4 ms·

One of the problems with the Olympics is it is dominated by the sports that nobody cares about the other 47 months of the four years. Track and field, swimming

by douche 10y ago

One of the problems with the Olympics is it is dominated by the sports that nobody cares about the other 47 months of the four years. Track and field, swimming, gymnastics, rowing, etc, etc, are not money sports; they aren't something that people dial into, even for their world championships. And for the money sports, the Olympics have become a side-show. It is, economically speaking, idiotic for a professional athlete to put their career, and millions and millions of dollars in earnings, at risk for nationalism. So in many cases, the best in the world don't bother to show up. Also, the NBC coverage is just awful. No wonder nobody wants to watch when it is wall-to-wall puff pieces, talking heads, and a few chopped and spliced highlights of the actual events.

bsder 10y ago
Well, it sure doesn't help that the website is horrific when a huge part of your younger demographic only uses the internet instead of TV. I wanted to see highlights of the judo stuff. The landing page for "olympic judo" better have links to video RIGHT AWAY. Instead, you have to hit the landing, hit the headline, hit the video, wait for some silly player to zoom it's way in, wait through an ad, and ... Never mind, YouTube or Facebook will have it. And, I'm on a desktop computer with a fast connection. I presume that the experience on mobile without an ad blocker borders on glacial. Holy spaghetti monster, Batman. Make your website STICKY. Feed me more until I'm ready to explode. You have the most amazing athletes in the world on video, MAKE USE OF IT. Top 10 judo takedowns. Best soccer highlights. Worst wipeouts. And THEN give me the ability to drill into longer and longer videos. It's not that hard to make me want to click things on your website when I already came there. But, this is what happens when it's about the ad revenue instead of sports coverage. NBC has only themselves to blame. As for the sports themselves, the other perennial problem is subjective vs objective judging. One thing that MMA has over boxing, for example, is an objective measure of victory. A lot of the olympic sports that have "busyness and spectacle" also have judging and we see in boxing what happened. Gymnastics has similar issues.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  Although I agree with you mostly, MMA has had some WTF results here and there, nowhere near as bad as boxing overall though.
throwawy82016 10y ago
That's, like, your opinion, man. I care about the Olympics and all of the obscure sports, because I want to see humans doing amazing things with their bodies and pushing the limits of what is possible. I also buy into the narrative of it being an excuse for nations to come together. I also like that many of the events focus on individual success. The Olympics have the only sporting events I ever watch apart from tennis championships. I do agree that the NBC coverage is awful. Their commentary could be much more subdued and intelligent. Fortunately it is possible to mute the inane audio.
- fsloth 10y ago
  Frankly, pushing limits in uninteresting if you don't understand what they are actually pushing and towards what - I think very few people can understand the intricasies of majority of the events. It's really a poor excuse for nations to come together if no-one cares. Football is popular all the time, nearly everywhere - it's much more organic as a global come-together-watch-together event. I can't personally understand the interest in sports beyond the personal experience - i.e. if one has familiarity in any skill or discipline it's incredibly enticing to observe true masters performance - but I do value in the philosophical sense the fact that all cultures come at the same playing field and speak the same language and share the same context in the form of the sport.

by douche 10y ago

bsder 10y ago

Well, it sure doesn't help that the website is horrific when a huge part of your younger demographic only uses the internet instead of TV. I wanted to see highlights of the judo stuff. The landing page for "olympic judo" better have links to video RIGHT AWAY. Instead, you have to hit the landing, hit the headline, hit the video, wait for some silly player to zoom it's way in, wait through an ad, and ... Never mind, YouTube or Facebook will have it. And, I'm on a desktop computer with a fast connection. I presume that the experience on mobile without an ad blocker borders on glacial. Holy spaghetti monster, Batman. Make your website STICKY. Feed me more until I'm ready to explode. You have the most amazing athletes in the world on video, MAKE USE OF IT. Top 10 judo takedowns. Best soccer highlights. Worst wipeouts. And THEN give me the ability to drill into longer and longer videos. It's not that hard to make me want to click things on your website when I already came there. But, this is what happens when it's about the ad revenue instead of sports coverage. NBC has only themselves to blame. As for the sports themselves, the other perennial problem is subjective vs objective judging. One thing that MMA has over boxing, for example, is an objective measure of victory. A lot of the olympic sports that have "busyness and spectacle" also have judging and we see in boxing what happened. Gymnastics has similar issues.

brokenmachine 10y ago
Although I agree with you mostly, MMA has had some WTF results here and there, nowhere near as bad as boxing overall though.

throwawy82016 10y ago

That's, like, your opinion, man. I care about the Olympics and all of the obscure sports, because I want to see humans doing amazing things with their bodies and pushing the limits of what is possible. I also buy into the narrative of it being an excuse for nations to come together. I also like that many of the events focus on individual success. The Olympics have the only sporting events I ever watch apart from tennis championships. I do agree that the NBC coverage is awful. Their commentary could be much more subdued and intelligent. Fortunately it is possible to mute the inane audio.

fsloth 10y ago
Frankly, pushing limits in uninteresting if you don't understand what they are actually pushing and towards what - I think very few people can understand the intricasies of majority of the events. It's really a poor excuse for nations to come together if no-one cares. Football is popular all the time, nearly everywhere - it's much more organic as a global come-together-watch-together event. I can't personally understand the interest in sports beyond the personal experience - i.e. if one has familiarity in any skill or discipline it's incredibly enticing to observe true masters performance - but I do value in the philosophical sense the fact that all cultures come at the same playing field and speak the same language and share the same context in the form of the sport.