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What . . .

•Captures the world’s imagination once every two years?

•Costs anywhere from $50,000,000 -$100,000,000 to produce?

•Uses a cast of thousands and is staged only once ever?

•Is not even the main event but merely a lead-in to the main event?

•Employs some state-of-the-art technology never before publicly seen?

•Is watched by at least two and a half billion people (by conservative estimates)?

•is staged merely to satisfy the requirements of an artificial, self-appointed organization; and

•Serves no mundane, material purpose other than to herald the Opening of a sports tournament?

Why, an Olympic opening ceremony, of course!

As befits an organization represented by a logo of five interlocking rings, Olympic ceremonies, by all accounts, are the ultimate five-ring circus. But firstly, for the sake of expediency, let us become familiar with some commonly used Olympic terms and acronyms.

Olympic acronymo-logy:

The IOC – the International Olympic Committee - the international, nonprofit, self-governing, self-assigning body which owns and controls the Olympic Games and anything associated with it. The organization owns the global rights to the five interlocking rings logo and is based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Think of this as the mother ship.

The IOC is, technically, not connected with the United Nations. However, the IOC claims to have a “Permanent Observer” status in the world body (although the U.N. website does not show this). The IOC maintains its own designations of its member countries, (e.g., the United Nations recognizes the “United Kingdom,” but the IOC lists them as “GBR – Great Britain”).

NOC – National Olympic Committee(s) – The designated representative body of a recognized (by the IOC) member nation that reports to the IOC and conducts the affairs relative to fielding a team to the actual games (e.g., the USOC - United States Olympic Committee, the BOA – the British Olympic Authority, the COC – the Canadian Olympic Committee, CNOSF - Comité National Olympique et Sportif Français, HOC – the Hellenic Olympic Committee, etc.. These would be the baby ships that report to the IOC mother ship.

Just as the list of Olympic nations does not align exactly with the UN member nations, having an NOC does not immediately signify that that nation has a voting entity in the IOC. The IOC is composed of individuals who, since they represent the IOC to their home countries, are hand-picked by the IOC to join its august ranks. For the 115 IOC members, the most important collective task during their active years is picking the future host cities of the Olympic Games.

IFs – International Federations -- These are the organizations which govern, manage, draft the rules and regulations concerning an individual sport (e.g., IAAF – International Amateur Athletics Federation (track and field), FIFA - Fédération Internationale de Football Association (soccer); FINA - Fédération Internationale de Natation (swimming); ISU – International Skating Union (figure and speed skating), etc. Like the IOC, most IFs are headquartered in Switzerland.

OCOG – an Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games. Once a host city is selected by the IOC, the city (or its designated body) enters into a contract with the IOC to stage the Games for the IOC. Immediately, an Organizing Committee is established to get on with the serious business of organizing the Games seven years hence. The Organizing Committees take on names like ACOG (Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games), ATHOC (Athens Olympic Committee), BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games), LOCOG (London Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games), VANOC (Vancouver Organizing Committee), etc.

“OCs” – Olympic Ceremonies (as a whole)

“OC” or o/c – Opening Ceremony

“CC” or c/c– Closing Ceremony

“SOGs” – Summer Olympic Games

“TOP” – The Olympic Programme – the top-tier of Olympic sponsorship wherein a company, as a sponsor, has global rights to use Olympic iconography and being associated with the forthcoming Olympic Games. TOP partners include Coca-Cola (the oldest, longest continuing), Omega (the second oldest but not continuing sponsor), McDonald’s, Samsung, GE and Visa. (The IOC limits these global TOP spots to about a dozen companies so as not to dilute the brand. In late 2008, due to the global economic meltdown, Johnson&Johnson, Kodak, Chinese computer giant Lenovo and ManufacturersLife withdrew from IOC sponsorship. Going into the 2014-2016 cycle, the other, remaining TOP partners were: Acer, Atos-Origin, Dow Chemical, Panasonic and Procter & Gamble.) These TOP partnerships do not come cheap: for a four-year period covering two Games (a summer and a winter), they now average anywhere from $80-100 million apiece. For all that, TOP partners, of course, get the best seats in the house for the best events during the Games. Partners are different from Sponsors or Suppliers, which are less expensive categories.

“WOGs” – Winter Olympic Games

“YOGs” – the Youth Olympic Games

Some other acronyms within the Olympic world worth knowing about:

IPC - International Paralympic Committee

ASOIF - Association of Summer Olympic International Federations

AIOWSF - Association of the International Olympic Winter Sports Federations

ANOC - Association of National Olympic Committees

The regional spheres within ANOC are:

ANOCA - Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa

OCA - Olympic Council of Asia

PASO - Pan-American Sports Organisation

ONOC - Oceania National Olympic Committees

EOC - European Olympic Committees

The opening moments of the magical Barcelona 1992 Opening Ceremony.

What is an Olympiad?

The ‘Olympiad’ concept (or conceit) began with the ancient Greeks when they used it as a ‘calendar epoch.’ In Olympic parlance, an ‘Olympiad’ refers roughly to the (quadrennial) four-year time period beginning with a particular (set of summer) Games and until the clock runs out on that four-year period when the next set of Summer Games begins. Thus, the Games of the Xth Olympiad were the first Los Angeles Games of 1932. Any corrections of records, awards, placements, etc., took place following the Games; thus they occurred mostly within the Tenth Olympiad. When all of that was put away, they could then begin the XIth Olympiad with the 1936 Games of Berlin beginning on 1 August 1936.

