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That's right, the Olympics just got planetary suckers.
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I mean, it makes sense.
We do have three Olympic -themed indicators this week, so when we come back we are going to learn what factors help countries win medals.
How NBC is betting on these games to save its struggling streaming service.
And what it takes to feed 15 ,000 hungry athletes.
That's coming up after the break.
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Edward Jones member si PC Kenny hit us with your indicator.
I Love the Olympics and I have always said I can never get enough Olympics and this year friends It's finally gonna be put to the test because my indicator this week is 5 ,000 plus hours of Olympics.
That is the amount of content NBC Universal is putting on its streaming service, Peacock, 5 ,000 hours.
That's like longer than the Olympics itself.
It's so much. Because NBC is apparently going to show like everything, every event, every medal ceremony, hours and hours of commentary, and genius business move.
Earlier this month, they raised the price of the streaming service Peacock by two dollars.
So now, Peacock is what?
Nine bucks a month?
10 bucks a month? 7 .99 for the ad -supported tier.
13 .99 for the sort of ad -free tier, which I happily this week signed up for, and I have basically not turned the TV off since because real Olympic heads know that this stuff starts before the opening ceremonies.
In fact. Correct. While we record this, I have Hungary, France, handball up on one phone, I've got a group stage soccer match on another, and Peacock is going to let me stream four split screen sports at the same time soon, and just like, yes, inject 4X the amount of hopes and dreams and heartbreak
into my eyes. Please.
This is what I'm here for.
You at least have to stretch before you're watching four simultaneous screens.
Yeah, well, what we've got here is NBC's hopes and dreams and arguably heartbreak going on because Peacock is somewhat in the streaming wars especially behind services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video and they had a pretty serious success earlier this year when they took a big important American football
game and put it exclusively on Peacock, numbers went up and they say they actually managed to keep a lot of those viewers who then discovered non -football content like The Office and Yellowstone and so NBC is hoping these 5 ,000 -plus hours of Olympics will have a similar effect this time around.
Thank you Kenny, Adrienne what do you have for your Olympic indicator?
So my indicator is 273 medals.
That is the number of medals won by the athletes from the U .S., China and Russia in the last Summer Olympic games.
These teams were the winningest teams in the games.
They took home one out of every four medals that was given out.
That is an astonishing rate, maybe ahead of their population advantage, even.
So how is this happening?
Obviously the skill of the individual athletes matters when it comes to winning a medal, but recently our friends at the website, a Khan Effect did this analysis where they were wondering what national level macro -factors help determine Olympic success.
One I want to start with.
Two of them that they spotlighted were population and wealth.
So, get this. A Everyday Concept estimates that when you see a 10 % increase in the population of a country, their medal count goes up by about 3 .5%.
So, that makes sense, more people, you have a greater pool of potential athletics skill, more medals.
and that explains why you have a country like China that has won so many medals.
And like in the U .S., like, hundreds of millions of people and the odds of producing a Michael Phelps who's just apparently built like a fish goes on.
Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of people in the U .S.
too, I mean, definitely not as many as China.
But here's where you talk about wealth.
That's an even bigger factor than population.
So, Econofact estimates a 10 % increase in national income, leads to 7 % more medals.
So essentially double the effect of having like an increase in population I mean the u .s.
Is big but is what you're hinting at that the us is the country that buys its Championships like the New York Yankees of the Olympics or something I mean, I think that is one way to look at it But also money is not the only factor here Interestingly countries with a higher percentage of women in the workforce
also see their women athletes get more medals Oh, what's the hypothesis there?
So it could be that in countries, it's sort of like a social thing.
Like, countries where women have more opportunity to do different kinds of jobs.
Those opportunities include doing things like being a professional athlete, or being an Olympian.
Oh, sure. Sure. That makes total sense.
Adrian, this is a good one.
This is a good indicator.
Thanks, man. A gold medal indicator?
So fast I haven't even gone yet.
OK, all right, Waylon.
What's your indicator?
It's like hyper competitive.
All right. My indicator is 13 million.
That is the number of meals that the organizers expect to serve during the Olympic and paralympic games.
It's food for 15 ,000 athletes, plus tens of thousands of volunteers and media people and support staff.
Actually, now that I think about this, everyone needs something different?
How does this work?
So yeah. I mean, if you think about all of the cultural and dietary preferences that have to be considered, it's a mind -boggling feat they have to pull off.
They're bringing in three million bananas just for the athletes staying at Olympic Village.
That is just record amounts of potassium.
No one will cramp. No one will cramp in this Olympics.
Not on their watch.
There is a bakery at the Olympic Village making over 2 ,000 baguettes and croissants every day.
Can you imagine how good it probably smells over there?
It's incredible. And what's interesting is, you know, they do have to take into account what everyone from all over the world wants to eat and the food they're used to.
And the organizers have made it an explicit goal to source a lot of the food locally.
They want 80 % of the food to be French in origin and they want a quarter of it to come from within 250 kilometers of competition venues.
We're looking at figs from Nice and beef from Bordeaux.
Wow, that sounds great.
I want to be eating figs and cheese before I'm exerting a lot of effort, but I assume there's more than that going on.
Yeah. And it's also snacks, or maybe you're done competing and then you just want to eat all the things.
Yes. Well, I lost and I want to eat all the things.
You just want to eat your feelings?
Time to eat the feelings, yes.
So, this effort to boost local agricultural producers is part of this bigger initiative around making the Olympics more green and reducing carbon footprint.
I found this video of the President of Paris 2024, Tony Estange, and he's holding up a This burger is a symbol of the message I want to share with you today.
Burger is what he said?
Yeah. He said this burger is a symbol of the message he wants to share.
What message is that?
Well, first of all, I wanted to note very briefly that Tony is a three time gold medalist in slalom canoeing.
Did you even know that was a thing?
Can you, however we did.
Of course I knew. That was a thing.
Well, he's holding up his burger and he's like, oh, this burger has French cheese and it has a veggie patty because they're planning to serve more vegetables at the Paris Olympics.
It's right to say that we love burgers, and of course, at Paris 2024, we will have burgers.
Okay, burgers, Paris 2024, that's the Olympic slogan, and constipation.
Oh my god. I was thinking a little bit about that with the bananas.
Um, well listen, everybody.
It's been a pleasure.
I still, I got to go.
Because these sports aren't gonna watch themselves.
It's been a, well, I'll talk to you later.
This episode was produced by Angel Coreras and engineered by Debbie Daughtry.
It was fact -checked by Ciara Juarez.
Patty Hirsch edited this episode.
Kingades Cannonen is our editor and The Indicator is production of NPR.
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