Why The Olympic Bid Process Is Corrupt And How It Majorly Changes Your City.
video description
Date: 2019-11-01
Related videos
Comments and reviews: 9
Jenna Gets Creative
All of the additional housing that was built for Olympic athletes and their teams for Vancouver 2010 was meant to become low income housing afterwards, and it was a shit show in the years after actually getting affordable housing situations established on those properties. Vancouver definitely already had a lot of the infrastructure needed, though. It's already a world stage host for sporting events, and nearby Whistler is a world-renowned winter sports destination. 2 big issues I remember leading up to it, though: 1 was the rush to complete additions to the SkyTrain lines, which caused major disruption to businesses around the construction areas. 2 was the fact that the IOC forced every local business with Olympic in their name to change their business name. Even if they had been operating as Olympic for decades. I grew up in the Vancouver area. I remember the bid. I remember being SO excited to hear the Olympics would be coming to my neighbourhood, not understanding exactly how far away the actual event was (I was a child when the bid happened. I remember passing by a pavilion set up about the bid and allowing private citizens to contribute financially when visiting the PNE with my father, and I begged him to go in, but he was very much against the Olympic bid and wouldn't take us in. Fast forward to 2010 and I was a 22 year old college student working in a grocery store. I had no hope of affording tickets to see the events in person, but my school gave us the entire even off classes so we could experience it in whatever way we could. My workplace let us wear Team Canada clothing instead of our uniforms, and set up a huge TV by the registers to play the CBC coverage all day, every day. When I was at work, I was mostly on the front end and got to watch between customers. When I wasn't at work, I was watching the CBC broadcast at home. Looking back, 9 years later, I remember 2 things clearly. 1 was watching the mens snowboarding finals (Shawn White) at home, with my boyfriend at the time who had the same congenital heart condition at Shawn White. The other was being at work, manning the self checkouts (right in front of that big TV) during the gold medal mens hockey game. Absolutely everyone in the store, staff and customers, dropped everything to watch the last few minutes and celebrate Canada's gold medal win. But of course, both of those experiences would have been the same had the Olympics been in another city.
reply
All of the additional housing that was built for Olympic athletes and their teams for Vancouver 2010 was meant to become low income housing afterwards, and it was a shit show in the years after actually getting affordable housing situations established on those properties. Vancouver definitely already had a lot of the infrastructure needed, though. It's already a world stage host for sporting events, and nearby Whistler is a world-renowned winter sports destination. 2 big issues I remember leading up to it, though: 1 was the rush to complete additions to the SkyTrain lines, which caused major disruption to businesses around the construction areas. 2 was the fact that the IOC forced every local business with Olympic in their name to change their business name. Even if they had been operating as Olympic for decades. I grew up in the Vancouver area. I remember the bid. I remember being SO excited to hear the Olympics would be coming to my neighbourhood, not understanding exactly how far away the actual event was (I was a child when the bid happened. I remember passing by a pavilion set up about the bid and allowing private citizens to contribute financially when visiting the PNE with my father, and I begged him to go in, but he was very much against the Olympic bid and wouldn't take us in. Fast forward to 2010 and I was a 22 year old college student working in a grocery store. I had no hope of affording tickets to see the events in person, but my school gave us the entire even off classes so we could experience it in whatever way we could. My workplace let us wear Team Canada clothing instead of our uniforms, and set up a huge TV by the registers to play the CBC coverage all day, every day. When I was at work, I was mostly on the front end and got to watch between customers. When I wasn't at work, I was watching the CBC broadcast at home. Looking back, 9 years later, I remember 2 things clearly. 1 was watching the mens snowboarding finals (Shawn White) at home, with my boyfriend at the time who had the same congenital heart condition at Shawn White. The other was being at work, manning the self checkouts (right in front of that big TV) during the gold medal mens hockey game. Absolutely everyone in the store, staff and customers, dropped everything to watch the last few minutes and celebrate Canada's gold medal win. But of course, both of those experiences would have been the same had the Olympics been in another city.
