ABSTRACT
Jerry Rubin was drawing attention to the way that advertising appropriates language, and drains it of its emotional force, and ultimately of its meaning. I think there is a real danger that this is about to begin happening in the Olympic movement. In promoting their products, the major Olympic sponsors seek to draw upon the language of Olympism, the Olympic ideals and the Olympic spirit. In doing so they may serve to drain those ideals of their force. I am very aware, in writing this, of two English clichés – ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you’, and ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’. Let me say right away that it is not my intention to attack the very concept of sponsorship. I am not that kind of idealist – sponsorship is not going to go away, and the revenue it provides has great potential value to sport institutions, if used wisely. However, I think we have to recognise that those who pay the piper might at the least tend to influence the piper’s repertoire. Indeed no less an Olympian than Seb Coe, certainly no enemy
of commerce as such, has warned that those who pay the piper are tending to want to rewrite the symphony.11 It is now widely accepted that the Olympic Games has been transformed by television. The huge advertising market in North America, and resultant competition between the networks for Olympic rights, has produced hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the IOC. Television has provided the Olympic Games with a global audience. Television has also, I would argue, transformed the cultural dimension of the games, exerting an influence over the programme, the schedule, and the presentation of the Games.12
