less of a problem if the IOC wasn't so deadset on the concept of the Olympic Village. Most developed countries have a lot of that required infrastructure already in place, just not all in one location. It's absurd to put world class facilities all in one city and expect people to make use of them. The Olympic village is a pretty cool part of the Olympics actually. What they should do is just have the games in Athens every time instead of travelling around to places. Just have a different country do the opening/closing ceremonies every time or something to keep the "introduce your culture to the world" element.
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May 29, 2015 13:52
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Orange Devil posted:The Olympic village is a pretty cool part of the Olympics actually. What they should do is just have the games in Athens every time instead of travelling around to places. Just have a different country do the opening/closing ceremonies every time or something to keep the "introduce your culture to the world" element. Yes except a place with modern infrastructure, capacity and construction standards.
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May 29, 2015 14:10
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Theoretically, if a country could build a world class facility that could be used every 2 years (assuming you can build one that can accommodate winter and summer games), they would probably profit nicely on that investment. The wastefulness is in building it for use once. I could see the Olympics reaching a point where all the developed countries don't want to host it anymore, and all that's left are dictatorships and human rights abusers, so the IOC decides to commit it to a single venue for at least 20 years. Athens would be the most logical place, but maybe it would be somewhere else just for the logistics and infrastructure. Plus the IOC could make all sorts of ridiculous demands in building a permanent Olympic village to their standards and codes. Plus there's no reason those facilities can't be used during the off time. Ski slopes can be open to the public and stadiums can be rented out as concert venues or used by local sports teams.
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May 29, 2015 15:37
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Vancouver makes pretty good use of the stuff they built. Basically provided you are a large city in the developed world hosting the Olympics is generally ok for you cost wise.
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May 29, 2015 15:51
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Yeah. The main issue is that most of the cities that could easily host the Olympics and then continue to find use in the facilities have already done so fairly recently, and it seems like it's convention that you have to wait a while to re-host. Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo, London, LA, others that are pretty much ready as-is... they'd probably all be happy to be in a permanent rotation of the summer games.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 16:06 on May 29, 2015 |
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May 29, 2015 15:58
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JT Jag posted:Their initial offer to Katy Perry for this year's Super Bowl was for her to pay them. They eventually backed off of that. I remember that! It was a great "too big for your britches" moment.
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May 29, 2015 17:35
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Orange Devil posted:The Olympic village is a pretty cool part of the Olympics actually. What they should do is just have the games in Athens every time instead of travelling around to places. Just have a different country do the opening/closing ceremonies every time or something to keep the "introduce your culture to the world" element. Now that we have Tinder and Grindr, do the athletes really need a centralized housing facility? Seriously, between the prison at Lake Placid and the too-short-for-basketball beds at London, it does seem like a mixed blessing. sbaldrick posted:Vancouver makes pretty good use of the stuff they built. Basically provided you are a large city in the developed world hosting the Olympics is generally ok for you cost wise. I went to Whistler the summer before the Olympics and if the guides for one of our activities was to be believed, some of the facilities were already in use.
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May 29, 2015 17:47
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JT Jag posted:Their initial offer to Katy Perry for this year's Super Bowl was for her to pay them. They eventually backed off of that. Wow. Learn something new every day. 
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May 29, 2015 17:48
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MikeJF posted:Yeah. The main issue is that most of the cities that could easily host the Olympics and then continue to find use in the facilities have already done so fairly recently, and it seems like it's convention that you have to wait a while to re-host. Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo, London, LA, others that are pretty much ready as-is... they'd probably all be happy to be in a permanent rotation of the summer games. Tokyo somehow hasn't hosted since 1964 somehow. I know they have talked about if Rio is too hosed up they will just host in in London again because they could do it with like 6 months notice.
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May 29, 2015 17:52
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sbaldrick posted:Tokyo somehow hasn't hosted since 1964 somehow. They've got 2020, don't forget. sbaldrick posted:I know they have talked about if Rio is too hosed up they will just host in in London again because they could do it with like 6 months notice. Hah, they were saying the same thing with Athens and Sydney for a bit there.
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May 29, 2015 17:59
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Honestly, aside from the huge opening and closing ceremonies, it doesn't really make a ton of sense why all of the various events even have to be held in the same city anyways. 30 years ago, maybe. But with modern technology, covering the games in various remote locations wouldn't be as difficult as it was before.
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May 29, 2015 18:02
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bull3964 posted:covering the games in various remote locations wouldn't be as difficult as it was before. Attending the games, on the other hand...
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May 29, 2015 18:38
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I assume we will get something about todays election.
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May 29, 2015 18:48
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MikeJF posted:They've got 2020, don't forget. We'll likely never forget it.
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May 29, 2015 19:04
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MikeJF posted:Attending the games, on the other hand... That's a good point, but I guess I'm pretty ignorant about how these events are attended. Is it typical for people to go to multiple different events to spectate or do people tend to go to their favorite. Are tickets purchased by event? I guess what I'm getting at is of people don't really go or purchase tickets for more than one event, then it's fine. People just go to different places.
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May 29, 2015 19:19
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MikeJF posted:Attending the games, on the other hand... Who cares about the opulent fucks that actually attend more than one olympic event?
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May 29, 2015 19:22
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The Bugle has confirmed that FIFA is being covered this week!
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May 29, 2015 19:58
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Xoidanor posted:Who cares about the opulent fucks that actually attend more than one olympic event? If you do, just limit the area that the Olympics can be spread beyond the host city to a certain number of kilometers. Outside Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Russia and the U.S. it's probably not much of an issue to travel around anywhere in the host country for events. Let the huge area countries bid by State/Provence/Whichever Subdivision of Russia floats your boat.
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May 29, 2015 20:25
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sbaldrick posted:Tokyo somehow hasn't hosted since 1964 somehow. Tokyo holding the olympics in the 2000s is literally the plot to a post apocalyptic anime or 12 I'm sure.
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May 29, 2015 21:03
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IRQ posted:Tokyo holding the olympics in the 2000s is literally the plot to a post apocalyptic anime or 12 I'm sure. It is in fact part of the plot of Akira, yes.
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May 29, 2015 21:20
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When was the chicken fucker vote? How will I know if my representative voted against it and I have to tweet he's a chicken fucker? I used to get the results of every weekly vote in my email but they stopped passing legislation or I got unsubscribed.
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May 30, 2015 10:31
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My toupee is more likely to stay on. BOOM
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Jun 1, 2015 04:31
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That episode was incredible
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Jun 1, 2015 04:34
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Oliver's contempt for whatever he's ranting about is always obvious but it's on a whole other level when he's ranting about FIFA. God drat he hates them and rightfully so.
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Jun 1, 2015 04:44
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Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:Oliver's contempt for whatever he's ranting about is always obvious but it's on a whole other level when he's ranting about FIFA. God drat he hates them and rightfully so. He is even willing to drink bud light lime!
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Jun 1, 2015 05:02
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Holy poo poo that was great
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Jun 1, 2015 07:29
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