Strangely enough, the Winter Games were not considered part of an Olympiad previously. Thus, when the Winter Games were introduced in 1924, this threw a whole curve ball into the concept of an ‘Olympiad.’ Between 1924 and 1992, they were held in the same calendar year as the Summer Games. However, going by the pre-Winter Games time concept, the Olympiad countdown always began with the summer edition. Olympic purists rigidly held on to this timeframe. But how, for example, could the XVth Olympiad (Helsinki 1952) begin when the Oslo Games were celebrated in February of the same year? It got to be all too much, and it was decided that, informally anyway, the Olympiad countdown would begin with the start of the calendar year, on 1 January.

As if that weren’t confusing enough, when the Games projected for 1916, 1940 and 1944 did not take place due to the world wars, the ‘Olympiad’ clock ticked on. So in Olympic history books, one will see that the VIth Olympiad began in 1916. The XIIth and XIIIth Olympiads are marked 1940 and 1944, respectively. So although no Games were celebrated in those years, nonetheless, the guardians of Olympic history still set aside those years for those respective ‘Olympiads’ even though nothing competition-wise actually took place.

To make things even more convoluted, there is a timing issue: the Olympic Games (per season) happen every four years. For the most part, this book will call them by the years they were played out (e.g., London 1948 or Innsbruck 1964); but Olympic host cities are chosen many years before the actual games. For most of the last century, they were picked five years in advance. In the 1950s, they were moved to a six-year lead-time. Finally, in 1991, it was extended to seven years (i.e., in 1991, the IOC voted for the 1998 Winter Games host). Often, because the selection of a host city alone provides its own fascinating story--and may have a bearing on the Ceremonial aspects, this strange time-continuum may have to be referred to. But if we were to refer to, say…Beijing 1993, this is not a typo. What we would be referring to is the time period when Beijing put forth its first candidacy, in the year 1993 and all events relevant to that time. (Just to finish this trend of thought, Beijing came back to run a second time in 2001 when it was finally selected to host the Games of 2008.) So a term like Torino “1999/2006” means the “bidding year / the staging year.”

Here’s a quick rundown of the Olympic Games of the Modern Era:

1896 – Athens, Greece (summer) – The ancient Games are revived.

1900 – Paris, France (s) – These Olympics were a sideshow to the 1900 Universal Exposition.

1904 – St. Louis, Missouri, USA (s) – The first Olympics outside Europe. Chicago was the originally designated host city; but after some manipulation by President Wilson and the Missouri congressional delegation, the honor was taken away from Chicago and given to St. Louis. But like Paris 1900, these 1^st Games set in the U.S. were stretched out over several months and turned out to be a sideshow to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase World Exposition.

1908 – London, Great Britain (s) – Similarly, 1908 has originally been awarded to Rome, Italy. However, after the 1906 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Italy recused itself from hosting and London was called upon to host 1908.

1912 – Stockholm, Sweden (s) – Other than being called the “Jim Thorpe” games, these were very non-controversial games.

1916 – Originally awarded to Berlin, Germany, these were not celebrated due to World War I.

1920 – Antwerp, Belgium (s) – Similarly, 1920 has been originally awarded to Budapest, Hungary. However, because Hungary was a Central (i.e., aggressor) power in World War I, the honor was retracted.

1924 – Herewith, the (W)inter Olympic Games (or WOGs) began, and the first one was in Chamonix, France, although those were retroactively recognized. Summer was Paris again; and those were the Games immortalized in the film Chariots of Fire. (France was just ablaze with new, international sporting meets coming to life that year. The Summer Student World Championships which would later become the Universiades and the first Games for the Deaf (later the Deaflympics) were both born in Paris that year.)

1928 – St. Moritz, Switzerland (w); Amsterdam, the Netherlands for the summer and the first Games to ignite a cauldron.

1932 came back to the U.S.A. – first at Lake Placid for the winter; and Los Angeles for the summer. This was the first of the short-lived tradition of awarding both Games to one country.

1936 returned to Europe, Germany in particular. Winter went to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps where the 1^st winter cauldron was lit; and the summers were the notorious Berlin Games. The Nazis imbued these Games heavily with their branding including inaugurating the Olympic torch relay routine.

1940 was already set for Japan (Sapporo for winter and Tokyo for the summer) when the Japanese Empire’s aggressive actions in Asia caused the winters to be reassigned first to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in a 1939 vote. When the Nazis unleashed their own bellicose plans, and the IOC was still hoping to maintain their Games on a regular basis, St. Moritz and Helsinki became the last-minute replacements for a 1940 set of Games. But the full outbreak of war scuttled those plans as well.

Since host cities are picked 5 or 6 or 7 years before, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, was originally going to host the 1944 Winter Games; and London the summer. However, because Italy had been an aggressor and losing nation in 1945, the hosting by Cortina was rescinded from Italy.

1948 - The Games returned to their normal leap year cycle when St. Moritz again played host to the first post-WW2 Olympics; and London, despite Britain’s war-torn economy, agreed to fill in for summer.

Come 1952, when Europe’s shattered economies were starting to recover, Oslo, Norway hosted the 1952 winter; and Helsinki fulfilled its 1940 summer appointment at last.

By 1956, Italy had been forgiven, so Cortina d’Ampezzo also fulfilled its earlier commitment. The summer Games went to Melbourne, Australia, taking place the latest they had ever been: in November and December, due to the reverse seasons of the southern hemisphere. There was actually a 3^rd Olympic Games that year when the equestrian events had to stage their own min-Olympics in Stockholm in June since Australia’s quarantine laws could not be bent to accommodate the Olympic horses.

1960 - American television (CBS) had finally paid attention to this quadrennial spectacle when it paid for rights to televise the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, California; and the summer in Rome, finally fulfilling its hosting duty 52 years later. This was the start of the ever-burgeoning TV rights income for the local organizing committees and the IOC; and we shall take note of them from here on.

