Each day during the Summer Games, THE DAILY offers our take on the business performances of some of the people, sponsors, broadcasters and other entities around London.
| | GOLD: LONDON ORGANIZERS -- What a testament these Games were to LOCOG and its leaders, Sebastian Coe and Paul Deighton. They chose not to be Beijing, to give these Games their own personality and flair. Along the way, they paid attention to every detail while still managing not to smother the London Games in bureaucracy and political correctness. From the well-designed layout of venues, to the Opening and Closing ceremonies, to fixing security issues on the fly, to always maintaining a healthy dose of British humor, they delivered a fantastic Olympics. |
| | SILVER: NBC -- What else can be said about NBC Sports and its performance these past 17 days? From the best non-U.S. Olympic ratings in decades to ad sales records to offering every minute of every Olympic event live, albeit with a few glitches along the way, NBC performed brilliantly during the London Games. |
| | BRONZE: TEAM USA -- Everyone said this was China's year to win the medal count, yet when the final tally was in, Team USA had delivered one of its finest performances in history. The U.S. won 104 medals overall, 46 of them gold, to China's 88 medals and 38 Golds. The USOC, its NGBs and all of the athletes and coaches should be commended. |
| | TIN: THE NAYSAYERS -- For all those who said no one could follow Beijing, who said London was too big of a city to host the Games and that security would be a nightmare and traffic disastrous, to the ones who said tape-delayed coverage cannot possibly work in this day and age and that online coverage would cannibalize all media, to even those who said China was poised to take over the medal count and Team USA and Team GB would spend these past 17 days on their heels -- to all of the naysayers everywhere, we are happy to say you were wrong. |
