Politics, Propaganda and The Olympic Games

Since the revival of the Olympic Games in 1896, the Olympic Games have gradually been influenced by politics and propaganda. The purity of sportsism is endangered by scandals, corruption, commercialism, boycott, political conflict, improvement of reputation, and terrorist acts. Large sports events such as the Olympics have the strange ability to not only temporarily reunite the United Nations community but also reflect real world competition and conflict (Grix). From pure athletic to political goals, and from promoting money, politics are often pushed to the forefront of the Olympic Games.

Politics plays an important role in international sports. At various times, each country boycotted the Olympic Games like the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. Voting to award the Olympic Games to the city is a very political issue, often related to allegations of bribery such as the 2002 Winter Games awarded to Salt Lake City, Utah. Apart from these problems, the market in the sports industry operates as economic theory understands. Each team of professional sports has monopoly power as the sole seller of sports in the city. As one of the few talented players, the team has monopoly power as well. A few years later, regular players have market power by selling their services and are strengthened through partnership contracts. Very good players have considerable strengths because they exceed the marginal income of other players. However, not all of these may be important for fans. Fans are ultimate buyers of industry output.

Since the Soviet Union first participated in the 1956 Winter Olympics, the Winter Olympics was at the forefront of the ideology of the Cold War era. It was not long ago that Cold War fighters could find powerful propaganda tools for the Olympic Games. The emergence of state-sponsored "full professional athletes" in Eastern group countries further weakens pure amateur ideology. The Soviet Union entered the rank of athletes, they were all nominal students, soldiers or professional workers, but many of them actually had full-time training by state. Nevertheless, the IOC still adheres to the traditional amateurist rules until the 1990s.