1964 saw the winter torch relay from Olympia to Innsbruck, Austria, initiated. When the summer Olympic Games finally came to Asia and Tokyo, Japan, television images of the Games were beamed overseas via satellite for the first time as well as some sports were televised in color domestically.

1968 - The Winters in Grenoble, France were the first Olympics to be televised fully in color; and the Summers in Mexico City were the first Olympic Opening Ceremony shown live in the U.S.

1972 – 32 years after its original designation, Sapporo, Japan hosted the first Winter Olympics in Asia, while what a rebuilt German economy had hoped would be joyful Games in Munich turned out to be a tragic one when eleven Israeli athletes were murdered in cold blood by Palestinian terrorists.

1976 – Six years earlier, the IOC named Denver, Colorado as the 1976 winter host as a gift for the U.S.A.’s Bicentennial celebrations. However, the Colorado electorate overturned the award in 1972; so the IOC had to scramble for another host and found that in Innsbruck, Austria once more. The summer had already been awarded to Montreal, Canada. Most of the African nations would boycott the Montreal Games midway through the Games.

1980 – Despite the bitter after-taste that the Denver debacle left in the IOC’s mouth, they returned to an old reliable in the U.S. – Lake Placid, for the 1980 winters. Meanwhile, the IOC flirted with a new frontier by going to Moscow, U.S.S.R. for the summer. It could not be ignored that the athletes of the post-war socialist, Iron Curtain world were the most competitive athletes in the world if all things ‘amateur’ were honest. However, only 80 nations showed up to compete in Moscow.

1984 – The socialist world had gotten a Summer Games, so it was also time to give them a Winter one. That went to Sarajevo, supposedly, if one were to believe the TV commentators,”… in celebration of the 400^th anniversary of the founding of Yugoslavia.” How they claimed that fact was truly quite puzzling because the kingdom of Yugoslavia of the 20^th century was founded after World War I, in 1918. The Summers returned to Los Angeles, USA, and there is a full discussion for that in Chapter 3.

1988 – Winter went to Calgary, Canada, and for the first and only time in history, the American TV rights for the Winter Games sold for more than the Summer Games of the same year. Seoul, South Korea not only hosted the regular summer Olympics but was also obligated to stage a full summer Paralympics as well.

1992 was a Franco-Spanish year. Winters returned to (Albertville), France only because Barcelona, Spain grabbed the summer prize (see full story in Chapter 4).

1994 saw the Winter Games finally gain their own year. In its infinite Olympic wisdom, or actually based upon the advice of its marketers and bankers, the IOC decided to split the traditional Olympic year in 1986. The Winter Games were moved to the ‘off-year’ between the Summer Games (the same year as the football World Cup). Thus, the new Olympic calendar started with Lillehammer, Norway in 1994. The new own-year Winter host was also required to have the Winter Paralympics attached to them (as Seoul did in 1988). Lillehammer’s U.S. TV rights went for $300 million.

1996 – The Centennial year commemoration surprisingly went to Atlanta, Georgia, only a short 12 years after Los Angeles 1984. The U.S. TV rights went to NBC for a low-balled $456 million.

1998 – Japan’s second WOG hosting, at Nagano. This was CBS’ last Olympic coverage for which it paid $375 million.

2000 – The Summer Games returned to Oceania after 44 years at Sydney (who had beaten Beijing, China by only two votes in the selection).

2002 – Once again, the WOGs returned to the U.S., to Salt Lake City which had been plagued by a corruption scandal in its pursuit of the privilege.

[The next three Games’ TV rights had been purchased as a package by NBC for a then record $2.3 billion in an October 1996 preemptive strike to shut out its competitors. Figures in parenthesis are how the IOC broke up the big sum and assigned them:

2004 – Athens (S). After 108 years, the Games finally returned to their land of origin. ($793 million apportionment; and these were the first Games televised in digital HDTV.)

2006 – Torino, Italy (WOGs; $613 million).

2008 – Beijing, China (SOGs; $894 million)]

[The next two Games were sold together as one package to NBC for $2.0 billion, June 2003:

2010 – Vancouver, Canada (WOGs, $820 million apportionment)

2012 – London, GBR; first three-peat summer Olympic host. ($1.18 billion).]

[Due to the global economic downturn, the IOC sold TV rights to the next four Games again as one package, even before the 2018 and 2020 host sites were selected. Favored network NBC again won the rights with a record $4.36 billion, June 2011:

2014 – Sochi, Russia (W; $775 million)

2016 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (S) – first Olympics in South America ($1.226 billion share)

2018 – PyeongChang, South Korea (W; $963 million)

2020 – (S) Still not known; finalists are Baku, Azerbaijan; Doha, Qatar; Istanbul, Turkey; Madrid Spain, and Tokyo, Japan. Host to be selected in September 2013, but eventual winner can count on $1.418 billion to help defray its costs.]

How is an Olympic host city chosen?

At a minimum these days, it takes at least nine years for a city to land an Olympic Games, Summer or Winter. Imagine, if you will, seeking the crown of an international beauty pageant.

First you have to enter and win the domestic primaries, 9 – 10 years out. If you belong to a larger nation with several viable candidate cities (e.g., the USA, Brazil, Canada, Australia, etc.), make that a dozen years. If you are a one major-city country (e.g., the UK, France, Argentina, etc.), you could do it in nine years. Once you triumph over your local peers, your NOC presents your city to the IOC.

Some 16 months before the selection date, the IOC whittles down the list to the Short List: 4 or 5 finalists for the Summer Games; and usually three for the Winter Games. Then the international phase commences. Up against the other foreign finalists, the cities wage a global campaign--bringing their show-and-tell acts to various international gatherings and sports events, chasing IOC members around the world to secure votes, and waging an international PR campaign.

