King Kaufman's Sports Daily
The Olympics: They're empty seat-tastic. Plus: An ESPN boycott? And: Let's talk it over.
July 23, 2004 | Looking for a great last-minute destination for your summer vacation? How about Greece?
They're having a big festival in Athens in the second half of August called the Olympics, so that should be fun. No problem getting tickets, and tourism officials say there are plenty of hotel rooms available. Athens will be less crowded with tourists than it was last summer, the officials say.
Well, OK, I don't know. There's almost always stories before the Olympics about how ticket sales are lagging and the whole thing's going to be a disaster, and more often than not, he said off the top of his head, it turns around and the Olympics are a success in terms of attracting crowds. The Greeks say that things are looking up now that all the construction is wrapping up and people can see all the improvements.
But there's still the security concerns, about which there's pretty much nothing anyone can do. Hire all the armed guards and bomb-sniffing dogs you want, there's still going to be a big bunch of people who just aren't interested in going to such an obvious terrorist target that's so close to the home base of so many terrorists, by which I mean there are no oceans in between.
It's easy for a terrorist to cross an ocean, but it's a psychological thing. Sept. 11 wasn't even three years ago, and we've been talking about it a lot lately, and Americans make up a healthy bloc of Olympic tourists, or they usually do, anyway. The weak dollar and high airfares are also teaming up to mean the Yanks aren't coming.
And then there's this: If you're not a hardcore fan of one of the Olympic sports, when's the last time you heard something positive about these Games? It's all been about the doping scandals, the construction delays, the lack of interest, the NBA stars who don't want to play, the security concerns, the heat, the rudeness of the Athenian taxi drivers.
Just a glance at Friday's papers turned up stories about C.J. Hunter, Marion Jones' ex, saying he'd seen the embattled track star inject performance-enhancing drugs before her 2000 Olympics performances, and the Greek baseball coach threatening to quit because his announced team has all of two Greeks on it. The rest are Americans of Greek descent. I don't want to say that last word has been defined too liberally, but I've eaten souvlaki before, and if I could hit a curveball, I'd have been on the Greek baseball team.
Who knows. The Olympics might rally. I'm looking forward to them. They have a way of overcoming all of this kind of stuff with the drama and excitement of the actual competition, which we're all hoping NBC will show us a few minutes of in between the sappy features about Athlete X's little brother who's suffering from acute hangnail syndrome, and to whom Athlete X has dedicated these Olympics.
Baseball's been talking for a decade about how lousy its product is and it seems to be doing nicely these days, so maybe the negative P.R. strategy will work in Athens too.
Next page: A boycott of ESPN. Plus: Talk it over in the new Table Talk thread