Interesting new york times blog posting that places some of the blame on america's insanely idiotic "border security". lol.. So we're going to go on a federally funded advertising spree while non-citizens get fingerprinted, have to fill out forms 24 hrs prior to traveling, and generally get substandard treatment - yeah, that'll solve the problem... All this for a false sense of security. Argh, the stupidity.
Makes sense, from stories I've heard from Chinese trying to get into the States. Besides the hassle, security might be more of an issue since Chicago would be a juicier target for an anti-Western terrorist than Rio would be.
True, however this recent article about Rio's crime situation makes any talk of security frankly a joke. I can drive through the southside of Chicago and generally be OK (in fact I have many times). Not so for the favela where guys are throwing grenades and shooting machine guns at each other. I assume that during the games there will be a temporary truce on gang wars in the favelas and the worst kinds of kidnapping/torture/rampages.
Agreed. Talk of crime in chicago as a deterrant to the olympics is silly now that the games are planned for Rio.
Chicago has a lot of crime, but it's not something that should deter the Olympics from coming here. Almost all of the crime is localized, and affects little, if any, tourists. I'm sure violent crime rates in Atlanta are just as bad.
That was my point. In terms of crime, Rio is way worse than chicago. Arguments stating chicago's crime as a reason for no-olympics are rendered moot in light of the Rio selection.
Its more of an art rather than a science convincing the IOC that your city should host the Olympics. Thats why things like crime rates, transport, media markets and the like are talked about, but not REALLY that important. They kind of get a feeling for where they want to send the games, they get all the kickbacks and promises of funding from the right people, its a dirty game and you have to play that game and THEN be lucky on top of that.
A job he should never have taken to Europe. It's a "failure" he didn't need to risk having. I understand that he loves Chicago, and it would have been a huge economic boost for the city, the state, and the country, but a person in his position shouldn't put himself out on a limb like that. The President definitely learned something from this experience. About time South America got the games. I hope they are a success.
so maybe Chicago wasn't corrupt enough.... (and Deck -- the Heads of State of the other 3 finalists were there. Seems apt for Obama to stump for his country's bid too. Don't see any 'limb' or 'failure' on his part. This was hardly a cornerstone of his agenda. Can't read too much into it).
Actually, there are reports that indicate that having the Olympics in your city provides no boost and overall is a negative for the economy. It's the same thing as the Super Bowl. It's a temporary boost that gets outweighed by other factors. http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-olympic-myth/Content?oid=1196342 The Olympic Myth A European report concludes that the games do more harm than good for local tourism. International oddsmakers still had Chicago a hair's breadth behind Rio in the contest for the 2016 Olympics last week. But here on the shores of Lake Michigan, with the City Council signing off on an unlimited Olympic expense account, it feels like a done deal. Unless the IOC's nose is still out of joint over the U.S. Olympic Committee's abortive attempt to cut its own deal for an Olympic cable network, it's hard to see how even the world capital of sexy can stand a chance against the Richie Daley-Pat Ryan-Oprah-Obama machine. Meanwhile, bid committee chair Ryan gets local hearts thumping with his prediction that the games would bring Illinois $22.5 billion. For the city's cultural institutions, the $7 billion predicted to come directly from increased tourism is the main focus. According to an economic-impact study commissioned by the Chicago 2016 committee and released late last year, "the number of visitors to the city will increase before, during and after the games," and the $7 billion would roll in over an 11-year period starting in 2011. Tourists are also supposed to be the primary force behind job creation—"a major underpinning" of the predicted impact of the games, because, in the alternative world of impact studies, jobs have a magical "multiplier" effect based on the idea that people who get jobs spend their pay on goods and services, which generates yet more economic activity. With the study's muscular multiplier in play, $8.4 billion in anticipated direct spending (on games prep and operation, as well as by tourists) balloons into Ryan's $22.5 billion bounty. Written by a pair of academics at California State University, Sacramento, the economic impact study doesn't talk about permanent jobs, like those created when a factory is built. It deals in something called "job years," which are calculated by counting up the temporary and part-time gigs that a onetime special event is expected to generate. By that criterion, the Olympics would spawn a total of 315,000 job years, two-thirds of them "in tourism-related industries, including hospitality and entertainment." Touting "long-term" benefits in a December 2008 announcement, Ryan said the study "reinforces the economic legacy, which we've seen play out in past Host Cities." According to the 2016 committee, "Chicago's enormous visibility on the global stage . . . would have a direct impact on the city's tourism industry." When I read that, I was reminded of my visit to Beijing in April 2008. Four months before the opening of the Olympics there, I could have rolled a bowling ball through the empty galleries of the National Museum of Art. And the big, new, centrally