reply
Dustin Chung
I dont even understand why cities would do that. The amounts of bids have gone down significantly due to governments catching on the fact that the olympics does not provide an economic benefit to the city. The only few real gains that a city may get is the 1. Attention of the millions of people who watch the olympics, 2. Increased psychic income and 3. An opportunity to renovate and build better, newer buildings and facilities For the first point, the attention is not necessarily welcome as there are many people who leave the city during these times in order to get away from the crowding. Protesters also use this attention to shine light on the negative impacts (such as displacement of the poor, significant negative environmental impact, etc) that stem from the Olympic Games. The attention is, presumably supposed to be for cities to present themselves as a good place for companies to invest in. However with the protests, it would probably have the opposite effect. Point 2: while psychic income (intangible benefits like happiness or pride) may be good for some residents, it is predominantly something that is good for the top-middle to top class residents or sport fanatics (using this term really lightly. Point 3: up until agenda 2020, a new implementation of the IOC, all of the host cities had to build new facilities to host the games (even if they had hosted it before in and still have some of those facilities. This creates a problem of having white elephants which are basically facilities that are built to use for a short period of time and has no use later on (usually because it is not cost efficient to operate such large facilities with low traffic. These multimillion dollar buildings would either not be used or torn down. With the introduction of agenda 2020, cities are now allowed to reuse their facilities so long as they renovate the buildings to that they are up to IOC standards. This basically decides that cities that have hosted before are usually the ones that would host again making it useless to pay extra to ensure the olympics happen in a city.
reply
I dont even understand why cities would do that. The amounts of bids have gone down significantly due to governments catching on the fact that the olympics does not provide an economic benefit to the city. The only few real gains that a city may get is the 1. Attention of the millions of people who watch the olympics, 2. Increased psychic income and 3. An opportunity to renovate and build better, newer buildings and facilities For the first point, the attention is not necessarily welcome as there are many people who leave the city during these times in order to get away from the crowding. Protesters also use this attention to shine light on the negative impacts (such as displacement of the poor, significant negative environmental impact, etc) that stem from the Olympic Games. The attention is, presumably supposed to be for cities to present themselves as a good place for companies to invest in. However with the protests, it would probably have the opposite effect. Point 2: while psychic income (intangible benefits like happiness or pride) may be good for some residents, it is predominantly something that is good for the top-middle to top class residents or sport fanatics (using this term really lightly. Point 3: up until agenda 2020, a new implementation of the IOC, all of the host cities had to build new facilities to host the games (even if they had hosted it before in and still have some of those facilities. This creates a problem of having white elephants which are basically facilities that are built to use for a short period of time and has no use later on (usually because it is not cost efficient to operate such large facilities with low traffic. These multimillion dollar buildings would either not be used or torn down. With the introduction of agenda 2020, cities are now allowed to reuse their facilities so long as they renovate the buildings to that they are up to IOC standards. This basically decides that cities that have hosted before are usually the ones that would host again making it useless to pay extra to ensure the olympics happen in a city.
reply
Beemer
Guys, the reason the video didn't talk about the London 2012 Olympics is because the UK is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We're looking at how it can potentially damage low-income nations. It's important to talk about because the Olympics are supposed to be able to be hosted by anyone. The whole point of the Olympics is that the government gains income from new infrastructure, new businesses, and more tourism. It should be rotated to the lower-income countries in order to help them. That's why it rotates every time. It's not supposed to be held by the same country every year, because that only allows that one country to gain income. The problem is that the IOC is corrupt, so those lower-income countries are not able to host it, or if they do they don't wind up making money, and that defeats the purpose of having the Olympics in the first place. There is no point in highlighting London 2012 because _they didn't need to host the Olympics. _ They obviously took the opportunity because it would easily give them growth as they can more easily sustain any extra costs, and wind up making the Olympics into a net positive for their country. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to the world if, instead of giving it to London, a low-income country could have held it? Too bad the corruption of the IOC prevents that from being a possibility when it would inevitably wind up costing the low-income country more than they could gain from it. That's the problem being discussed. That's why it's such a bad thing. Yes, the London 2012 Olympics were great, but we could have helped a low-income country if the IOC wasn't so goddamn corrupt.
