The year is 1936.
The event is the largest
propaganda operation of all time.
And no, this isn't some fascism party rally.
This is the 1936 Olympics, a perfect stage for
what would become the most corrupt event of all time.
The Olympics is a cartel.
[Music]
A cartel preying on a dream.
Take Tonga, their princess wanted so badly to see
a citizen in the Winter Olympics, they hired a
German marketing company to find an athlete.
This led them to choose the unlikely sport of
Luge and the even more unlikely competitor, Bruno Banani,
the son of a coconut farmer who had never seen real ice before.
He was shipped to Germany and began training.
And it turns out he was surprisingly good at
this whole Luge thing, making it to the Olympic
trials and exceeding until...
Where did this all start?
And why do we care so much?
The modern Olympic Games began in 1896 by
a French aristocrat as a way of reviving
national pride after his country didn't do so
well versus Germany in the Franco-Russian war.
That's why athletes represent countries rather than
themselves, and why Hitler staged the 1936
Games as a kind of showcase for
rising German military might and aggression.
During the Cold War, the Olympics functioned as yet
another proxy battle between the free world and communism.
Later, when the US and Soviet teams faced off
in sporting events, it was every bit as much
of a geopolitical showdown between superpowers as anything happening
in Southeast Asia at the time.
Bruce Jenner, in his world record setting
1967 to decathlon victory, wasn't just about
surpassing the limits of the human body.
It was somehow a metaphor for
real politics and nuclear war.
But this framing wasn't without collateral damage.
With ongoing national boycotts over political disputes, athletes who
had trained for years were figuratively sacrificed on the
altar of nationalism, or, in the case of murdered
Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Games, literally killed
in the name of international politics.
Even in 2022, with the Olympics taking place in
the winter wonderland of China, where the snow is
totally fake, but the silencing of American athletes is
all too real, I have to stop and ask
myself, how much worse can it get?
And it turns out, much worse.
For Bruno Banani, he had crashed in his trials, just missing
qualification and failing his country. Out of money,
he had no place to go.
That is, until a fantastic coincidence happens.
It turns out the name Bruno Banani was also
the name of a popular German underwear brand.
They saw Bruno and had to sponsor him, helping
him to train for the next Winter Olympics.
Bruno was becoming a kind of
celebrity in the Luge world.
This Tongan with the perfect underdog story
and even better name, that is, until
journalists began to look into his background.
Meet the IOC, the International Olympic Committee.
According to the New York Times, the
International Olympic Committee is probably the most
pervasive sport infrastructure in the world and
arguably the least accountable.
These guys play so dirty, they make
even the filthiest events look spotless.
Take the Utah scandal, and they weren't
done yet because it happened again and
again and so many times after that.
There's an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to
the scandals and corruption within the IOC.
- I think that the entire system is corrupt.
You have to take away the power of the members of
the IOC to decide who gets to host the Olympic Games.
- So the Olympics has more scandals than Bill
Cosby at an all-you-can-drink resort.
But who are they?
Or what are they?
Well, every couple of years, the elusive IOC
creatures come out of hibernation to feed on
the blood of whatever host country is gullible
enough to put on the Olympics.
The thing is, you can't technically own an
event, but you can own the rights to
the intellectual property of an event.
And if you thought that the IOC might share
those rights with countries or athletes, think again.
Not even the local businesses are safe.
Not the Butcher, the Baker, or the tire replacer.
The USOC says businesses cannot use their
own versions, and it's threatened to sue
anyone who uses its trademarks without consent.
This causes businesses and athletes to
bend the rules a little bit.
And it turns out Bruno Banani wasn't actually
Bruno Banani, the son of a coconut farmer.
Instead, he was a man named Fuahea Semi,
a Tongan who was plucked out of the
crowd by a certain German marketing company.
Had his name changed to Bruno Banani and had his
fingers crossed that the underwear brand of the same name
would sponsor his efforts to be an Olympian.
