Yes, it is a great shame that the advertising industry has been allowed to capture the Olympics and fuck up the coverage. Given time, that industry and its bogus marketing will damage the actual sporting events it as severely as it has American football.

I guess the lure of the big bucks on a corrupt IOC is just too much.

This would be easy to fix, the broadcasting rights should cover only events that the holder is willing to broadcast live. Everything else, on a non exclusive basis, should be fair game to any broadcaster. An appropriate fee could be applied to each event broadcast live. Given the huge number of events, well managed, this could rase as much, or even more, money for the IOC.

We could even have an American law that forces the rights holder to sell on any event that it chooses to not broadcast in real time.

Remember that the commercial television industry is not in the entertainment or information business. It is in the advertising business, and the commercials are the only thing that matters. It has no other source of revenue, and every cent it earns is passed on to the consumer. Thankfully, the industry is in decline in the digital era and we can watch its slow painful death over the next twenty years.