reply
Guys, the reason the video didn't talk about the London 2012 Olympics is because the UK is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We're looking at how it can potentially damage low-income nations. It's important to talk about because the Olympics are supposed to be able to be hosted by anyone. The whole point of the Olympics is that the government gains income from new infrastructure, new businesses, and more tourism. It should be rotated to the lower-income countries in order to help them. That's why it rotates every time. It's not supposed to be held by the same country every year, because that only allows that one country to gain income. The problem is that the IOC is corrupt, so those lower-income countries are not able to host it, or if they do they don't wind up making money, and that defeats the purpose of having the Olympics in the first place. There is no point in highlighting London 2012 because _they didn't need to host the Olympics. _ They obviously took the opportunity because it would easily give them growth as they can more easily sustain any extra costs, and wind up making the Olympics into a net positive for their country. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to the world if, instead of giving it to London, a low-income country could have held it? Too bad the corruption of the IOC prevents that from being a possibility when it would inevitably wind up costing the low-income country more than they could gain from it. That's the problem being discussed. That's why it's such a bad thing. Yes, the London 2012 Olympics were great, but we could have helped a low-income country if the IOC wasn't so goddamn corrupt.
reply
xmari3goldx
The claim about cities not fighting against the bids is misleading. The whole reason that LA became the US candidate was because Bostonites let their disdain be known. Boston was the original host city candidate for the US Olympic Committees (USOC) bid for the 2024 Olympics but they had a referendum and the people voted against it. The USOC still wanted to bid so they were able to LA partly because they did it before. The bidding for the Olympics is getting so unpopular now that they had to choose the next 2 hosts between the two remaining cities for the 2024 bid (Paris and LA. The next three Summer Olympics will all be former hosts (Tokyo 2020, Paris 2024, and LA 2028) and while Tokyo and Paris had it at different economic times (1964 and 1924 [most recent]) it would be interesting to see the differences between the economic costs and benefits. It would also be interesting to see how LA benefits from the extra time it has to get ready. While the Olympics is my favorite international sports event, the corruption and bribery will soon make the even obsolete. The only countries that want to bid now are led by dictators who are willing to pay the bribes and bring some positive press. FIFA is also going through this somewhat but the World Cup brings in much more money than the Olympics to a city. I would love to see an African Olympics in my lifetime but until the bidding process is changed and African leaders get their act together (a whole other story, I doubt it will happen.
reply
The claim about cities not fighting against the bids is misleading. The whole reason that LA became the US candidate was because Bostonites let their disdain be known. Boston was the original host city candidate for the US Olympic Committees (USOC) bid for the 2024 Olympics but they had a referendum and the people voted against it. The USOC still wanted to bid so they were able to LA partly because they did it before. The bidding for the Olympics is getting so unpopular now that they had to choose the next 2 hosts between the two remaining cities for the 2024 bid (Paris and LA. The next three Summer Olympics will all be former hosts (Tokyo 2020, Paris 2024, and LA 2028) and while Tokyo and Paris had it at different economic times (1964 and 1924 [most recent]) it would be interesting to see the differences between the economic costs and benefits. It would also be interesting to see how LA benefits from the extra time it has to get ready. While the Olympics is my favorite international sports event, the corruption and bribery will soon make the even obsolete. The only countries that want to bid now are led by dictators who are willing to pay the bribes and bring some positive press. FIFA is also going through this somewhat but the World Cup brings in much more money than the Olympics to a city. I would love to see an African Olympics in my lifetime but until the bidding process is changed and African leaders get their act together (a whole other story, I doubt it will happen.
reply
I May Have Miscalculated -
There is something quite fundamental that you are misunderstanding here. When governments provide a service that you want, you willingly pay. You get an electric bill, a water bill, etc. If you don't want to pay, you can cancel the service. If the government doesn't use the law to enforce a monopoly, you can get that service from a competitor, or make your own solutions (as it happens, collecting rainwater is illegal in several places. wonder why, etc. Do you understand? You don't pay taxes for services you want. You agree to a contract and pay service fees for services you want. You pay taxes to not get thrown in jail by the government. It's a protection racket. No matter how well or honestly a government run, it is corruption by its very nature. So, with that understanding, it's silly to complain about the Olympics being corrupt. It's being funded with tax money. It was corrupt from the moment it came out of your pocket. If the people actually _wanted_ the Olympics, they wouldn't have to be threatened with jail time to pay for it. If participation was voluntary and consensual, you could just choose not pay them if you don't think they're worth the investment. The reason this is such a big deal is because of the non-consensual nature of taxation, the threats of violence against you if you don't pay. The Olympic scandal is just a symptom of the actual problem.
