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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I think that the point that we're missing is that the Russian's simply don't care about external influence, if they did they would have softened their stance on Syria for example.

If Russia didn't care about external opinions, they wouldn't be holding the olympics. The olympics are way to trade money for international visibility and national popularity. That's why countries want to host them despite them being huge money sinks.

Besides, boycotts like these are about more than just changing minds in Russia. LGBT rights are discussed all around the world right now, Sochi or no Sochi.

Spreading pictures like this in social media

(Russian anti-LGBT violence linked to Olympic sponsors)

NSFW!

are the stuff of nightmares for olympic sponsors. I think it would be more accurate to say that the uproar has mattered already. The more noise people make, the more effect it will have, completely regardless of what the Russians do.

While it's unlikely to change policies outright, I believe it's likely that World Cup sponsors will put pressure on Russia and Qatar to tone their rhetorics down. But more importantly, corporations will do stuff like that in other places too. Not because they care about human rights, but because they want to avoid that kind of publicity. And when you have less politicians trying to gain popularity by picking on unpopular minorities, you have scored major victories in the long run.

As to Russia, they're mostly just grandstanding. You can be sure that they are regretting that they didn't at the very least delay their anti-gay laws until after the olympics were over, because this has been nothing short of a PR nightmare. They're hoping that once the games begin, people will be too focused on that to care about 'a bunch of gays'. Which is why things like important countries and athletes missing from the olympics matter, why protests and uproar matter, and why it would make all the difference in the world if the IOC actually took away their olympics.

Call it a game of brinkmanship. The Russians are counting that nobody will really care enough do anything. They're threatening to put LGBT athletes to jail if they show their colors. Call their bluff, and they lose. No country has ever put a visiting athlete in jail for something like this, not even the nazis. They will either look stupid in Russia or cause the kind of international crapstorm we have rarely seen.

Russians would obviously be outraged at the west, but also Russian businesses would be outraged at their politicians, and a lot of Russians who couldn't care less about LGBT people would also be really pissed at their leaders for messing up a good thing.

Look at that ##### Doll or whatever it is situation, tremendous international pressure was put on the Russian government to not prosecute and then to release those girls and they didn't relent.

Russian courts don't have corporate sponsors and are not the place for business networking.

America has put tremendous pressure on the Russians over Syria

Again, not a situation with a lot of corporate sponsors... well actually there propably are a lot of corporate sponsors hoping for the escalation of that conflict.

and over the Snowden situation

Protecting Snowden was a hugely popular move internationally. 'Muricans might be awfully pissed, but a lot of other countries and a lot of human rights organizations have been pleased. Besides, Snowden did something the Russians would want others to do, handing him over to US would be directly against Russian interests.

T.V. rights - a Tremendous amount of money flows into Russia's cash drawers from that. That's already been paid and advertising has already been sold. I doubt that the television carriers are going to back out, it would be a massive hit to them. I doubt that the advertisers will withdraw either.

This is a perfect reason to boycott by not watching.

Sponsor rights - I believe there is a split between the hosting nation and the Olympics. Again this has already been paid and the courts would side with the Olympics and Russia if agreements were broken and the money wouldn't be refunded If anything a boycott would hurt the sponsors who are the innocent parties in this whole thing as they paid long before the laws came into effect.

If they'd move the olympics, you could still run all the ads and have all the contests just the same. Not going to happen I know, but I'm sure it could be done, especially with the luck that the Vancouver was the last place to hold the olympics. You're a pretty well organized country, you could get it done.

Personally I think sponsors are far from innocent anyway. There is no such thing as innocent support to violent regimes.

There isn't much that can be done.

Of course there is. Nobody is forcing anybody to go to Sochi at gunpoint. Nobody is forcing you to watch it. Nobody is forcing countries to send their athletes, or forcing them to compete.

If they held the olympics in Vancouver, some money would be lost by some entities, but propably not really significant amounts in the grand scheme of things.

Personally I think one of the biggest holds against doing something is all the people saying that nothing can be done. Mostly stuff like this doesn't get done because people don't care enough to put their money where their mouth is, or to inconvenience themselves by not watching something they otherwise would.

Personally, I'm not going to watch the Sochi olympics, just like I didn't watch the Beijing olympics.