The Two Sides of the Gold Medal: Paradoxes of the Olympic Experience

Mega-sporting events like the Olympic Games, the Soccer World Cup finals, or the Super Bowl have become high-profile global consumption phenomena that attract the attention of massive spectator crowds. In the case of the Olympic Games, every four years, hundreds of thousands spectators gather for about two weeks to experience thrilling sporting competitions, entertaining side-shows, and how the “fastest-highest-strongest” from more than 200 countries compete for Olympic gold (Toohey and Veal 2007).For spectators, the Olympic Games offer a unique consumption experience that exhibits characteristics of skill, spectacle, and festive performance (Arnould 2007). The staging of sports skill performance in a naturalistic setting offers the passive consumer a spectatorial product. Yet, the Games also produce elements of spectacular performance through the extravagant presentation of moral values and fantastic environments. Also, consumers become integral parts of the festive performance; they co-create the atmospheric arena and produce cultural narratives (Arnould 2007). What participants of this study call a “once-in-a-lifetime” experience, resembles an extraordinary consumption experience in its various exceptional social interactions and “intense, positive, [and] intrinsically enjoyable” activities (Arnould and Price 1993, 25).While this unique positioning has set the Olympics apart from other sports events, this popular spectacle is also vulnerable to public criticism and controversial media debates (Toohey and Veal 2007). On the one hand, critical cultural analysts mark an intensifying commercialization displayed by celebrations of consumption in Olympic Parks and streets (Tomlinson 2005) or financial pressures on athlete performances (Rahman and Lockwood 2011). On the other hand, they praise the Games as a cultural epicenter, exhibiting authentic athletic performances, accumulating cultural resources, furthering social cohesion and peace promotion, and encouraging active healthy lifestyles (Maguire et al. 2008; Papanikolaou 2012; Rahman and Lockwood 2011).Evidently, these spectacularized mega-sporting events offer the spectators experiences laden with opposing meanings—or paradoxes (Luscher, Lewis, and Ingram 2006; Mick and Fournier 1998; O’Driscoll 2008)—that are negotiated in discourse. Research on extraordinary consumption experiences and consumption of spectacular and festive environments has acknowledged before that dialectical elements of staged spectacles create tensions and competing discourses (Holt 2002; Kozinets 2002; Kozinets et al. 2004; Tumbat and Belk 2011). This study applies a paradox perspective that emphasizes the interdependencies of opposing elements in discourse rather than interpreting them as contradictions. Adopting a paradox perspective allows to accept paradoxes as critical components of consumer discourse on consumption experiences.This study reviews theoretical perspectives on paradoxes and empirically examines how paradoxes, crystallizing in the narratives of spectators of the London Olympic Games 2012, both dispute and enrich the Olympic experience. We detail the characteristics and dynamics of four paradoxes and discuss their contribution to unique consumption experiences.