At an IOC meeting seven years before the actual Games, the Olympic “family” comes together for their grand pow-wow (called a Session) and selects the next homecoming queen. At the time of writing, the IOC had just selected the city of PyeongChang South Korea as the host of the XXIIIrd Winter Games of 2018 over Munich, Germany and Annecy, France.

In the previous race for Summer 2016, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro began their immediate quest in earnest around 2002-03. Madrid made the short list for the 2012 race; Rio did not. The two came back and represented their respective continents for 2016 (probably the only selection contest in Olympic history wherein all the finalists were from different continents; representing Asia was Tokyo; and Chicago for North America.) However, Tokyo’s Olympic dream went farther back to 1935 when it was named the original host for the 1940 Games; but those plans were aborted by World War II. In 1964, Tokyo finally got its turn to host.

Chicago, on the other hand, might have seemed like the new kid on the block for the class of 2016--but in reality, the Windy City was seeking to reclaim a century-old lost dream. Remember, it was Olympics founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s original choice for the 1904 Games until it was taken away by St. Louis instead. One hundred years later, Chicago pursued the dream again. So chasing an Olympic hosting dream can actually last more than a century.

What It Costs to Win a Modern Olympic Games

Like anything connected with the Olympics, bidding to win the designation alone is a multimillion dollar venture. Some costs* (est.) of bidding for recent Olympic Games:

•Los Angeles’ three successive bids (1976, 1980 and 1984) – $300,000

•Atlanta 1996 – $7.8 million

•2012: London ($48 million); Madrid and Moscow (about $30 mil each); Paris ($40 mil); New York ($32 mil-- $10.1 mil from Mayor Bloomberg’s and his deputy, David Doctorow’s ($5 mil) own pockets)

•2014: PyeongChang ($21 mil); Salzburg ($8.5 mil); Sochi (est. $90-95 million)

•San Francisco just before it dropped out of the 2016 domestic race - $535,000

•2016: Chicago ($76 million); Madrid ($51 mil); Rio de Janeiro ($48 mil); Tokyo ($150 mil (!)

•2018: Annecy ($26 million); Munich ($42.5 mil); PyeongChang ($31.5 mil)

•For 2020, Tokyo announced they would spend the leftover $75 million from the 2016 run; Madrid dropped its bid budget to (est.) $33 million. Rome and Durban, South Africa, once considered the frontunners, dropped out altogether when the overall economic picture demanded it.

*The above are outright figures which do not include donated goods and services from city departments and countless man-hours extracted from volunteers and interns. In addition, hard-core supporters pay their own way to go to the selection city (e.g., 180 Atlantans flew to Tokyo in 1990; 300 Chicagoans chartered a jet to Copenhagen 2009; over 100 Munich supporters flew to Durban for the 2018 vote) as “unofficial” cheering sections of the various delegations. Their out-of-pocket costs are usually not counted in a bid’s generic costs but can certainly add up. The Chicago 2016 junket was priced at $3,500 per person--so with 300 people, the whole cost of the expedition came to over $1,050,000.

As this edition was going to press, the IOC had finally taken notice of the prohibitively costly manner of bidding. For starters, it imposed severe restrictions on the 2020 candidate cities on promoting their bids in London 2012 and similar events. Now if it would only allow the delegates to actually visit the candidate cities again, perhaps some sanity could be restored to the process.

What are Ceremonies?

Ceremonies are rituals. Since the dawn of man, our species has used rituals to mark an event in life–a passage, a celebration. From the gathering of primitive man around a fire to celebrate a hunt, to a rain dance of tribes, to a baptism or a simple wedding in some remote village, to a centennial or a statue, or the victory in some conflict or struggle, humans have chosen to mark milestones in their life with some sort of ritual.

The Ancient Games. Since the original Olympic Games of Antiquity were celebrated as a religious festival with the athletic competition as a sideshow, it is difficult to determine what constituted pomp for pageantry’s sake and what was religious ritual. But it is known that there was some sort of torch/cauldron-burning and that the athletic victors were awarded at least with crowns of wild olive leaves.

The Modern Games. In 1894, a French nobleman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, revived the idea of the Olympic Games. In the 1880s, de Coubertin was dismayed at the state of sport and French public education. In Great Britain, the United States and Germany, France’s greatest rival at the time, he saw that sport was intertwined with education and the results on their youth. He didn’t see that in the upcoming French generation. Thus, de Coubertin seized upon the idea of reviving the ancient Olympic Games in an industrialized world. At a convocation he organized at the Sorbonne University in 1894, with delegates from nine nations in attendance, de Coubertin put forth the idea of a revived Olympic Games with such conviction that the delegates unanimously agreed and even did him one better.

Coubertin originally hoped to have the renewal of the Olympic Games coincide with the Paris International Exposition of 1900 and the start of the twentieth century. But the enthusiasm of the delegates for his idea could not be contained; they outvoted him to hold the revived Games in 1896 in Athens, Greece rather than wait for Paris 1900. Thus was born the Olympic Games of the Modern Era.

For the modern Olympics, the IOC Charter has, of late (the Charter terminology gets revised every few years) hinted that Organizing Committees are “… encouraged to highlight some aspect of their national culture in the Artistic portions of the Opening Ceremony…”

Each Olympic Games literally closes its books when it presents a final report to the IOC months after the closing ceremony. Those final reports are multi-volume books called The Official Report of the __th Games of (City here…) and contain a detailed summary of all the salient points of the organization of those Games. Following is an excerpt from the Official Report of Munich 1972 describing what an Olympic Opening should be (parenthethicals are author’s views):

“First of all the Organizing Committee (OC) applied itself to the Opening Ceremony: The ceremony served as an introduction to the Games. Its staging influenced the total style of the following Olympic days.

