> As a lover of capitalism this all leaves me conflicted.
I don't want to go on a tangent but this is the exact contrary of Capitalism, it's a monopoly: as a consumer I can't make a choice, there is no market.
I feel the word monopoly gets way overused. "There is only one company with a train from Town A to Town B! It's a monopoly!" Probably not, as if there are other viable ways to travel (car, bus, plane, boat), then there are substitutes.
The olympics are no different. As a form of entertainment, there are countless substitutes. If the Olympics are boring, people won't watch. Even as a form of international cooperation, there are many substitutes that compete with the Olympics for the time, money, and attention of nations.
Just like public utilities don't have a monopoly on the provision of power, because, hey, every home-owner can buy a diesel generator. With the level of substitution you are describing, you've made the word monopoly meaningless.
The regional broadcasters for the Olympics have a monopoly because of their economic power in setting the price for their good. Other than circumventing copyright or using a VPN, there is no competitor that will provide you with the Olympics for less money. Random youtube videos are not a substitute for watching an Olympics broadcast live.
For many routes, planes/trains/coaches are substitutes, so it's meaningful to say that trains are not monopolies. How do we know? Because when train tickets go up in price, there's a measurable effect on the number of coach tickets bought.
Your example (household electricity vs. diesel generators) doesn't work in the same way. If domestic electricity prices in London were to go up by 25℅, the number of diesel generators and amount of diesel fuel sold would not budge. Because diesel isn't a reasonable substitute.
If anyone wants to know more, search the internet for 'cross elasticity of demand' and 'definition of substitute'.
That's like saying HBO has a monopoly because only they can broadcast game of thrones.
If a product must have a perfectly identical substitute to not be a monopoly, then more or less all companies have monopolies. I feel that position is untenable.
So you're saying that the alternative for the Olympics, a international gathering of most countries on the planet, is comparable to let's say... watching a basketball game? I think your analogy is very inaccurate.
A lot of the things people like to attribute to capitalism are really aspects of a perfect market. More off a convenient fiction for framing Econ 101 discussions on than something that actually actually exists. In some cases useful as a first order approximation.
It's the economics equivalent of frictionless spherical cows in a vacuum.
I don't want to go on a tangent but this is the exact contrary of Capitalism, it's a monopoly: as a consumer I can't make a choice, there is no market.