An MBA for Olympic watchers

Across the country, the month of February has been a tense time. In workplaces everywhere, people can be found pensively watching television screens and obsessively surfing the Web to monitor the latest developments.

Some show the physical signs of stress. Dark circles beneath their eyes, they complain of lost sleep and make quiet admissions to their co-workers of crying the night before.

Economic crisis? Market crash? Ah, no. The Olympics.

With the exception of a certain hockey series in 1972, there has likely never been a more consuming sports event in Canada than the Winter Distraction of Vancouver. The games of Calgary and Montreal were of a different era, prior to blanket coverage of every Olympic minute across multiple television networks and the Internet.

But it would be a mistake to assume that all those daytime hours spent debating the merits of Norwegian curling fashions or ice dancing - ice dancing! - is a productivity-sapping waste of time. Au contraire. The Games are nothing if not big business, and watching them can give you all sorts of useful wisdom that applies to the world of commerce and finance. For instance:

A little humility can go a long way.

American downhill skier Bode Miller was labelled "The biggest bust in Olympic history" after crashing out of the 2006 Games in Turin without a medal. Too much of a free spirit, too much ego, too little maturity, his critics said.

He came back to Vancouver at the ripe old age of 32, minus the hype and the showboating, and captured three medals, including a gold. American banks could pick up a clue from him. The return of monster bonuses, along with their fight against proposals to reform the U.S. banking system - most of which are reasonable - sets up the likes of Goldman Sachs for a public backlash that's even more vicious than the one we've seen to date.

Those who can do something unique can enjoy success that is disproportionate to their size.

In the medal count, Norway, which has a population of less than five million, stands ahead of much bigger countries like Russia (141 million), Japan (127 million) and Canada (34 million).

The reason is specialization. All but one of Norway's 19 medals have been earned on skis (as of midday on Friday). The Netherlands is the most extreme example of this. It has won 84 medals in the history of the Winter Games; 81 of them have been for speed skating. (The country has sent only one non-speed skater to Vancouver.)

The same goes for business. The best companies (from an investment point of view) tend to share the same characteristic as Norway's Olympic team. They focus on a small number of things in which they are superior to anyone else.

One of the top Canadian stocks of the past 15 years is Home Capital Group, which sells mortgages to customers who have trouble qualifying at banks. It's a niche market; nobody does it better. Apple makes almost all of its money from four products. Research In Motion has for years defied its skeptics by exploiting one highly lucrative niche - business customers who want wireless e-mail. Diversified companies, or those who play in fields in which they are second or third best, rarely perform as well.

You want to own the monopoly, not do business with the monopoly.

There are few rackets quite like the International Olympic Committee. There is only one Olympic Games, and one place for a company to go if it wants to attach its brand to those five rings. There's proof in the numbers. From 2005-08, Olympic marketing revenue was $5.45-billion (U.S.) - more than double what it was a dozen years earlier.

The biggest chunk of the revenue comes from broadcasting rights, which also doubled. And who's taking a big bath? NBC, the official U.S. network, has said it will lose $250-million in Vancouver. CTV, the Canadian rights holder along with Rogers Media, has not disclosed its financial projections. But the Olympic ad sales of all broadcasters have suffered from the poor economy. (CTV is owned by CTVglobemedia, which also owns The Globe and Mail.)

The IOC won't sweat it. Even after handing over 90 per cent of its revenue to "support the staging of the Olympic Games and to promote the worldwide development of sport," it still has hundreds of millions to pay for the running of its cozy little club. Nice work if you can get it.