Posted on 07/27/2024 6:10:19 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The 2024 Summer Olympics are finally set to get underway in Paris today amid some substantial safety concerns like ISIS threats and this morning, large-scale vandalism of France's train network. These high-level issues are momentarily distracting observers from another train wreck affecting most Olympic Games: cost overrun.
Spending more than you have budgeted for has become the norm for host cities, but as Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, Paris is actually not the worst of the bunch (as of current estimates) despite an overrun of more than 100 percent landing it at a cost of $8.7 billion for hosting the Games (excluding investments in urban and transportation infrastructure).
You will find more infographics at Statista
This is easily topped by Barcelona, which ran 266 percent over cost in 1992 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016, which was a whopping 352 percent over budget. Winter Games can also be more costly than expected, for example in the Russian town of Sochi in 2014, where the event was 289 percent more expensive than expected at a record-breaking 28.9 billion, or in Norway's Lillehammer in 1994, there a 277 percent overrun occurred (but the total cost was still nowhere near as high).
While hosting an event like the Olympics is sometimes touted as an opportunity to improve city infrastructure, the enduring legacy of the Games sometimes ends up being a slew of abandoned and overgrown venues that no one uses due to poor long-term planning. That remains the case to this day in past host cities such as Sarajevo, Athens, Beijing and Rio, to name just a few, where crumbling stadia and forgotten Olympic villages serve not as proud monuments to athletic achievement, but rather as somber symbols of catastrophic financial mismanagement.
Some have taken these past mistakes to heart and Hamburg, Germany, is a notable example for taking back its 2015 bid on cost grounds after a public referendum. Other cities have learned that the financial consequences can be dire only after hosting the Games.
A Frenchman brought back the Olympic Games and the French are going to regulate it to the dustbin of history.
Post 9/11 and the creation of DHS, the Fed’s play a major role in security for the big sporting events.
And those things cost money. Lots of money. And insane amount of OT paid to all the cops, firemen, ems, logistics.
A lot of cities have said …. ENOUGH.
I guess the juice isn’t worth the squeeze anymore, for some cities.
That would save a lot of money, and actually be more interesting.
I recall that the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles turned a profit.
That was 40 years ago and Ronald Reagan was President.
Which is why they need to decide on 3 or 4 cities each for Winter and Summer Olympics.
Beijing, Sydney, L.A. for Summer, then SLC, Oslo, St. Moritz for Winter.
And their Christian-mocking tranny strip tease ceremony ensures that there won’t be a lot of viewership. So advertising revenue will plummet.
I always think its funny that every four years cities around the globe compete to see who will be the lucky one to lose billions this time
The list fails without Montréal 1976.
The people of Québec are STILL paying for the cost overruns on that one (some estimates put it as $2 billion plus (in 1976 dollars)
Olympic Stadium was called “The Big Owe” for a reason.
If they had a single permanent site and used it for every future games it would begin to work financially and a lot of problems would be eliminated. Unfortunately the IOC loves all the money sloshing around their traveling circus so they stick with that model but at some point when no one no longer wants to host them they may be forced into doing that. If they based it on some island where the IOC controls everything it could become quite the moneymaker for them if they had that vision.
I think they picked SLC.
Thinking about it, it’s cheaper. All the venues are built. Just a matter of logistics and hope that climate change doesn’t ruin winter(ha ha ha)
Whatever it is, they need to decide on a permanent rotation. SLC is ideal because they have everything they need.
“Bread And Circus” is an expensive hobby. Almost as expensive as the care and feeding of illegal aliens, or government defined benefit pensions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.