Olympics 2022

[FZR1KG]

Rommie got me checking things on this and so I found this: http://www.vg.no/sport/ol-2022/ioc-krev ... /23306598/

You'll need to translate it but if you use Chrome that's an easy option.

The list of "demands" to stage the Olympics are nuts. This event has lost all meaning to me years ago but it seems that others are now feeling the same way.

Among other demands IOC members following:

** To meet the King before the opening ceremony. Afterwards, they shall have the cocktail reception, where the drinks are payable by the Royal Family or possibly the Norwegian Olympic Committee.

** Full control over all advertising spaces throughout the city of Oslo as long as the games progress. Only the IOC's own sponsors will receive advertising. Even street vendors must be removed.

** All IOC members will get every opportunity for its new mobile phone with Norwegian subscription. The phone must be of the brand Samsung.

City council leader Stian Berger Røsland as leader seeks committee for Oslo Olympics confirms several of the most striking points to VG:

- In Norway, it is not true that one can invite themselves visiting the castle, as it must in case his Majesty invite IOC there. I realize that many of these points may appear strange, says Røsland.

What a total bunch of wankers.
We demand that the King throw us a party at his expense and be present when we are there!

So there were only three bidders for the games in 2022, now with Norway gone there are two: China and Kazakhstan.

So the big question is just how much does the IOC pay you to host the Olympics considering all the demands?
Haha, it costs the host about 50billion dollars.
You read that right, 50 BILLION!

Well, we all know why the list of volunteers is fast dwindling.

[Swift]

I can't remember if it was the IOC or Beyonce who demanded only green M&Ms and sparkling water for their dog in their dressing room.

[SciFi Chick]

I can't remember if it was the IOC or Beyonce who demanded only green M&Ms and sparkling water for their dog in their dressing room.

Referencing artist riders is EXACTLY what I said when FZ told me about this. We're in sync today.

[Swift]

We're in sync today.

Tomorrow, could we be Gladys Knight and the Pips?

[Sigma_Orionis]

Well there's Van Halen's famous M&M incident

Van Halen tends to make the news portion of radio more often than it gets airplay. There was the M&M riot in New Mexico where the band did thousands of dollars of damage to a hall when they were served brown M&Ms — their contract said the brown ones had to be removed.

The thing is that there was an actual logical reason behind it....

Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We'd pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn't support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren't big enough to move the gear through.

The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say "Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes . . ." This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: "There will be no brown M&M's in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation."

So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl . . . well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error. They didn't read the contract. Guaranteed you'd run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.

And in one incident in Colorado....

The folks in Pueblo, Colorado, at the university, took the contract rather kinda casual. They had one of these new rubberized bouncy basketball floorings in their arena. They hadn't read the contract, and weren't sure, really, about the weight of this production; this thing weighed like the business end of a 747.

I came backstage. I found some brown M&M's, I went into full Shakespearean "What is this before me?" . . . you know, with the skull in one hand . . . and promptly trashed the dressing room. Dumped the buffet, kicked a hole in the door, twelve thousand dollars' worth of fun.

The staging sank through their floor. They didn't bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty thousand dollars' worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&M's and did eighty-five thousand dollars' worth of damage to the backstage area.

Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?

Having said that, the IOC can go suck moose

[Rommie]

Damn... you know you're getting older when you see a picture of N'Sync for the first time since you were 13 when they were "old" and realize they're younger than you now.

Back to the original topic, now that Oslo has pulled out the two options remaining are Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan... the IOC basically bitched out Oslo for refusing their kind offer of ransom while they hold their city hostage because they know this is just awful. I mean Norway has won more medals than pretty much any other country in winter Olympics and they don't want it, and only the dictatorships still want it because of the attention they force the world to give them? (Also, beyond that obvious glaring issue, it is now going to be the third Olympic game in a row in Asia, after Chongquing 2018 and Tokyo 2020.) Talk about clusterf*ck.

Thing is of course they don't have to be that expensive, just they've been able to get away with it so far with people still willing to pay the price tag. I also suspect though that it'll be many years yet before the summer Olympics is similarly treated, as they're far more popular and can be held in more places. I also won't be surprised if in a few weeks we hear of them approaching a few recent hosts (ie Vancouver, if you wanna do Sochi you may as well go to Kazakhstan) to see if they want a last-minute bid.

[Parrothead]

IIRC, I heard on the radio, that the IOC was also asking for dedicated lanes in roadways, for participants and IOC members only, throughout the games.

Toronto is hosting the Pan Am games next year and it is already over budget (as the budget has been increased), we have no idea of the security costs (it's being budgeted separately), a couple of the organizers have been released of their duties (severance packages for 3 senior executives total close to $1m). I wouldn't be surprised if the prov. gov't pays remaining executives bonuses for bringing the games in "on budget", next year, even though the budgets have been increased, meaning they aren't on budget.

[FZR1KG]

Government budget re-organisation in practice:
Projected budget is 10million over initial.
Pay out the executives: 3million for being over budget.
Hire new executives to put budget back on track, so now event has 3 million less than it did before.
Pay bonuses to execs 5million each for getting under budget, five new executives, means the event now cost the tax payer 25 million more than the initial projection and the public got 3 million dollars less for the event.
Claim this as an example of how their leadership is effective and responsible in fiscal management.
Throw lavish party to celebrate, costing a few million. Get caught doing cocaine an a guy called Flamino, and make claims it was a one off and we really didn't inhale or suck as the case may be.
Win the next election.

[SciFi Chick]

We're in sync today.

Tomorrow, could we be Gladys Knight and the Pips?

Sure, but I get to be Gladys.