reply
There is something quite fundamental that you are misunderstanding here. When governments provide a service that you want, you willingly pay. You get an electric bill, a water bill, etc. If you don't want to pay, you can cancel the service. If the government doesn't use the law to enforce a monopoly, you can get that service from a competitor, or make your own solutions (as it happens, collecting rainwater is illegal in several places. wonder why, etc. Do you understand? You don't pay taxes for services you want. You agree to a contract and pay service fees for services you want. You pay taxes to not get thrown in jail by the government. It's a protection racket. No matter how well or honestly a government run, it is corruption by its very nature. So, with that understanding, it's silly to complain about the Olympics being corrupt. It's being funded with tax money. It was corrupt from the moment it came out of your pocket. If the people actually _wanted_ the Olympics, they wouldn't have to be threatened with jail time to pay for it. If participation was voluntary and consensual, you could just choose not pay them if you don't think they're worth the investment. The reason this is such a big deal is because of the non-consensual nature of taxation, the threats of violence against you if you don't pay. The Olympic scandal is just a symptom of the actual problem.
reply
Wellthisis-Awkward
It doesn't surprise me at all that there is corruption. It's as much as fact as saying the sun will rise every morning. As for cities, being in Toronto, I had heard discussions of Toronto wanting to put in a bid because they wanted the income that it would potentially generate. Our city doesn't even have the infrastructure in place to transport people to and from home and work. Our transit situation has actually become an acceptable excuse as to why we are late. You're telling me that you're about to shove another several hundred of thousands of people on that thing? No. Our roads and city layouts don't work. People around me started saying that if the Olympics came, they'd move out. Imagine, people are willing to relocate themselves for a two-week long event because we know that the construction, the disruption would be too much to even function. I am all for having the Olympics since it is one of the only times the world will come together. But, not at the detriment to the cities they go to. I don't believe Toronto's story is unique in this case. It has become nothing but peacocking. If cities did what LA did and use facilities already available, then I'd be all for it. But if they can corrupt people into giving them their vote, who's to say that there aren't people corrupting them asking for the contract to build those massive stadiums?
reply
It doesn't surprise me at all that there is corruption. It's as much as fact as saying the sun will rise every morning. As for cities, being in Toronto, I had heard discussions of Toronto wanting to put in a bid because they wanted the income that it would potentially generate. Our city doesn't even have the infrastructure in place to transport people to and from home and work. Our transit situation has actually become an acceptable excuse as to why we are late. You're telling me that you're about to shove another several hundred of thousands of people on that thing? No. Our roads and city layouts don't work. People around me started saying that if the Olympics came, they'd move out. Imagine, people are willing to relocate themselves for a two-week long event because we know that the construction, the disruption would be too much to even function. I am all for having the Olympics since it is one of the only times the world will come together. But, not at the detriment to the cities they go to. I don't believe Toronto's story is unique in this case. It has become nothing but peacocking. If cities did what LA did and use facilities already available, then I'd be all for it. But if they can corrupt people into giving them their vote, who's to say that there aren't people corrupting them asking for the contract to build those massive stadiums?
reply
Canadagraphs
I live in Vancouver, where the 2010 Winter games took place. Yes, there was some tourism boost benefits, but the inconvenience to the citizens was atrocious. I had a Police officer from a completely different Province (not even our region) threaten me with arrest for TOUCHING a fence one day. not just any fence, but the THIRD layer of different security fencing around a place. Many roads were closed, or limited in the way traffic could use them so that IOC vehicles could get places efficiently. I lived across the street from a park that is popular down where I lived for homeless people to hang out, and even camp in. For the months leading up to the games, and conveniently thru to just a couple weeks after they ended, it was under construction so that tourists didnt see our homelessness problem. I LOVED the games being here, because of my love of sports. But the inconvenience to the general public, is NOT worth it. If the IOC, which is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, actually used THEIR money more to make the games happen, I'd be on board for us doing them again. But as things stand right now, I would not welcome them back. despite all the fun it brought.
