The Olympics Edition

Because why not?

When you watch the Olympics on the television, the local broadcaster will have paid for the rights to do so.

So, given the Olympics are being hosted in France, this makes The Olympics, or at least The Watching of the Olympics on Television, a French services export, right?

Ummm. Not necessarily.

The broadcast rights for the Olympics are sold by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which, according to its website, is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. In the UK (and Europe), the distribution rights were bought by Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) for €1.3bn back in 2015. WBD is headquartered in New York, although it has offices all over the place.

This means that when you are watching the Olympics in France from a sofa in your flat in North London, you are possibly benefitting from a 2015 services export from Switzerland to New York. Confusing? Yeah.

(It also might not be true, depending on how the transactions were actually structured.)

But don’t worry, France will be generating some export revenue from all of this.

Assuming you are able to get there, if you are a foreigner, the money you spend on things like hotels and transport will technically be classified as a French services export. Mode 2, to be precise:

But what about the non-French athletes, are they exporting their services to France?

This all gets kinda complicated and boils down to “maybe and it depends”.

In the first instance, they certainly face some [minor] barriers to trade, in that they have to apply for a visa to compete.

The nice folk at Newland Chase set out the process here:

But they don’t, however, require a work permit due to an exemption that also applies to all of the training staff, referees, doctors, sponsors, etc.

Olympians also, famously, don’t get paid or receive prize money. So if they’re not getting paid, no services export?

Except … some do get paid, if they get on the podium, by their national committees. According to the internet, the Australian and the US federations pay their medalists. So probably not an export? But then again, the national associations do get money from the IOC, so you could argue that, very indirectly, this could be classified as an export (from Switzerland to the Australia and US) … but given the money isn’t explicitly for the medalists, probably not.

But what about the sports where the medalists actually do win some money?

Again, according to the internet, medalists in track and field will receive prize money from World Athletics, and Boxing medalists will receive prize money from the International Boxing Association.

World Athletics is headquartered in Monaco and the International Boxing Association is headquartered in Switzerland, so if a, say, Argentinian won a medal in Paris in both I guess you could argue that person exported services to Monaca and Switzerland, respectively.

If none of this makes any sense to you, WELCOME TO TRADE IN SERVICES.

Anyhow, whether the Olympians are technically exporting services or not, if they are bringing specialist equipment with them to Paris (unless they are from other EU or EEA countries), then they will have encountered barriers to trade in goods …