(Section) 5.4.1 The Conception of the Opening Ceremony Guidelines. The ceremonial of the opening celebration is regulated in great detail by the IOC Statutes. There was little leeway left to the organizers of the Olympic Games for original ideas and initiative. Nevertheless, the OC tried to embody the guidelines of the Munich games in the traditional ceremonial. The opening ceremony was to appear neither religious, military, nationalistic, nor overly pompous. (Ha!) Instead it was intended to be spontaneous and light and to establish rapport between the performers in the arena and the audience on the tiers. Means to this end were:

-strong visual effects, carefully tested for their effectiveness.

-symbolic actions, their meaning easily recognized.

-commonly appreciated and suitable music.

The IOC had to approve all changes in the ceremonial. However, the OC did not want to submit details bit by bit, but rather presented a completely thought out and unified total concept.

The following also shows Opening and Closing Ceremony staging particulars as spelled out in the IOC Charter. The section below is from the 1980 version prescribing that (for the Summer Games) “…the athletes must leave the infield after all the Protocol portions have been satisfied…”--and only then may the ‘artistic programme’ take place or continue. The rule for an exception immediately follows:

XV. TO RULE 63

Opening ceremony

The sovereign or Head of State who has been invited to open the Olympic Games shall be received at the entrance of the stadium by the President of the IOC and by the President of the OCOG. The two Presidents shall conduct the sovereign or Head of State and his retinue to his box at the stand of honour where he shall be greeted with his anthem.

The parade of the participants shall then follow. Each delegation dressed in its official uniform must be preceded by a name-board bearing its name and must be accompanied by its flag.

No participant in the parade is permitted to carry cameras, flags, banners, etc., on the field during the opening and closing ceremonies. Any participant committing a breach of the above regulations, will be liable to sanctions according to Rule 23. The OCOG shall see that these provisions are carried out.

[See last paragraph above: No participant in the parade is permitted to carry cameras, flags or banners, etc. on the field during the opening and closing ceremonies. Of course, they should have added: “…no chewing gum, camera-hugging or mugging either.”] It continues…

The contingent shall parade in alphabetical order according to the language of the country organising the Olympic Games, except that Greece shall lead the parade and the organizing country shall bring up the read. Only those who are competing in the Olympic Games, and no more than four non-competitors in each delegation, shall parade.

The delegations shall salute the sovereign or Head of State of the country by turning their heads toward his box, with no other demonstration. The flags of the participating delegations, as well as the name-boards and their bearers, shall be furnished by the OCOG and shall all be of equal size. Each contingent, after completing its march around the stadium, shall line up in the center of the field and maintain its position in a column behind its name-board and flag facing the stand of honour.

The President of the OCOG, accompanied by the President of the IOC, shall then proceed to the rostrum placed in the field in front of the stand of honour where he shall introduce the President of the IOC in the following words:

“I have the honour to introduce . . ., President of the International Olympic Committee, to whom I extend the warmest welcome.”

The President of the IOC shall then mount the rostrum, and deliver a brief speech of welcome, of not more than three minutes, concluding with the words:

“I have the honour to invite . . . (the sovereign or Head of State) to proclaim open the Games of the . . . Olympiad of the modern era, initiated by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1896 (or of the . . . Olympic Winter Games).”

A symbolic release of pigeons precedes the arrival of the Olympic flame, brought from Olympia by a relay of runners, the last of whom, after circling the track, shall light sacred Olympic fire which shall not be extinguished until the close of the Olympic Games.

The solemn Olympic oath shall be then taken in the following ceremony:

The flag bearers of all countries shall advance and form a semicircle around the rostrum; an athlete of the country where the Olympic Games are taking place shall then advance to the rostrum accompanied by the flag bearer of his country; he shall mount the rostrum and, holding a corner of the flag in his left hand, and removing his hat, shall raise his right hand and take the following oath on behalf of all the athletes:

“In the name of all the competitors, I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honour of our teams.”

Immediately after, a judge of the host country shall then advance to the rostrum and similarly take the following oath on behalf of all the judges and officials: “In the name of all the judges and officials, I promise that we shall officiate in these Olympic Games with complete impartiality, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, in the true spirit of sportsmanship.”

The anthem of the organizing country shall then be played or sung. The participants shall then leave the arena by the shortest route. The official ceremony according to the protocol described above so comes to an end. Only then may any artistic programmer and the competitions take place.

In the case of an opening ceremony being authorized by the IOC to be held at a secondary Olympic venue, the rules of protocol described above shall not apply, but the OCOG must submit details of the ceremony in advance to the IOC (at least one year).

Of course, most of what has been stipulated above has changed and been altered as needed, but it still provides the basic framework for the spine of today’s Olympic ceremonies. In July 2007, the Olympic Charter clarified the subject matter further on page 103 and this is currently in force:

“(Rule) 56. Opening and Closing Ceremonies:

1.The Opening and Closing Ceremonies shall be held in strict compliance with the IOC Protocol Guide.

2.The contents and details of all scenarios, schedules and programmes of all ceremonies must be submitted to the IOC for its prior approval.

3.The Olympic Games shall be proclaimed open by the Head of State of the host country by pronouncing either of the following sentences as the case may be:

- if at the opening of the Games of the Olympiad: “I declare open the Games of … [name of the host city] celebrating the … [number of the Olympiad] …Olympiad of the modern era.

- if at the opening of the Olympic Winter Games: “I declare open the ...[number of the Winter Olympic Games] Winter Olympic Games of … [name of the host city].”

