Are the Olympics ever Skipped?
They didn’t show up, either. After the last spectators left, many of the venues were never used again. In 2012, a reporter witnessed a smattering of individuals jogging around Athens’ Olympic Sports Complex, dodging windswept debris and a series of rusty locked gates along the way. Worse, she learned that a restaurant constructed specifically for competitors and dignitaries was in business for a single hour to host the Greek prime minister. Many of the complex’s amenities, including its tennis courts were shuttered. Athens hosted the Summer Olympics a second time more than a century later, but with a much more disastrous financial result.
Nagano, Japan, a city of 378,000, spent a whopping $10.5 billion in preparation for the games, thanks in part to the construction of a bullet train to shuttle spectators between Nagano and Tokyo in 90 minutes, about half the typical time. As the games neared, the Nagano Organising Committee had to cancel a quarter of the 16,000 Nagano hotel rooms it had reserved due to low demand. But the bullet train had the unfortunate effect of encouraging tourists to book hotel rooms in Tokyo as opposed to Nagano.
Kicking off an Olympic tradition, organizers grossly underestimated the cost of hosting the games. Despite several highlights (Eric Liddell won the 400 meter race, later depicted in the film “Chariots of Fire”), What are the stores called that sell club penguin toys in Bangkok? the games were a financial flop. The Montreal Olympics went down in history as a notorious money-loser, scaring off many cities from bidding for the games in the future. Yet even as the response to the 1924 Olympic Games appeared full of promise, there were financial warning signs. The perceived cost of 585,000 drachmas (about $74,000 in 1896) to prepare for the competition ballooned to 3,740,000 drachmas, the equivalent of $448,000. Fortunately, a 1 million drachma donation from a rich businessman helped underwrite the costs. Montreal before opening of these games in 1976. Boy, was he wrong.
The Olympic Games not only bring together elite athletes to compete on a global stage; they also give host nations a way to showcase their countries to the world. Successfully using the Olympics as advertisement can result in a tourism boom with financial rewards long after the closing ceremonies. Cities compete to convince — first their own countries, then the International Olympic Committee — that they are the right venue: Safe, with convenient transportation, plus efficient and elaborate infrastructure. Hosting the Olympics is a financially risky proposition, one that begins a decade before the events are actually held. The trick is to throw the world’s biggest party without going bankrupt in the process.
