Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Watch Colorado Experience, “The Games That Never Happened”, streaming on RMPBS+ starting Thursday, March 26 at 7 p.m.!
Despite never hosting the Winter Olympics, Denver ’76 merch is famous in the world of Olympic memorabilia collectors.
Pins, hats, posters, ice scrapers, ashtrays… once Denver was named the host city for the 1976 Winter Olympics, marketers put that logo on almost anything they could come up with. Retail sales are an important piece of Olympic revenue, and back in the 1970s, so were local taxes. When Coloradans voted against raising taxes to pay for the Games, Denver had no choice but to reject the Olympics, making all the Den ’76 merch just a memory of “The Games That Never Happened”.
#coloradoexperience #Denver76
Watch Colorado Experience, “The Games That Never Happened”, streaming on RMPBS+ starting Thursday, March 26 at 7 p.m.!
Despite never hosting the Winter Olympics, Denver ’76 merch is famous in the world of Olympic memorabilia collectors.
Pins, hats, posters, ice scrapers, ashtrays… once Denver was named the host city for the 1976 Winter Olympics, marketers put that logo on almost anything they could come up with. Retail sales are an important piece of Olympic revenue, and back in the 1970s, so were local taxes. When Coloradans voted against raising taxes to pay for the Games, Denver had no choice but to reject the Olympics, making all the Den ’76 merch just a memory of “The Games That Never Happened”.
#coloradoexperience #Denver76
