Millions for managers and a "magnet" for "human trafficking"

£1.2 Million for "consultants" and "managers" (Evening Times)

Commonwealth Games could be a "magnet" for prostitution and human trafficking (Evening Times)

Glasgow Commonwealth Games facing multi-million pound gap

From insidethegames.biz:

Exclusive: Glasgow Commonwealth Games facing multi-million pound gap in budget after Davies report

Sunday, 06 December 2009

By Steven Downes

December 5 - Officials at Glasgow 2014 may be left with a £20 million hole in their budget as a result of the recommendation to drop the Commonwealth Games from Britain’s protected list of free-to-air televised sporting events.

Ben Bradshaw, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, will issue his response soon to the report on TV sport’s "Crown Jewels", which was delivered by David Davies and his committee last month.

There follows a three-month consultation period.

Provided there is not a UK general election before the end of March, Davies's recommendations could come in to force immediately thereafter.

Two small paragraphs of advice contained within the 110-page report passed almost unnoticed when it was published last month.

Yet the recommendations to drop the Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games from the protected list of free-to-air events has caused dismay in Glasgow and London, with one source involved with winter sports describing the suggestion as "deeply disappointing".

Davies's review of the protected list, the first to be conducted since 1998, took nine months, and it clearly struggled to reconcile the aspiration that key events of national interest should be seen by as many of the public as possible, while protecting sports bodies’ ability to generate income from TV rights.
*******************
Commonwealth officials fear that by de-listing the Games, Britain will replace a public-funded monopoly of coverage by the BBC with effectively a commercial monopoly, and one in which the value of the rights are starkly reduced.

The Commonwealth Games has traditionally always received in-depth coverage on the BBC, whether staged at home or abroad.

The BBC has served as host broadcaster at the 1970, 1986 and 2002 Games.

But its estimation of the value of the Games appears to be diminishing: Delhi 2010 is receiving just 60 per cent of the rights fees from the BBC that was paid to the organisers of the 2006 Melbourne Games.

Glasgow 2014, which recently increased its overall budget for staging the Games by £81 million, had based its bid on the BBC being its host broadcaster, setting the cost of hiring broadcast services at £19.3 million while placing the same value on the domestic TV rights "sold" to the BBC.

Full story here

From London to Glasgow - the disappearing city

A science fiction film about a future London - could just as well be Glasgow (thanks to Games Monitor for posting this one):

"OLYMPICFIELD"

Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics: 8 reasons to oppose the games

Resist 2010: Eight Reasons to Oppose the 2010 Winter Olympics. (LOW RES) from BurningFist Media on Vimeo.

Predicting the costs

From Games Monitor:

P R E D I C T I N G T H E C O S T S
AND B E N E F I T S O F
M E G A – S P O R T I N G E V E N T S :
M I S J U D G E M E N T O F O LY M P I C
P R O P O R T I O N S ?

Jonathan Barclay

The economic benefits of hosting mega-sporting events are often exaggerated. Ex-ante impact studies typically overestimate the gains and underestimate the costs involved. It is therefore difficult to explain in economic terms the intense competition among cities to hold such events.

Introduction

In recent years cities have competed
vigorously for the right to host what can be
labelled as ‘mega-events’, namely the
quadrennial Olympic Games and FIFA
Football World Cup. One can afford such a
description when one considers the scale of
these sporting extravaganzas, with in-person
attendance in the millions and television
audiences in the billions.1
There are a variety of reasons why cities
may wish to host these events, the most
compelling being the promise of a vast
economic windfall forecasted by economic
impact studies. Given these forecasts, an
increasing number of developing economies
have joined the bidding frenzy, insisting on
their right to receive a share of the monetary
spoils and hopefully kick-start their
development. It is also evident that cities that
host these events must commit a significant
investment into sports stadia and other
miscellaneous infrastructure. Therefore, the
question is whether the economic benefit
compensates for and outweighs the vast costs
and substantial risks incurred. Are the games
‘fool’s gold’ (Baade and Matheson, 2002) or a
lottery jackpot (Preuss, 2006, p. 183)?

Read more: Games Monitor 2014

US Journalist detained in Canada - because of 2010 Winter Olympics!

From Games Monitor:

Democracy now

Amy Goodman Detained at Canadian Border, Questioned About Speech…and 2010 Olympics

While traveling to Vancouver, Canada to speak at the Vancouver Public Library at a benefit for community radio stations, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and her two colleagues were detained by Canadian authorities. Amy was questioned extensively about the speech she intended to give; their car was gone through by armed border guards, and their papers and laptop computers were scoured. The armed interrogators were particularly interested in whether she would be speaking about the upcoming Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.