During the entire period of the Olympic Games, including all ceremonies, no speeches of any kind may be held by any representative of any government or other public authority, nor by any other politician, in any venue placed under the responsibility of the OCOG. During the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, only the IOC President and the President of the OCOG are entitled to deliver short addresses.”

Thus, the above documents spell out the IOC’s complete control over the Ceremonies connected with their Olympic Games.

Global Reach. The Olympic telecasts are among a handful of global events that anyone can watch with some planning and in good spirits. Together with the Oscars, the World Cup and the Misses International, Universe and World pageants, the Olympics (or summer at least) are one of the truly worldwide telecasts that are beamed to every country on earth and making the planet a proverbial “media village’ and one family. A famed Broadway set designer, in anticipation of his first Academy Awards-design assignment, called the Oscars as “…one of the great communal rituals of the world,” …just like the Olympics.

From the first Games (Squaw Valley 1960) which sold television rights to subsidize staging costs, to the XXIXth Summer Games in Beijing, U.S. and worldwide viewership has grown exponentially with the increased costs of television rights and the virus-like proliferation of television and the internet. In 1960, CBS (the Columbia Broadcasting System of the U.S.) paid $50,000 for the (b&w) rights to the Squaw Valley Games–the first television sale of its kind. Some 48 years later, the sights and sounds of Beijing 2008 cost NBC (the National Broadcasting Company) some $894 million (for rights alone). There were no Nielsen ratings for Games previous to 1968, but the opening ceremony of Beijing in August 2008 drew some 842 million Chinese viewers, 34.2 million Americans, and at least another 2.5 billion viewers worldwide.

Similarly, the costs of staging these one-time Ceremonies have mushroomed beyond all reason.

Cast of thousands, cost of millions. The Olympic ceremonies today literally employ a cast of thousands and are produced at a cost of millions. The closest thing these strange extravaganzas can be compared to are the older, big-budget Hollywood ‘road show’ epics that, in the pre-digital age, employed thousands of extras to fill up the wide screen as invading armies, citizens in revolt or in some sort of cataclysm, or as cheering crowds to a conquering hero. And these casts of thousands (usually Italian or Spanish extras) were surrounded by eye-popping, “expensive” production values: stupendous sets and sumptuous costumes.

These were the big jaw-droppers of their pre-digital day when each studio tried to outdo the other in grandiosity: The Ten Commandments (Paramount, 1956), Ben-Hur (MGM, 1959), Spartacus (Universal, 1960), 55 Days at Peking (J. Arthur Rank, 1963), Cleopatra (20^th Century-Fox, 1963, $30 million), Fall of the Roman Empire (Bronston Productions, 1964), to name a few.

But the big difference between Olympic ceremonies and these epic films is that because feature films are made for profit, the casts were then paid off for their services. In Olympic and similar ceremonies, those productions rely solely on the goodwill of volunteer casts (and often production crews). These are volunteer efforts by civilians or, in the cases of Moscow 1980 and Beijing 2008, recruited army cadets. Of course, a little flirtation with show biz would have been a big break from the dull, humdrum life of being a private, especially if you get to wear a snazzy costume and have your face flashed on global television. Who doesn’t dream of his fifteen seconds of fame?

Numbers. The casts of recent Olympic ceremonies range from around 6,000 to 13,000+ (Seoul). However, these pale in comparison with the Spartakiades of old socialist regimes or North Korea’s Arirang Games which utilize(d) as many as 75,000 participants on the average to regale its great leader, Kim Il Sung, a few select foreign visitors and his starving, adoring masses.

Ceremonies vs. Films. There is an inverse formula to getting the job done correctly in filmmaking versus Olympic ceremonies. Motion pictures involve a few rehearsals (for various camera angles, for example) or numerous ‘takes’ (from which the best ones are picked and then edited) to get a scene in the can; whereas Olympic ceremonies are just the opposite. They require a few weeks of arduous practice just to get it right for ONE live performance--no repeats, no retakes that can be edited in post-production. And where the movies can ‘fake’ any and all effects, there is no such “cheating” in Olympic or similar ceremonies. They are, for the most part, shown live and their major jaw-dropping effects are meant to impress in a ‘live’ arena.

Ceremonies vs. Large-scale Musical Stage Shows. Similarly, let us contrast the whole Olympic enterprise to, say, your big-budget Broadway or Las Vegas musical. At the end of 2008, an archetypical Broadway musical cost about $20 million to bring to life, with a cast of about 36 actors, rehearsing for two months, and takes about 1½ years to recoup its investment. The most expensive stage-musical of any kind to open is Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark. It was originally budgeted at $54 million for a 2008 opening. When it finally opened in June 14, 2011 after a record number of previews (183), it had cost $75 million. With a weekly operating cost of nearly $1 million, it is estimated to take at least seven years (so early 2018) for the show to recoup its original investment.

In comparison, the Beijing 2008 opening ceremony alone cost nearly $65 million, had a cast of 10,000+ people (one segment--the “moving print blocks”--rehearsed for ten months (the longest on record), and with no objective whatsoever to turn over a single red cent, to use a pun. Furthermore, while the Broadway musical plays only to about 1,500 people a night and one pays an (est.) US$125 for an orchestra seat, an O.C. is seen today by at least 2.5 billion people in one sitting and costs nothing for the televiewer to see it; but seeing it live is the most expensive ticket on any Olympic programme. So there is truly nothing quite like an Olympic opening ceremony.

