(With A Very Important Lesson For People In Our Business And Advice For TV Sports Fans)

Arthur Solomon

Soon two of the world’s most popular sporting events will take place:  The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, from February 4-20, and the 2022 Super Bowl between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams, which will be played at SoFi Stadium, Los Angeles, right in the middle of the Olympics on February 13. 

Both events will be televised by NBC Universal, which is promoting them as celebratory “Once in a Lifetime” TV sports coverage. But doctors who specialize in brain health and human rights advocates and democratically elected officials have another viewpoint:

• The hyped football game, often not necessarily between the two best teams in the National Football League, ends another season during which football players suffered potentially serious injuries and, perhaps concussions which will in later life make players unable to care for themselves or lead to death. 

(Watching a football game, during which every snap of the ball can be a prelude to a life-altering injury, is similar to the ancient Roman spectacles in the Coliseum and Circus Maximus involving gladiators battling against each other or wild animals and even executions.)  

• And the International Olympic Committee, whose decisions seemingly are made by the three Japanese monkeys who  “see no evil, speak no evil and  hear no evil”  have once again awarded its games to a totalitarian, expansionist- minded country, China, which has been condemned by democratically elected officials and human rights organizations for its harsh treatment of its citizens.

While millions of sports fans are looking forward to Super Bowl Day and the Olympics, countless millions more who haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid know the reality of these competitions, as I assume do many of the fans who have imbibed, that they are Big Business events where making money is more important than values.

But what will the future hold for these events? Nothing will change for the Super Bowl because despite its violent nature football is still American’s favorite sport, which is no surprise given the lame reaction to Americans regarding daily gun violence.  

However, there is a possibility that the IOC will eventually have to change its ways. Leading athletes, who have been vocal about racial inequities in the U.S. are now speaking out forcibly about conditions in totalitarian countries like China, not a welcome development for their sponsors who look at China as a cash cow country. Also, the pressure from athletes like Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter, whose criticism of China over Tibet and Xinjiang, and has called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games, might propel other athletes to speak out against holding future Olympic Games in totalitarian countries. 

In China’s case, the Women’s Tennis Association has already decided that actions are louder than words by announcing that it was immediately suspending all tournaments in China, including Hong Kong, because they have not been able to speak to Peng Shuai after she disappeared from public life when she accused a top Communist Party leader of sexual assault.

With the move, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) became the only major sports organization to push back against China’s increasingly authoritarian government. Women’s tennis officials made the decision after they were unable to speak directly with Peng after she accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier of China, in social media posts that were quickly deleted. 

Change will not happen overnight. But if it does, pressure will have to be put on the IOC and its game sponsors by high visibility athletes refusing to participate or pressuring their sponsors, and by consumers standing up for democracy by boycotting products of sponsors who turn a blind eye to the human rights violations, and worse, in totalitarian countries.  

As for the IOC and its sponsors, don’t expect them to voluntarily change their behavior. The history of the IOC proves that it if they have to choose between democracy and staging their athletic events democracy will be sidelined. In 1936, the IOC insisted that their games must proceed by permitting Nazi Germany to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics, despite knowing of the country’s racial policies and that concentration camps for political prisoners had existed since 1933, the first being  Dachau, which later became the model for other concentration camps. 

In addition, the IOC has also delivered its games to the totalitarian states of Mexico, the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, Yugoslavia and twice to China.

Like sheep following their IOC’s shepherds, sponsors remain silent about promoting a sporting event that totalitarian countries use as propaganda vehicles.  “It doesn’t matter where the games are; there’s controversy that something is not right,” Rick Burton, the chief marketing officer for the U.S. Olympic Committee for the 2008 Beijing Games, told the New York Times. If you’re a top I.O.C. sponsor, he added, “you know what you’re getting into.” And that’s the truth.

In 2016, then CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves said of the twice-impeached Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Seemingly, NBC Universal, which paid millions to the IOC for the rights to televise their games, even when they are held in totalitarian countries, and the U.S. corporate sponsors of the games feel the same way, “It may not be good for democracy, but its damn good for us.”

Yes, I’ll be watching both the Super Bowl and the Olympics and in an insignificant way I’ll show my disdain for a so-called sporting event that at its core is known to cause serious life-altering injury for its participants, and now also will also cause considerable injury to those at home because the NFL is now in bed with the gambling industry. Its longtime affiliation with its alcoholic drinks sponsors urging viewers to imbibe obviously didn’t do a sufficient amount of harm to viewers to satisfy the NFL and other sports organizations, I guess. 

I’ll also be watching the Olympics, mainly to see how NBC sports reports about the undemocratic conditions in China, which during the lead-up to the Beijing Games it has effectively avoided, proving that NBC’s self-censorship makes censorship by the Chinese government unnecessary.

The Important PR Lesson: In my experience, too many people in our business believe that if they work on major corporate, brand or sports accounts, like the Olympics or other major sports-related accounts, the press will be impressed when they call offering candidates for interviews. But the truth is that the size of a budget or name of a client doesn’t impress reporters or producers of major news organizations. It’s the story that matters. 

Advice for TV Sports Fans: What’s a TV sports fanatic to do? Need not worry. Here’s the solution: Tape both the Super Bowl and the Olympics then watch them. That way you can fast forward those continuous annoying commercials and watch the athletes do their things. And for your own sanity, skip those pre, half-time and post game football shows, (although I must admit they are funnier than Saturday Night Live has been for the past several years.)

In the Super Bowl’s case, articles about players who suffered brain damage from concussions has become a staple of pre-Big Game reporting. 

In the Beijing Olympics case, protests against the holding an Olympics in totalitarian China has dominated pre-Olympic coverage.  Too many PR people who are eager to work on these glam sports-related accounts should take that into consideration when drafting a program.

At the conclusion of the Beijing Olympic Games I will offer suggestions to be considered when drafting a program for future Olympic Games. Unlike the great majority of template-like Olympic programs it will include original thinking, which is  too often rejected without consideration by the Luddite’s of our trade because it goes against the tenets that have dominated PR that are still in vogue since they were crafted by the Neanderthals of our business years ago.

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About the Author: Arthur Solomon, a former journalist, was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, and was responsible for restructuring, managing and playing key roles in significant national and international sports and non-sports programs. He now is a frequent contributor to public relations publications, consults on public relations projects and was on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee.  He can be reached at arthursolomon4pr@juno.com.