located hotel where I stayed was virtually empty. Guides in Beijing and three other Chinese cities I visited complained that the games had brought their business to a near halt. That wasn't a fluke. The dampening effect the games have on host-city—and host-nation—tourism in the periods before and after the big event (not to mention the shut-down-city effect during) has been cited by numerous observers. Officials at Atlanta's Fernbank Museum of Natural History and the Atlanta Botanical Garden, for example, say they had significant declines in attendance for 1996, the year of the Atlanta games. The slump is usually presented as a bump in the road to the gloriously increased tourism that's sure to be the games' lasting legacy. But some of the folks who study this stuff, including Mark Rosentraub, a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan, call that a fantasy. Rosentraub says the Olympics is "a good thing to do" if you manage it properly and don't build a lot of infrastructure. But it's not going to have a long-term impact on the host city's economy, and "there's no evidence that it results in a sustained increase in tourism." A fascinating read on this subject is the Olympic Report by the European Tour Operators Association (2006, updated in 2008), which came to the conclusion that "there appears to be little evidence of any benefit to tourism of hosting an Olympic Games, and considerable evidence of damage." According to the ETOA, in fact, "there is no strong link" between hosting any sporting event and growth in tourism. "The audiences regularly cited for such events as the Olympics are exaggerated [and] attendees at the Games displace normal visitors and scare tourists away. Both Sydney and Barcelona had 'excellent' Olympic Games, but their tourism industries have not significantly benefited." The assumption that billions of people will watch the Olympics on TV and then beat a path to the host city is wrong on both counts, the ETOA argues. "Sports fans watch television in order to enjoy the sport. . . . This activity is notoriously narrowly focused." As for the global TV audience, the 3.9 billion viewers widely touted for the 2004 Olympics in Athens would mean that 80 percent of the world population with access to electricity was in front of the tube. What isn't generally understood, the ETOA claims, is that 3.9 billion was the potential, not the actual audience. The ETOA also notes that people who travel for sporting events are "unlike regular tourists, and more like business travelers." They "tend not to spend money on [other forms of] leisure and entertainment, and when not in stadia they watch events on TV rather than engaging in other activities." The greater Los Angeles area recorded a slip in theme park revenue in 1984; in 1992, resort business on Spain's Costa Brava languished. And though hotel construction is fueled by the buildup to the Olympics, hotel occupancy rates drop off a cliff once the two-week event is over. Hotel occupancy in Barcelona, for example, was 70 percent the year before the 1992 Games, but fell to 54 percent for two years afterward. The ETOA report also points out that while Barcelona is frequently invoked as a host-city poster child and has grown as a tourist destination since the games, it lags behind comparable nonhost cities like Dublin and Prague. In Sydney, the 2000 games were followed by a three-year decline in international visitors. Terrorism got most of the blame, but the ETOA notes that the decline was in effect months before the 9/11 attacks, in spite of the broadest tourism campaign ever to accompany the Olympics to that point. The study quotes Australian tourism official David Mazitelli: "The impacts were short term and were contained within a relatively tight geographic region. The forecast of a remaining strong impact for the four years following the Games did not eventuate." In 2007, the Chicago Office of Tourism reported 46.3 million visitors (an interesting number, since New York City reported an even 46 million for the same year) spending $11.5 billion. Just 1.1 million of those were leisure travelers from overseas countries, and Chicago ranked only ninth among U.S. cities as a destination for international tourists. That's why, for example, Chicago Architecture Foundation head Lynn Osmond supports the bid, which she calls "global positioning" for Chicago. "We deal so much with the international visitor, and we realize all the time that nobody knows about us," Osmond says. "We are a flyover city. People are always telling us they had no idea that Chicago is so beautiful." But whether tourism will get a boost from adding Olympic rings to rat-a-tat-tat and Michael Jordan is anything but clear.
eh I just read the print version and I think I need the hard copy to register. It's pretty good read so I will maybe do it tonight at home.
they did...but the history of that franchise, generally, is disappointment. same is true of the Cubs. remember it was a huge deal when the sox won their first world series in an eternity.
Cubs fans suck. Their sole purpose for going to Wrigley is to party in the bleachers. Most of them could care less about the outcome of the game, let alone know who the Cubs are even playing. I actually respect Sox and Bulls fans. For the most part, they are pretty knowledgable about the game.
How many cities have won NBA, NFL, and MLB championships in the past 25 years? I'd say Chicago sports fans, in general, have it pretty damn good. 8 major sports championships in 25 years ain't too bad. The only other metro area with NBA, NFL, and MLB championships in the past 25 years ( that I can think of ) is Boston.
L.A. (Lakers, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim?) Miami (Heat, Dolphins, Marlins?) EDIT: DOLPHINS fall just outside of that. I didn't remember it was 1973.
