Epic, unforgettable and transformative. No three words better summarize the expectations for the 2008 Olympics since the International Olympic Committee selected Beijing as the host city seven years ago. The moment was a watershed in sports, and a crescendo of anticipation has been building ever since.

But how much of the hype can you believe? And how much will it change the Games for the future?

In his book, “Inside the Olympics,” Dick Pound wrote, “The Olympic Games are so huge that they seem to create their own myths.” He added that most can be explained.

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SportsBusiness Journal decided to tackle that task on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. In honor of the start time for the most anticipated Games in history — 8/8/08 at 8 p.m. — the magazine selected eight perceptions and important issues facing the movement. After parsing through the facts and analyzing the relevant data, here’s a look at where the property stands going forward.

The Olympics are less relevant to young people.

Growing up, Helios Partners CEO Chris Welton loved the Olympics and he watched every one. But — after selling Olympic marketing rights for six years — the longtime Olympic businessman struggles to get his 16-year-old son to watch the Games today.

“He’s not interested,” Welton said.

His son’s disinterest is far from unique among U.S. teenagers. Over the past 16 years, people age 2-29 have made up an increasingly smaller percentage of the total prime-time Summer Olympics audience. That demographic accounted for 32 percent of total viewers in 1992 but only 22 percent in 2004. The Winter Olympics’ drop has been similar but less precipitous, falling from 19 percent in 1998 to 17 percent in 2006.

Overall, the Olympics’ TV audience is aging. The median age of Summer Olympics viewers in prime time rose from 38.7 in 1992 to 47.1 in 2004. The rise was most pronounced among males, where the median age in 2004, 47.9, was more than 10 years older than in 1992. The average female age rose over the same period from 40 to 46.1.

ESPN Sports Poll data shows similar trends in its research of fan avidity. Among 12- to 17-year-olds in 2000, 80 percent considered themselves fans of the Summer Olympics and 27 percent considered themselves avid fans. A similar poll in 2007 showed those numbers had dropped to 63.7 percent and 24.7 percent, respectively.

“We’re at the point where we’re going to lose a generation,” Welton said. “The IOC and [U.S. Olympic Committee] need to start developing media assets that help the Olympics regain relevance.”

The IOC acknowledges that the relevance of the Olympics has declined among youth. It created the first Youth Olympics, which will take place in 2010 in Singapore, to address that. But will it be enough?

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More women follow the Olympics than any other sports property.

One of the first things NBC did after buying the women’s cable channel, Oxygen, was announce plans to make it the unofficial home of gymnastics during the 2008 Olympics. Research shows it easily could have added a slew of other sports.

51 percent of U.S. women are interested in the Olympic brand, according to an online study conducted in March for the USOC by Lieberman Research Worldwide. Only the NFL came close to that with 39 percent interest among women.

71.1 percent of women are interested in the Summer Olympics and 72.7 percent are interested in the Winter Olympics, according to a 2007 ESPN Sports Poll. Again, only the NFL came close with 61.2 percent interest. The NBA (56.4), MLB (56) and NASCAR (45.4) all lagged behind.

Such statistics have played into activation by some of the USOC’s sponsors ahead of the 2008 Olympics. This year, Kimberly-Clark’s Kleenex brand released a documentary titled “Let It Out,” which tells emotional stories of athletes and encourages viewers to “release their emotions.”

Tyson took a similar, targeted approach, launching an Olympic-themed Gold Medal Mom contest as part of its “Thank You, Mom” campaign.

“Knowing that women love the Olympics broadens our appeal,” said USOC chief marketing officer Rick Burton. “It’s not that they don’t love the NFL or the NBA, but they love the Olympics in large part because they can see younger or older versions of themselves.”

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The Olympics provide an economic boost to their host cities.

After hosting the 1976 Olympics, Montreal found itself more than $2 billion in debt. Twenty years later, Atlanta pegged the economic benefits of the 1996 Olympics to the city and state at $5.1 billion.

So are the Olympic Games an economic winner or a loser? The answer is tricky.

Take Sydney, which spent $3 billion on the 2000 Games, as an example. A 2002 PricewaterhouseCoopers study showed that the Sydney Games generated significant economic benefits, including $600 million in new business investment; almost $2 billion in post-Games sports infrastructure and service contracts; and an injection of over $6 billion in infrastructure developments in New South Wales.

But a subsequent 2004 study by the accounting firm showed that consumer spending and overall GDP growth slowed after the Games. That coincided with an Australian and global economic downturn in 2001.