Budgets. The earliest publicly available report strictly for ceremonies, quantifiable in U.S. dollars, would be for the Innsbruck Games of 1976. In its pre-award budget, the Innsbruck ’76 Organizing Committee had budgeted $70,000 for “all ceremonies and prizes.” Compare that to the wildly rumored $300 million cost of the Chinese ceremonies; but a more realistic figure was (the still suspect) budget of some $160 million for Beijing 2008’s ceremonies. ‘Suspect’ because Moscow 1980 and Beijing 2008 were staged by totalitarian governments accountable to no one; thus the former USSR and China could fudge and cover up whatever portions of their overall Games budgets might suit their purposes. However, as seen in Chapter 8, Beijing initially seemed more forthcoming than Moscow.

Olympic ceremonies’ budgets now include the so-called Victory/Award ceremonies--the little ceremonies wherein medals are awarded to the winning athletes. Because these are dictated by IOC protocol, there is a regimen of how these mini-ceremonies must be conducted, especially now that these Award ceremonies are staged some 300 times for the Summer Games. Some ceremonial budgets have also included partial costs of the Torch Relay--another expensive ceremonial component of an Olympic Games. And starting with Lillehammer 1994, the cost of the Paralympic Ceremonies has likewise been tacked on to the general Ceremonies budget.

Of course, the highest-known budget for ceremonial expenses for a major multi-sport international tournament goes to the Asian Games of 2006 hosted by Doha, Qatar, at a staggering $185 million for ceremonies alone--but chump change for a tiny, oil-rich emirate.

Some recent ceremonial budgets and/or final expenditures: Los Angeles 1984-$10.5 million; Calgary 1988-$23 million (which included all Pageantry, Cultural and Torch Relay costs); Barcelona 1992-$25 million. Lillehammer 1994’s $13,000,000 started a trend which also included Awards and Paralympic ceremonies in the published budget. The Centennial Games in Atlanta 1996 had budgeted $30 million; but it came in at $26.6 million as the first Games’ ceremonies to come in under budget even though the $26.6 million included Awards, Paralympics and Torch Relay.

Progressively, budgets went up in slight increments: $27.5 mil for Sydney; $28 mil for Salt Lake (including its Paralympic ceremonies)…and then it jumped seismically to $95 million for Athens 2004 although that figure was supposedly spread out over four years. The Torino Winter Games of 2006 was overspent by $55 million for the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne; and the still unbroken $185,000,000 on Doha’s 2006 Asian Games. Beijing came close at about $160 million ($36 million for the Paralympics; $20 mil for miscellaneous).

Vancouver 2010 closed its books at Can$48.3 million; and London is setting aside $128.5 million thereby becoming the most second expensive Olympic ceremonies after Beijing. Sochi 2014 is supposedly budgeting $46 million for its ceremonies; and Rio de Janeiro 2016 put down $125 million for Ceremonies in its bid book. We shall see if those budgets stay.

The difficulty with comparing budgets for various ceremonies over time is the years when they were quoted in non-US dollar denominations (e.g., Innsbruck 1976, Albertville 1992 and Athens 2004) vs. present-day cost perceptions. It was difficult to ascertain the prevailing rates of exchange at the time; and then value-compare them to the others (especially the U.S.-based Games) whose costs were more readily available in U.S. dollar amounts. (Strangely enough, the production costs of opening ceremonies’ nearly mirror the estimated viewerships of the ceremonies in the U.S. Barcelona cost $25 million; its U.S. viewership was 21.6 million households. Sydney’s cost $27.5 million; its U.S. viewership clocked in at 27.3 million. So, it’s almost as if a U.S. dollar per head. Salt Lake 2002 perhaps would have had the cheapest ‘gate’ cost going by this formula. It would’ve been 53¢ per head if admission had been charged.)

Recent Ceremonial Budget Fluctuations. Vancouver 2010’s Ceremonies budget was originally set at Can$58,000,000. This was an early figure bruited about when the Australian team of David Atkins Enterprises was picked to stage those winter Ceremonies. Atkins’ team was previously known for their staging the aforementioned budget-breaking Doha 2006 Asian Games ceremonies. Of that Can$58 million, $40 million were reserved for the regular and Paralympic openings and closings; and $18 million for Awards ceremonies in both Vancouver and Whistler. By 2009, the Whistler Awards ceremonies were eliminated, bringing VANOC’s entire ceremonies budget to Can$40,000,000. In June 2009, VANOC released an additional Can$8.3 million. That brought directly related ceremonies-spending back up to some Can$48.3 million before the curtain opened. The belated Can$8.3 mil funds went to revamping the B.C. Place sound system as well as additional requirements for the show(s).

London’s 2012 bid papers originally set aside $92,000,000 for all the Cultural, Ceremonial (including Awards ceremonies), Identity and torch relay doings. However, by December 5, 2011, LOCOG announced that due to massive savings on other phases of the Games, they were doubling the ceremonies budget (alone) to (£82 million) $128,400,000—making London 2012 the second most expensive Olympic ceremonies in history after Beijing; but still way behind Doha 2006’s gargantuan $185 million budget.

The Best Seats in the House. The cost of attending these once-in-a-lifetime shows are like the cost of putting on the shows. They can range from reasonable and affordable if you’re lucky, to the outrageous and astronomical if you’re also lucky. Tickets to the opening of the first modern Olympic Games in April 1896 in Athens, Greece were one, 1.5 and 2 drachmas (which worked out to U.S. 12¢-18¢-25¢ at 1896 currency exchange rates). One hundred years later, at the Centennial celebrations at Atlanta 1996, it cost $212, $424 and $636 to attend the Opening Ceremony. That’s a staggering 4,000% increase in summer ceremony tickets.

