Critical audience for games

PLATFORM:With just under a year to go, the Beijing Olympics has polarised opinion to an extent not seen since Moscow in 1980.

The vast marketing platform offered by staging the games in the world's most populous country is being weighed against continuing human rights abuses on the part of the Chinese government and their record on environmental issues.

From a commercial perspective, the appeal of a Beijing Games is obvious: the opening ceremony is expected to draw an audience of 800 million within China alone.

These sort of numbers have ensured the International Olympic Committee a rights fee bonanza. The world's broadcasters have paid $1.7 billion for the rights to the Beijing Games.

Sponsors contribute $866 million (up from $663 million for the Salt Lake City (winter) and Athens Games).

It is mainly corporate America that helps sustain the Olympic movement.

Coca-Cola has recently renewed its contract until the 2020 Olympics, a contract which is understood to be worth about $60 million for each four-year Games cycle.

GE, owners of US network NBC, has paid $2.2 billion to screen the games until 2012, despite a declining and ageing audience in Europe and the US.

The average age of those who watch the Olympics is 46, according to Performance Mindshare.

China's state broadcaster CCTV is by comparison getting the Games on the cheap. At a conference in London this week, Timmo Lumme, the IOC's head of broadcast and marketing, said that CCTV paid less than New Zealand or Argentina for the rights.

This is despite the fact that China will be the world's second biggest advertising market by 2010.

The desire to transform the image of China has led the cost of the games to escalate. The bill is currently $38 billion, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, with infrastructural improvements in the city doubling that figure.

The building programme has left many environmentalists to question the long-term legacy of the games, as the city sprawls across rural areas.

However, the slow pace of change within China is troubling human rights groups such as Amnesty International, who question whether the country's Maoist hardline rulers are keeping their promises on reform.

According to Amnesty International, there is concern that, rather than the Olympics being a force for liberalisation, it is being used as a reason to "clean up Beijing" before the global spotlight turns towards the city next year.

"Not only are we not seeing delivery on the promises made that the Olympics would help improve the human rights situation in China, but the police are using the pretext of the Olympics to extend the use of detention without trial," said Amnesty's secretary general Irene Khan.

Beijing-based activists face "house arrest" and tight police surveillance, the media is being muffled, journalists and writers imprisoned and the internet censored.

More broadly, China executes more of its own people than any other country. An estimated 8,000 people died at the hands of the state in 2006.

Amnesty points out that these ongoing human rights violations are at odds with Olympics principles, including "the preservation of human dignity" and "respect for universal fundamental ethical principles" laid down in the Olympic charter.

Beijing's proponents in the business community say the alternative course of action is equally unpalatable.

Michael Payne, who ran the IOC's marketing department for more than 20 years, told me recently: "It is an imperfect solution but we must continue the dialogue. What is the alternative? Not to engage with China, to cut it off from the rest of the world? Is that the best way of moving forward?"

Payne believes it is a mistake to think the Olympics will change "everything within the country by the time the opening ceremony comes around", a point echoing a statement by IOC president Jacques Rogge as part of the "year to go" celebrations.

"With Beijing, one of the great challenges will be to manage expectations that the Olympic Games can influence China's evolution to the extent many observers desire," said Rogge.

It is testimony to the appeal of the Olympic Games that it carries with it the hopes of so many differing constituencies.

For the business community, the year ahead will be a test of resolve in the face of growing media attention, proving once again that the Olympics is about much more than sport.

richard@gillisonline.co.uk