Considering what a financial black hole the Olympics has become — with a gazillion sports, all needing their own arenas, most of which will never be used again after the games — selling the broadcast rights for top dollar is the only chance the host countries have to even approach break-even status. They’re convinced that the only way to protect the value of the broadcast rights is to make them exclusive, hence the prohibition on Internet broadcasts that would allow us to bypass NBC. And honestly, they may be right. The only way to fix the problem is to cut back on the number of events and focus the games on sports that truly have a worldwide audience, but they’ve been talking about that for decades without really doing anything about it. If they ever manage to do that, the games would be less expensive to put on, which would make it less critical that they squeeze every last dollar out of every conceivable source. But that would mean that rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming would be eliminated as medal events — and we can’t have that!!!