Toronto Star on the withering short list for 2022

[aquaman617]

My only issue is that the games would become completely corporate if that happened. You would have Coca Cola on the back of every athlete and the medals would have the Nike symbol on them. Unless a company is truly charitable towards the games (which logically is not gonna happen), you're going to see product placement everywhere that'll ruin the atmosphere previous games have had.

An example being Atlanta, where they relied heavily on corporate sponsorship for funding, but were criticized by the European IOC members as having "a general atmosphere of commercialism" that undermined IOC sponsorship in favor of their (Atlanta) own so they could pay for the games. Sure, the government only gave them so much so they had to rely on corporate sponsorship and ticket sales, but the results show that sometimes this isn't the best plan of action.

To the TV viewer, Atlanta's excessive commercialism was invisible - no logos in the arenas or on jerseys, etc. The criticism around Atlanta's commercialism was about the atmosphere immediately outside the venues - many likened it to a carnival fairway: tacky souvenirs, cheap tee shirts, vendors hawking knock-off goods, etc.