Some chips. Banned from the Olympics, unless McDonald’s. Photo:EvelynGiggles
The background
Corporate giant and Olympic sponsor McDonald’s is flexing its titanic corporate muscles – anyone who wants to buy chips in and around the Olympic site will have to go to … McDonald’s. The 800 or so food retailers across the games venues have been banned from serving chips – apart from with fish – because of a sponsorship agreement. You can’t serve chips on their own. The McDonald’s restaurant at the Olympic site has the capacity to serve 1,200 people an hour.
Workers on the site, however, are allowed to eat chips from elsewhere. The London Organising Committee, reported The Guardian, allowed “chip-hungry staff” to get their carb kicks from other caterers. Spectators, though, will only be allowed chips from McDonald’s.
The corporatism has reached elsewhere – Pimm’s, that essential Wimbledon drink, must be sold unbranded. Commentators across the board are outraged at what they are largely calling “Chipgate”, and are asking if this is the moment that sponsorship has lost its mind.
“My, my, McDonalds are a fussy bunch aren’t they? Will they get upset if you go somewhere else and have chips? Will Ronald McDonald cry? Will the mascara run down his paedo-face?” asked The Daily Shame.
What about lasagne and chips?
The Daily Mail pointed out that this would mean that though visitors could enjoy fish and chips, they couldn’t enjoy other British faves, such as sausage and chips, “gammon, egg and chips, lasagne and chips, steak and chips, and chicken and chips.”
The right to sell a bag of chips is fundamental
The Spectator was up in arms, with Sebastian Payne labelling it the Censorship Olympics. He said that the “Soviet-style roadlanes are bad enough, but the right to sell a bag of chips to anyone who wants one is fairly fundamental.” It’s our “national pleasure to munch through a bag of greasy skinned potatoes while cheering on” athletes.
Corporate sponsorship has lost its mind
Tom Chivers on The Telegraph said he couldn’t “quite believe this is real.” Are McDonald’s “so terrified of off-brand chips”? Will they get an “Eastern European hammer-thrower to hurl you bodily from the venue” if you try to buy chips on their own?” This is the moment when “corporate sponsorship lost its mind.”
A chip to break the camel’s back
This, said Will Dean on The Independent, “seems to have provided a chip to break the camel’s back of public outrage at the Games’ corporatism.”
