Goodwill Games

The Goodwill Games are international mutli-sport events that features summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a variety of competitions. The Games are owned by The Eclipse Group, through their media division WarnerMedia.

Like the Olympic Games, the Goodwill Games are held every four years, with the Summer and Winter Games alternating by occurring every four years but two years apart, usually the year after the Winter and Summer Olympic Games.

First era (1986-2001)
The first Goodwill Games, held in Moscow in 1986, featured 182 events and attracted over 3,000 athletes representing 79 countries. World records were set by Sergey Bubka (pole vault), Jackie Joyner-Kersee (heptathlon), and both the men and women's 200 m cycle racing, by East Germany's Michael Hübner and the Soviet Union's Erika Salumäe, respectively. World records also fell at the 1990 Games in Seattle, to Mike Barrowman in the 200 m breaststroke and Nadezhda Ryashkina in the 10 km walk.

The 1994 Games in Saint Petersburg, Russia were the first competition held since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russians set five world records in the weightlifting section, and the games were the first major international event to feature beach volleyball, which would appear at the Olympics for the first time at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

In October 1996, Turner's company, the Turner Broadcasting System, merged with Time Warner, thus bringing the Goodwill Games under the control of the latter. Ted Turner's last games were in 1998 in New York City, with memorable highlights including Joyner-Kersee winning her fourth straight heptathlon title, the U.S. 4 × 400 m relay team setting a world's best time, plus Michelle Kwan and Todd Eldridge winning the gold in figure skating, and Dominique Moceanu capturing the women's gymnastics gold medal with a dominant performance. Time Warner organized the 2001 Games in Brisbane, Australia, before announcing that this would be the last edition of the games. With the cancellation of the games, Phoenix, Arizona and Calgary lost their respective summer and winter games, scheduled for 2005. The 2001 edition witnessed Australia winning the most medals with 75, but it received very low television ratings in the United States. Nevertheless, critics praised Turner Network Television for showing the games live, rather than on tape delay.

During a live interview at the 2009 Denver SportAccord conference, Turner blamed the demise of the games on the short-sighted management of Time Warner, and stated, "If I'd have stayed there the Goodwill Games would not have been canceled." Turner expressed hope that the games would return as a bridge to restore cultural contact between Russia and the U.S., stating that the relationship between the two had steadily disintegrated since the Cold War, which he called a dangerous situation due to both countries' massive nuclear arsenals. He also reiterated his belief in the power of international sporting competitions to prevent war, saying that "as long as the Olympics are taking place and not being boycotted, it's virtually impossible to have a world war", because the nations involved "wouldn't want a war to mess up their chances".

Second era (2021-present)
Executives Oliver Watson and Kasperi Salovaara met up with Ted Turner on December 17, 2020. Not much is known, but what is known is that topics during their discussions included the Korean conflict and the rising tensions between China and the United States, but one notable topic was the possibility of reviving the Goodwill Games, as an alternative to the Olympic Games. Two sports federation associations, GAISF and ARISF, along with Turner, were in support of the idea. Salovaara especially mentioned his passion for creating his own multi-sports event, similar to the Olympics, between him and his friends, ever since he was a child; while Watson wanted to revive the Goodwill Games, going as far as to attempt to contact then-Time Warner's executives, much to no success.

Goodwill Games Committee
Even though Goodwill Games as an entity is commercial, the events are still arranged and managed by a sports organisation named Goodwill Games Committee, based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Commitments
One of the Goodwill Games Committee's goals is to minimize the economic and negative social impact left by such large-scale multi-sport events, which was why they invited most of the previous Olympic towns to take part in the bidding process for the unsettled Goodwill Games.

Funding
It was announced that all executives will pitch in $1,000,000,000 in order to help fund the games. These funds will go to organizing the events, helping cities fund their Goodwill Games bid and games themselves, as well as funding for media ventures.

Reception towards past ceremonies
Watson and Salovaara famously commented that the opening ceremonies of the earlier games were "straight up garbage", and that they were gonna "one-up (them) with second-to-none difficulties whatsoever [sic]". Davis added that adding American rapper Jay-Z as an opening act is enough to outdo even the 2001 Goodwill Games opening ceremony.

Future
In response to the Finnish town Salla's bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics, Davis, Turner and Watson released a statement where they praised the town for using the bid to raise awareness of global warming, jokingly adding "if (the Olympics) won't take it into consideration, we will". Salovaara later tweeted that it is "by far the smartest we as humans have ever been".

Goodwill Broadcasting Services
The Goodwill Broadcasting Services (GBS) are a company that was established by the Goodwill Games Committee, Endeavor, WarnerMedia, and ViacomCBS in order to serve as the Host Broadcaster for all Goodwill Games and affiliated events, maintaining continuity of quality throughout each edition. Close partners to the GBS are Arri, Sony, NEP Group, Host Broadcast Services (HBS), and International Sports Broadcasting (ISB). Arri and Sony's cameras will be used to catch all the action, while NEP Group, HBS, and the ISB will collaborate with WarnerMedia and ViacomCBS to produce a clean and overall unbiased high quality broadcast. The GBS are headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia in the same building as the Goodwill Games Committee, while the international headquarters are located in WarnerMedia Entertainment Spain's home office in Madrid.

The GBS also established their own distribution subsidiary that will focus on distributing the World Feed broadcasts to the broadcast rights holders.

The president of the Goodwill Broadcasting Services is Oliver Watson, who is the vice-president of the Goodwill Games Committee. Vice president is Isaac Davis, who is the president of the Comittee and overall rights holder of the Goodwill Games. The GBS also employs three Creative Directors who oversee the overall broadcasts based on their genre of directing; action-orientated sports, stylistic sports (as well as the ceremonies), and mellow sports (the in between of action and stylistic). Each edition of the games will employ their own Creative Directors, however it won't be uncommon to see returning Creative Directors between each edition, winter or summer.

Goodwill Games Meetings
The Goodwill Games Meetings are essentially IOC Sessions for the Goodwill Games. These meetings will detail forthcoming events, such as voting for cities, mapping out venues and events for future events, approving sports to be hosted at the Goodwill Games, as well as media contracts.

Broadcasting rights
World Feed is produced by GBS with partners NEP Group, HBS, and ISB.
 * United States: ViacomCBS (CBS / Pop / CBSSN / whatever paramount network is going to be here / CMT) and WarnerMedia (TSport / TNT / TBS)
 * 2023-2030
 * United Kingdom & Ireland: ITV/STV/UTV (Eclipse Broadcasting UK) and Channel 5 (ViacomCBS UK) / BT Sport, FreeSports, and Premier Sports.
 * 2023-2030

Streaming rights
TBA

Distribution
ISB and GBS control the broadcast distribution of the games under Goodwill Games Global Distribution Service (GGGDS), which is a joint venture between ISB, GBS, WarnerMedia's Warner Bros. International Distribution and ViacomCBS's ViacomCBS Global Distribution. GGGDS will also produce local programs with the host broadcaster that will focus on local talent as well as highlighting the city that the games take place.