How London 2012 has changed the Olympics forever

The London Olympics have been a Summer Games spectacle that will have a far-reaching impact, and will change the way the largest sporting event in the world is operated in the future.

The idea of an Olympics affecting change should not be trivialized. It cannot always be spelled out through direct economic or sporting spinoffs.

[Slideshow: World record breakers at London Games]

For the host country, an Olympics can indeed "inspire a generation'' and spark positive change to a nation's sense of identity (see Vancouver 2010 for Canada). In regard to London 2012, the tremendous success of the British team has provoked grand dreams of a new era of British dominance in the sporting arena. Yet more than that, the Olympics have been a boon for a Great Britain that's struggling with a faltering economy and painful austerity measures. To wit, the Olympics have been a welcome distraction for many Britons.

Of course, the Olympics-as-catalyst phenomenon is double-edged. Sometimes, an Olympics comes along that illustrates in vivid, tape-delayed HD, a shift that not only reflects the cultural Zeitgeist back at us, but points to what the future may hold for huge, global events that extend beyond the normal reach of sport.

The London Games were exactly that kind of watershed moment.

Of all the Olympics I've seen, the London Games represent a harbinger for not only how future Olympics will be run, but how major international events of all stripes operate. These changes are fiscal, technological and cultural. Yet one thing's for sure: The London Games have changed the Olympic Movement forever.

How so?

Circus, sure, but cost-effective circuses, please. It's self-evident that hosting an Olympics, Summer or Winter, costs too much money. The London Games cost an astounding $14-billion to put on. As it often happens, it is tough to tell how that investment will generate direct economic returns for the City of London.

However, a more unsettling trend in the post-9/11 world we live in is how the Olympics have become a massive and expensive security state operation. Surface-to-air missiles on apartment buildings, an entire battalion of British troops and entire armies of CCTV cameras was part of the package. Is this about sport or feeding a culture of paranoia?

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There is no way to take chances with security. A host nation, always in the long shadow of Munich and 1972, must keep the Games safe and secure. There must be a point, though, when the Olympics become a burden, especially when private contractors hired specifically for the event fail to deliver and army soldiers were pressed into service?

In London's case, this required resources many governments no longer have. There's plenty of cautionary tales about governments spending far beyond their means to host an Olympics (read: Montreal), but it's only been in the last decade or so that the consequences of such fiscal largesse have had a direct impact on a citizen's daily life. The harshest example? Athens, in which massive financial investments leading up to the 2004 Summer Olympics have been a partial contributor to the country's dismal finances.

The reality for the I.O.C. is that if they want to have the very best Olympics possible with the security to protect that investment, people will need to start getting creative with how these events are run. The status quo is clearly not an option.

Future Olympics may involve more co-hosted bids (the proposed Toronto-Buffalo 2024 Summer Olympic bid idea being floated around in London is one such example of this), more private investment in bids, or even a rotating series of Games hosted in semi-permanent cities. The I.O.C. — notoriously intractable and fearful of change — won't like these kinds of new ideas, but if the Olympics is to survive the more cash-strapped 21^st century, it will need to think about embracing new ideas.

The Internet is suffocating the old Olympic broadcast model. The London Olympics were the first Olympics to witness the real power of social media for good or ill. The International Olympic Committee must be concerned about how this will affect its bottom line.

The CTV/Rogers Consortium and NBC have enjoyed spectacular TV ratings. The latter got what it wanted despite heavy criticism for tape-delaying major events and sometimes being harsh toward non-American competitors, which led to a backlash (hence the Twitter hashtag #NBCFail).

[More: Ten stars of London 2012]

London 2012 will be the last Summer Olympics that the traditional broadcast model will hold such sway. The BBC's coverage offered a preview of what network broadcasters will have to do going forward: thousands of hours of coverage available on their much-lauded BBC iPlayer and an archive of Games content available on-demand on laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Twitter essentially overran London 2012 and data centres got overwhelmed from time to time, but the future Olympic broadcast model is inherently unstable and unpredictable. Audiences are king. It's also a model not in the IOC's control. The IOC can either embrace that future broadcast model — or, as they did in London, accept it only begrudgingly and with a million restrictions involved.

The playing field is more level today. The story of London 2012 wasn't the medal horse race between the U.S. and China. It was how nations such as Australia and Germany struggled to enjoy their accustomed level of success, while Hungary and South Korea became success stories.

[Also: Ranking the worst venues of the London Olympics]

Canada fared decently with 18 medals, which is the only way to look at it. The country absorbed an unusually high number of disappointments. The tougher part nations like Canada need to acknowledge is clear: while we have stepped up our investments with Own The Podium, many more nations — especially emerging economies like Brazil and Russia — are also stepping up. Further, other nations are optimizing their spending on sports: witness smaller players like Iran and Kazakhstan grinding out medals by focusing on a small number of sports (for the record, Kazakhstan got more golds than Canada). The Olympic playing field is more competitive, and if Canada wants to stay in the game medal-wise, we better deliver.

Canadians got spoiled by the country's gold rush of Vancouver 2010. In many ways, the nation expected another rash of success similar to Vancouver with London 2012. It was a bitter pill to swallow that Canada ended up with the lowest number of golds since Montreal 1976, but there's a lesson here for all nations.

Plaudits alone don't cut it — people want medals.

More London Olympics coverage on Yahoo! Canada Sports:
• Photos: Iconic Summer Olympics Closing Ceremonies
• Video: Jamaica's exclamation point on London Games
• Catching you up on Day 15 of the Olympics