And it worked.
But the problem is, you're only allowed one bad
snow job before your entire reputation is tainted.
And the IOC was leaving a
regrettable taste in country's mouths.
They needed a new approach.
So why not try a corporate PSA?
Basically, their pitch is paying us is good for you,
but is it actually?
Consider this,
every year since 1960, countries have
significantly overspent to host the event. Take Rio
in 2016, they told Rio it would only cost
about $3 billion to put on the Olympics.
In reality, it costs $20 billion.
Of course, it's not free to host an Olympics.
You need to build infrastructure,
dope testing facilities and hotels.
And you might be thinking, yeah, but countries
get to keep the buildings, and they benefit
from those buildings, which is true, but it's
not cheap to maintain oversized, multibillion dollar facilities.
Here are some of the pictures
of Rio after the 2016 Games.
But surely the games themselves
bring in revenue to countries.
I mean, these are large televised events,
so where's that money actually going?
Turns out the majority goes to,
you guessed it, the IOC.
Okay, the city doesn't get the lion's share
of money, but they do get secondary benefits
that are harder to measure, like spending in
the economy and bragging rights.
But what about the athletes, the people who
literally make the events, the people who sacrifice
their entire lives to perfect their craft?
They've got to be well paid, right?
Well, no, they're unpaid, zero.
They are completely reliant on sponsors if they
are lucky enough to get a sponsor.
In a recent study of 500 elite
athletes, 60% consider themselves financially unstable.
The average track and field runner at the
Olympics makes less than $25,000 a year.
And that's one of the main events.
The niche sports earn even less.
I was actually a pole vaulter back in the
day, believe it or not, at an Olympic level.
But I did it for about eight years and
it was absolutely my passion for a long time.
And I even earned a scholarship for it.
One of the biggest reasons I stopped pursuing
the dream to live as a pole vaulter was
the income. The best in the world,
even Olympians were struggling to get by.
So how could I, someone relatively
good ever live off of this?
Some Olympians have resorted to another
approach crowdfunding to pay their bills.
There is an exception, though.
Winners get paid more.
Most countries offer bonuses to
athletes who win medals.
However, the amount is totally
dependent on where you live.
If you're in the US, it's not much.
But despite the money, the prestige still matters.
And this means countries and athletes do anything they
can to try to get into the Olympics.
For Bruno, this meant changing his
name and faking a life.
But this doesn't take away from his skill.
He's still trained in work to
compete on the world stage.
The IOC hated this.
They hated the idea that a company could profit off
of the advertisement that is essentially a man's name.
They hated it because they couldn't charge Bruno
Banani, the brand that is, massive advertisement fees,
adding even more to their Olympic stash.
But how much exactly are they making?
Well, the IOC is a nonprofit.
We know the President makes about $243,000 per year,
but the rest is a bit more murky.
The Olympics likes to promote that
it redistributes 90% of its earnings, which they
mentioned many times in their annual report.
This might make you scratch your head a little
bit when you add up the operations and administrative
costs in that same report and you see it
comes up to $670 million on $5.7 billion in revenue.
But sure, they might just say
10% for the sake of rounding.
But Where's the remaining 90% redistributed to?
The Olympic channel, promotion of the Olympic movement?
Don't get me wrong, there are good things
in the mix here, like scholarships to athletes.
But I would just like to
see a little bit more transparency.
I'm not pointing any fingers, but it's all too
easy for a nonprofit to funnel a few million
by simply hiring contractors owned by insiders of a
nonprofit, all in the name of regular operational expenses.
What we know for certain is the Olympics.
draws a lot of money.
It pays very little and has a questionable past.
As for Bruno, he ended up qualifying for and
competing in the Winter Olympics despite thousands of attempts
to disparage his name and he'll go down in
history as not only an Olympian, but one of
the greatest gorilla marketers of all time.
And if you see me pole vaulting in 2024 under the
name Tommy, mind your own business.