Greg Groggel, a Thomas J. Watson fellow, spent all of 2006 traveling on his Watson fellowship to former Olympic host cities to study the financial and wider impact of the Games. He said that while the increasing costs of infrastructure and security are making it more expensive to host a Games, the economic benefits are still there.

“After the Olympics there’s always a post-Games depression because cities have spent years gearing up for a party and the party’s suddenly over,” Groggel said. “But if a city has competent leadership and local support, there’s no doubt it turns a profit (with the Games) because the venues that are built continue to be useful for events after a Games.”

Groggel added that China will likely be an exception to the rule. Beijing reportedly spent more than $30 billion on the Olympics — almost all of which came from public financing.

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This is the last of the TV Olympics and the first of the Web Olympics.

When NBC announced that it would air 2,200 hours of Olympics coverage online, NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol said, “For the first time, the average American will be able to create (his or her) own unique Olympic experience whether at home, at the office or on the go.”

Does that mean we’re witnessing the last of the TV Olympics and the first of the Web Olympics?

Of course not, said Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics. He said the Olympics will always be a shared viewing experience that only television can facilitate.

Yet NBC’s new measurement tool for the Games suggests its position as the primary platform is changing. The Total Audience Measurement Index adds TV ratings with broadband, video-on-demand and mobile users to create one total number.

For comparison, CBS has seen consumption of the NCAA basketball tournament shift since rolling out its online offering known as March Madness On Demand in 2006. This year, 1.4 million users registered for the product, doubling the previous year’s number. There were so many viewers in the first few days that by the fourth day of coverage, the total of 3.37 million hours of video overtook the total from 2007’s entire tournament by 659,215 hours.

“We see it as an incremental audience and not a cannibalistic one,” said Jason Kint, CBS Sports senior vice president and general manager of CBSSports.com. “The real opportunity for March Madness On Demand was to allow people to watch at work. It’s an alternative vehicle that fills out the gaps when you can’t be watching your television. The TV experience is preferred.”

NBC expects a similar pattern to emerge during the Olympics. Said Zenkel: “One objective is to drive people to our broadcasts, but the other is to satisfy the interest and the appetite of the Olympic fan who simply can’t get enough.”

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82% of Americans are fans of the U.S. Olympic Team.

The USOC sales deck reportedly says that 82 percent of Americans are fans of the U.S. Olympic Team. It’s a staggering number that can be easily explained — Who’s going to say they don’t support Team USA? — but hard to support.

Independent surveys indicate high interest in the property, as well, but not quite as high as the USOC puts forward.

Scarborough Research shows that 58 percent of people consider themselves fans of the Winter Olympics and 57 percent consider themselves fans of the Summer Olympics. That number was topped only by the NFL (60 percent). MLB (51 percent), college football (44 percent), college basketball (37 percent) and the NBA (34 percent) followed.

A 2008 ESPN Sports Poll survey shows 69.8 percent interest in the Summer Olympics. Again, the NFL was the only property to top that number (71.8 percent). College football (59.1), MLB (63.1), college basketball (50.8) and the NBA (50.1) followed.

Sponsors have seen this play out in their own research, as well. Before deciding to renew its partnership with the USOC this year, Hilton Hotels conducted a survey that found a 50 percent increase among people who preferred, recommended, trusted and stayed in Hilton hotels because of the company’s Olympic relationship.

Jeff Diskin, Hilton’s senior vice president of brand management said, “The Olympics as a brand and platform is universally understood. I can’t think of anything that could give us the bump in awareness that it has (over the past three years).”

The bottom line is that while the Olympics remain highly popular in the U.S. and valuable to its sponsors, the USOC may be inflating interest slightly.

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Global TOP Olympic sponsorships are not worth the cost.

Since the IOC created The Olympic Partnership program in 1985, revenue from the program has climbed from an inflation-adjusted $196 million for 1985-88 to more than $866 million for 2004-08. That’s led some to wonder if the price is worth the payoff.

“The problem is that with prices going up, it’s getting harder and harder to get value out of it in 17 days every two years,” said Helios Partners CEO Chris Welton, who sold TOP partnerships for the IOC for six years at Meridian Management.

Based on the IOC’s estimates, this year’s 12 TOP partners will each spend more than $72 million over four years in some cases. For that price, they receive global intellectual property rights, hospitality rights, rights to 200 national organizing committees and, in the U.S., the right to buy exclusivity on TV. They don’t receive any media rights.

