The Real Cost of London's Olympic Bid

Londoners excited about the 2012 Olympic Games may have second thoughts after they get a look at the fine print in the city's bid agreement.

Britain’s Spectator magazine has taken a page from WikiLeaks and uncovered its own scandal about what London had to agree to before being awarded the 2012 Olympic Games.

This, trumpets the Speccy is “entirely without the help of Julian Assange.”

We all know that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) reeks of favoritism, manipulation, greed and dogmatism. It’s most comfortable when feeding at the trough, which is why cities and countries vying for the Games feel required to shower gifts on committee members, and bow and scrape for the honor of playing host.

Still, the Spectator article revealing terms of London’s agreement, seem a trifle startling to even the most cynical of Olympic observers.

For one, London must provide the IOC and the “Olympic Family” (i.e. staff and officials) with 40,000 hotel rooms for the entire period of the Games. IOC elite are guaranteed 1,800 rooms in four or five-star hotels.

The 40,000 rooms do not include the athletes, who will live in an $800 million Olympic village being built for them. Nor do they include spectators to the Games, who may have to stay in lodgings 50 miles from London.

Included in the contract are 500 air conditioned limousines to carry officials, complete with uniformed chauffeurs, who will be guaranteed traffic-free speed lanes.

London was awarded the 2012 Games in 2005. Included in the contract are measures to deter what they call “ambush marketing,” which includes advertising or using the Games for promotional purposes without paying the IOC.

This includes billboard advertising, bus advertising, airport advertising. It does not yet include journalists writing about the Games, but you can be assured that if there was a way this could be done, it would be done. Especially for scribblers who might criticize the 115-member IOC.

Also in the contract is the right . .  .nay, the duty . .  . of customs officials to confiscate non-official Olympic paraphernalia that’s not approved by the IOC: “. Customs officers, instead of searching for heroin or child pornography, may end up targeting fake Olympics T-shirts.”

Also, spectators at the Games “must not wear clothes or accessories with commercial messages other than the manufacturers’ brand name.” If that dictum is enforced, it’s hard not to imagine all sorts of hell being raised by victims.

In other words, a spectator wearing a football jersey may be required to remove it, or be denied entrance to the stands. Wow!

At every ceremony during the Games, the official Olympic flag must be more prominently displayed than any other flag, including the Union Jack. How will that wash with Britons? But it’s what London agreed to, in order to get the Games.

What really offends the Spectator is that since French is the second language of the IOC, “billboards and pageantry shall (also) be in French,” which is interpreted to mean “we are required to plaster our capital city with thousands of posters in French.” (London beat out Paris for the 2012 Games.)

Considering what London had to agree to for the 2012 Games, it’s perhaps Britain’s good fortune that the groveling by Prince William, Prime Minister David Cameron, and British footballer extraordinaire  David Beckham, failed to land England the 2018 World Cup tournament.

England got only two of 22 votes and was eliminated in the first round. Russia getting the 2018 World Cup may be good news, since FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) is another of those IOC-like gangs that relish the good life and govern like dictators.

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