Planet Business

The world of business this week

€1 million

- payout that Speedo promised to the swimmer Michael Phelps if he won seven golds or more. As it transpired, Phelps won eight.

$3.6 million

- estimated value of advertising airtime that a Speedo-clad Phelps gained for the swimwear company on American TV network NBC.

€28.5 billion

The cost of the Beijing Olympic Games

The Olympic Quote of the Week

'Many of us thought we could make some money out of the Olympics, but now we find that we're just losing out'

- Chinese shopkeeper Jin Gang finds that the Olympics police patrols are no good for business in Beijing.

Good Olympics

Speedo

Team Speedo has not only won the gold medal for sponsorship, it has knocked all other competitors out of the race. Its LZR swimsuit, designed with aid from Nasa, has helped smash dozens of world records this year and was the outfit of choice for 90 per cent of the Water Cube swimmers. Athletes sponsored by rival brands scrambled to get out of their contracts, while one upset swimwear firm labelled the suit "technological doping".

Sexy Beijing

This Chinese internet TV show about Beijing's youth culture is using the games hype to add thousands of viewers via YouTube and Chinese video sites. The show, hosted in light-hearted Carrie Bradshaw fashion by Su Fei, aka bilingual American Anna Sophie Loewenberg, has also been broadcast in the traditional media via NBC, which is itself "defying the laws of media gravity", according to one executive, with stunning Olympic viewing figures.

Bad Olympics

Adidas and Nike

The two global sportswear brands were hoping that stamping their logos on China's biggest sports celebrity, Liu Xiang, would help them conquer the Chinese market. But Liu, who was expected to cross the 110 metre hurdles finishing line with a Nike swoosh on his shoes and reach the podium with Adidas stripes on his sleeve, failed to "deliver" as they say in competitive sport and pulled out injured before the first hurdle.

Shandong province

To keep Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium lit up in that delightful shade of amber and ensure that the showers and smoothie blenders in the athletes' Olympic village don't cut out, the Chinese government has diverted stockpiles of coal from the neighbouring Shandong province to the capital. But prioritising the games has exacerbated electricity shortages and forced some factories to close down for the month.