Based on the commonly used three times metric for activation, they should each spend $288 million over four years to activate their relationship — and that doesn’t include media. It’s not cheap, but sponsors say they still see a positive return on their investment.

“The Olympic Games has proven over the years to be invaluable to Visa’s business,” said Michael Lynch, Visa’s senior vice president of global partnership marketing. “The analytics prove that out. You’ve watched our business grow over the corresponding time period over the last 22 years.”

When Visa bought its TOP sponsorship before the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, it was third in its category behind American Express and MasterCard. Within three years, it climbed past MasterCard, and by 1995, it had replaced American Express as the category leader.

“The TOP program has been a guiding light and business miracle maker for brands that are No. 2 or No. 3 to leapfrog their competition,” said Rob Prazmark, president of 21 Marketing, who sold TOP sponsorships for more than a decade. “It offers instantaneous recognition and credibility. The world knows those Olympic rings are a trusted symbol.”

Welton agreed, saying, “The TOP program can still be worth it and certainly can deliver value for sports, but we’re kind of at a crossroads where it has to evolve. If the status quo remains and all you’re getting is the right to intellectual property, broadcast and hospitality, you’re going to see the value decline pretty quickly.”

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The Summer Olympics remain the pre-eminent global sports property.

If these Summer Games carry more geopolitical weight, the corporate, TV and intensity metrics are beginning to tilt toward FIFA World Cup and its power to grab a global audience over the course of a month.

“The Olympics [are] still the pre-eminent property, but if FIFA isn’t right there with it, it’s getting darn close,” said Jan Katzoff, CEO of SportsMark, the sports marketing and corporate hospitality agency that works for clients at both the Olympics and World Cup.

Only Visa and Coca-Cola are premier sponsors of both events and, for now, a top-level Olympic TOP sponsorship is more expensive to acquire than a World Cup partnership, according to IOC and FIFA documents. Michael Lynch, Visa’s senior vice president of global partnership marketing, acknowledged that in certain parts of the world, such as Latin America and Africa, soccer is “a total religion and the Olympics, maybe, aren’t quite as popular.”

If size matters, the Olympics still have the edge, but just barely. According to FIFA’s 2006 annual report, the organization brought in about $1.4 billion in TV and new media rights fees. Another $600 million came from sponsorship rights. The IOC reports $1.6 billion in TV revenue from the Beijing Games and $866 million in TOP sponsorships this year.

As for what event attracts more eyeballs globally, the data is dizzying and the measuring mindboggling. FIFA said 26.29 billion cumulative viewers over 376 channels worldwide watched the 2006 World Cup. The IOC uses a strange metric called “total viewer hours,” multiplying the number of hours watched per viewer. Thus Athens attracted 34 billion viewer hours. It’s impossible to decipher actual eyeballs, but more than 250 channels will beam the Games to 220 countries.

So for now, the Olympics continue to reign supreme as a global sports property. But for long?

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The Summer Olympics are relevant and cared about by Americans for one month every four years.

Listen to this analysis from five-time medal-winning U.S. swimmer Natalie Coughlin. She allowed that international swimming has its own dedicated fan base that follows the sport from year to year, but acknowledged, “It’s the general American household that never pays attention to swimming” except during the 17-day Olympic period.

“After Athens it was such a strange and new experience for people to recognize me on the street and stop me for an autograph,” said Coughlin, who will compete in Beijing. “That lasted for about two or three months. Then it died off.”

Not surprisingly, most corporate sponsors only carry their endorsed athletes for, at most, a couple of months beyond an Olympics. They recognize the short shelf life of Olympic fame and even shorter attention span of viewers.

Like the Games themselves, Olympic stars emerge “every four years, but then people just sort of, you know, lose sight of them until the next four years of a quadrennial,” said Doug Logan, the new CEO of USA Track & Field. “The eyeballs get fixed only on an every-four-year basis.”

Numbers prove the point.

Take a look at a typical night’s Olympics. Even the poorest-rated prime-time night of swimming and gymnastics at the 2004 Athens Games garnered an 11.8 rating, or about 12 million homes, for NBC.

Compare that to a strong swimming trials this summer in prime time. The best rating then: 4.0. For the prime-time track trials: 3.4. Respectable.

But in the off years — between 2005 and 2007 — no track, no gymnastics and no swim meet on network television exceeded a 2.7 rating. Only one track meet got as high as a 1.3 rating.

“We have to find a way to keep people interested in the continuum,” Logan said.

Logan was talking about his sport, but his comment could apply to the entire Olympic program.