With a huge rise in interest among sports lovers for the upcoming 25th Olympics in Paris, Barcelona, Spain’s second largest city, revels in its 2000-year-old history. Barcelona is the city to host the prestigious Games on many occasions (1924, 1945, 1972 and 1992).
In fact, the great city came closest to success in 1936, but the Olympic Games were awarded to Berlin (Germany). Major Dhyan Chand scored 33 goals in three Olympics and he was so used to his tricks that his ball would never leave the hockey stick. A few of his hockey sticks were broken to check if he had fixed magnet in it. He was also quoted with a man of ‘6 arms’ by very prominent authors of his time. He had very thick arms coz he had played for so many years.
The Barcelona Games – designated ‘The Money Games’ made football commercialised. TV saw huge success as rights were being sold in millions and one of the reasons for this was Pele’s performance which got TV rights sold for $401 million.
The Olympic Games have had huge impact on sports tourism. In 1990, Barcelona had 118 hotels with 10,265 beds. By 1992, the capacity had risen to 148 hotels and 13,552 beds. Moreover, these figures had dramatically risen to huge 223 hotels and 46,391 beds by the year 2004. In fact, sports tourism in Barcelona rose by 7.6 per cent where worldwide tourism fell by 1.3 per cent in the recent years. Average hotel occupation rates in the city have been 80 per cent in the recent years. Barcelona is the European city with the greatest increase in the overnight stay in hotels by 104.9 per cent, although it is still far behind the figure for total number of stays in London’s 120,400,000 overnight, 31 per cent increase for the same period and Paris 31,633,273 stays with 1.5 per cent increase. About four years later, The Internet Era was to begin in Atlanta in 1996.
In 1992, Barcelona made cautious use of new computer and communication technology. The technology setting was thus also favourable to the success of the Barcelona Olympic Games ’92. Approximately, 1 billion viewers watched the opening ceremony. The final negotiation of the TV right between COOB’92, the IOC and NBC was another of the keys to success of the organising committee. Finally, noted Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan and NBC, the network that telecast the Games, produced a highlight film ‘16 Days of Glory’ in 1993 on Barcelona ’92 Olympic Games.