reply
I live in Vancouver, where the 2010 Winter games took place. Yes, there was some tourism boost benefits, but the inconvenience to the citizens was atrocious. I had a Police officer from a completely different Province (not even our region) threaten me with arrest for TOUCHING a fence one day. not just any fence, but the THIRD layer of different security fencing around a place. Many roads were closed, or limited in the way traffic could use them so that IOC vehicles could get places efficiently. I lived across the street from a park that is popular down where I lived for homeless people to hang out, and even camp in. For the months leading up to the games, and conveniently thru to just a couple weeks after they ended, it was under construction so that tourists didnt see our homelessness problem. I LOVED the games being here, because of my love of sports. But the inconvenience to the general public, is NOT worth it. If the IOC, which is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, actually used THEIR money more to make the games happen, I'd be on board for us doing them again. But as things stand right now, I would not welcome them back. despite all the fun it brought.
reply
StephFish1004
When the games came to Calgary before in the 80's, thecity came out in the black as far as the financial cost because most of the people involved at all in the setting up and running of the Olympics were volunteers; and the facilities that got built have been used consistently by teams for training and just by the general public since then. They're only now starting to break down. That said the guy saying its about infrastructure is completely right. We pulled out of a bid as one of the last three cities because our country was pushing to demolish and rebuild all the facilities needed which. yeah they would need an update, but they didn't need to start from scratch on a project that would cost so much for not a lot of benefit. The Olympics are just a hassle now. What should happen is each country should have a designated city for it, where the facilities are built and MAINTAINED, and the country overall should share the cost so we're not putting cities in mass amounts of debt and building structures that wont be used after anyway. At least, that's my two cents.
reply
When the games came to Calgary before in the 80's, thecity came out in the black as far as the financial cost because most of the people involved at all in the setting up and running of the Olympics were volunteers; and the facilities that got built have been used consistently by teams for training and just by the general public since then. They're only now starting to break down. That said the guy saying its about infrastructure is completely right. We pulled out of a bid as one of the last three cities because our country was pushing to demolish and rebuild all the facilities needed which. yeah they would need an update, but they didn't need to start from scratch on a project that would cost so much for not a lot of benefit. The Olympics are just a hassle now. What should happen is each country should have a designated city for it, where the facilities are built and MAINTAINED, and the country overall should share the cost so we're not putting cities in mass amounts of debt and building structures that wont be used after anyway. At least, that's my two cents.
reply
Langtang
Hi my name is Jason Reid, and in 1987 i was born in the city of calgary. The winter olympics (1988) were held in the city of Calgary. Shortly after that my parents marriage went to shit. My then pregnant with my brother, mother moved back in to her parents house in canmore. After that we were placed in housing used as part of the athlete village while canmore experienced a Boom of Tourism and real estate. Canmore became a town of athletes i attended high school with several olympians. the population went from 300 (ish) too 13, 992 in 2016. Because of the olympics happening in my town i was able to grow up and live in canmore with my grandmother great grandmother and several uncles all in the town. (the housing built for the olympians were used as low income housing) Corruption and cheating aside the olympics were a good thing for me. Id like to go on to say i wish there were no corruption or cheating as i remember many children wanting to grow up to be olympians this is an organization that i feel should be squeaky clean.
reply
Hi my name is Jason Reid, and in 1987 i was born in the city of calgary. The winter olympics (1988) were held in the city of Calgary. Shortly after that my parents marriage went to shit. My then pregnant with my brother, mother moved back in to her parents house in canmore. After that we were placed in housing used as part of the athlete village while canmore experienced a Boom of Tourism and real estate. Canmore became a town of athletes i attended high school with several olympians. the population went from 300 (ish) too 13, 992 in 2016. Because of the olympics happening in my town i was able to grow up and live in canmore with my grandmother great grandmother and several uncles all in the town. (the housing built for the olympians were used as low income housing) Corruption and cheating aside the olympics were a good thing for me. Id like to go on to say i wish there were no corruption or cheating as i remember many children wanting to grow up to be olympians this is an organization that i feel should be squeaky clean.
reply
Add a review, comment
Other channel videos
14:58
20:2
17:33
12:50