For the winters, for which the Squaw Valley 1960 figures are the earliest one could find, it cost $7.50 to stand in the sunshine and snow outside (part of the winter 1960 opening ceremony was held outdoors) but you were closer to the cauldron and the daytime fireworks; or $15/$25 to have a seat under the Blythe Arena roof and get closer to the protocol portions of the show. Fifty years later, at Vancouver 2010, it cost US$600 - $900 - $1200 for fully enclosed, temperature-controlled seating. That’s a staggering 6,000%+ increase for the winter seats, only over 50 years.

However, it must be said that at Nagano 1998, the organizers recognized that the Closing was always a secondary show vs. the Opening. So they priced the Closing significantly lower—the first time in Olympic history. The Nagano opening seats (priced for the U.S. market) were the 3-tiered $231, $289 and $403. Closing tickets were $174, $231 and $346.

At the turn-of-the-century Sydney 2000 games, the organizers offered a 4^th, cheapest category to allow indigents and students a chance to attend the Ceremonies. Some 6,000 (of a possible 100,000) seats were made available for Aus$61.00. Similarly, Vancouver and London followed suit by offering a limited number of “D” seats student-priced at Can$180 and £20.12 respectively. These “D” seats were, however, available only to the domestic market. The rest of London’s Ceremonial tickets are the highest in history: $327, $1,880, $2,979 and $3,727 for Opening and $327, $1,262, $1,880 and $2,797 for Closing. Of course, these high prices help pay for the spectacle and they come with bragging rights. There were 1.5 million applications for the 4,000 “D” seats priced at £20.12.

At this point, it is also time to bust another myth. The best seats in the house for any stadium spectacle like Olympic ceremonies are not the premium, “A” ringside seats but the “C”,”D” or “bleacher” seats. Not only are they the cheapest but because they are the farthest from the field, they allow the spectator to fully appreciate the intricate patterns and choreographic formations. For close-ups of the athletes or featured performers, just rely on the jumbotron screen or bring your own high-powered binoculars. And another note to aspiring ceremonies groupies: if you aren’t lucky enough to score tickets to an actual Opening and Closing Ceremonies, seek out the dress rehearsals because these are nearly the same (just minus the Parade of Athletes and the actual lighting moment) as the actual thing at a fraction of the price.

No pre-Games event sets the tone for the grand athletic competition to follow more so than the opening ceremony. As Peter Ueberroth, the man behind the uber-successful 1984 Los Angeles Games, imparted to his Ceremonies producer, David Wolper: “A good Opening will set the tone for the Games that follow. Give me a twenty-goose-bump Opening!” And that has sort of has been the unspoken mantra of every Olympic Games, summer and winter, ever since (and at $3,727 a pop for a London 2012 “AA” seat, I’m sure that’ll give your pocket more than just twenty goose-bumps).

Obviously, ceremonies have always fascinated me. Time and again, I hear from people who have watched their first Olympic opening ceremony: Did you see that? Wow, how did they do that? And when I mention that I worked/participated in two of them, I get a quizzical look that borders on being in the presence of a beatified entity or an amiable freak. (I would hope it’s the former). In any case, an Olympic opening ceremony is such a unique phenomenon… not only presaging the main athletic tournament that follows but because it serves no known altruistic or earthly purpose other than to wow the interested spectator or budding Olympo-phile.

Similarly, many have asked: what are the Opening ceremonies for? The ceremonies are not there to feature a particular artist or to even make money. On that one night, some 10-15,000 wannabee performers put on their best spats and spangles, ready to perform before the world; another 10,000, the cream of the world’s athletes, have similarly gathered and donned their most stylish uniforms; and another 80,000 people have paid top ducats for a monster four-hour show. Seven years’ efforts all lead up to this one night. A whole country will literally come to a stop as it struts its stuff under the global microscope--and with them, some 2.5 billion fellow earthlings will also stop whatever they are doing to watch and help celebrate that one evening of unparalleled pomp and pageantry. Put simply, it is a great way to announce to one and all that a very important event is about to happen. And it is truly a magnificent game of oneupsmanship of an almost perverse and unimaginable scale.

Scope and Tone of the book: I tried to write for both the newcomer and the die-hard aficionado insofar as the tone of the book, and I hope to have struck a happy balance. As for scope, if it appears that the book is top-heavy with the Los Angeles, Atlanta, Athens and Beijing chapters, that is because those Games were not only true milestones in tracking the development of the genre, but from a more practical point of view, their ceremonies also had the greatest coverage, and thus the most material available from both regular sources as well as the internet. I have also used the European system of dating in an attempt to conform to the way the International Olympic Committee dates their events and documents. Nearly all games previous to Moscow 1980 had very traditional ceremonies, heavy on the protocol sections and sprinkled with the usual amounts of native folk dances and balloons. Also, being an artistic critique and historical reference book, this volume enumerates as many “firsts” and other “superlative records” as the author could possibly compile.

And finally, I want to again stress that due to the more stringent eBook formatting limitations, I have had to leave out more than 140 images (many of them in color and original schematics from some of the Ceremonies) and numerous tables (like, for example, the full listing of international artists who have performed at Olympic ceremonies, fuller tables of the Budget and OC ticket costs, the trivia questions, or the full list of the athletes lighting the cauldron and torch statistics). This is a leaner, more pared down book--not by the author’s choice. Of course, the fuller, more lavish soft cover version is recommended and available also. Or you could ask your local library to purchase it (they’ll get a 20% discount if purchased directly from the book’s website).

Viewable Past Ceremonies. Most of the past ceremonies discussed in this book are viewable in one or all sections on two sites: (i) highlights and portions can be found on the IOC website (www.olympic.org) or (ii) on that wonderful window to past and private lives, YouTube. Warning: sometimes the guardians of the IOC or whichever licensing organization it works with, are on caffeine-overload so they will take down those YouTube clips no sooner than you can utter the magic words Citius, Altius, Expialidocious.