The Olympic Games are, in a way, an exercise in boasting. Each competing country puts forth its best athletes in an attempt to prove to the international community what it is capable of; the Olympics serve as a display of each country's power. The burden that falls on the respective host country is two-fold: not only must the host country construct a wide range of facilities in a few short years, but it must do so in a way that displays its creativity and economic strength to the rest of the world. In the cases of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and this year's Olympic Games in Brazil, a country's failure to provide adequate facilities can highlight and prominently display socioeconomic weaknesses and leave the country open for scrutiny.
For decades, countries have made the desperate bid to host the Olympic Games in spite of tremendous costs to the host country because of the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) promises of increased economic growth and prosperity. The IOC has insinuated that the host country will see a rise in foreign investment and tourism which would offset the cost of investing in the necessary labor and infrastructure to host the Olympics. There are economists who will claim that certain countries benefitted from hosting the Olympics: Jen-Te Hwang, a Professor of Economics at National Chengchi University, claimed in 2008 that "holding the Olympic Games greatly stimulates and motivates [the] economy of developing countries such as Japan, Korea, and China." However, Hwang points out a crucial issue: not a single city before 1984 made a profit from hosting the Olympics. Even in recent years, while turning a profit is possible, it is tremendously unlikely.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), "Every Olympics since 1960 has seen major cost overruns." The most alarming would be the 1976 Summer Olympics held in Montreal, Canada. Though the city originally estimated the cost of hosting at $124 million, the estimate turned out to be more than $2.6 billion less than the actual cost―an almost 800% cost overrun. The Saïd Business School of Oxford released a report in 2012 claiming that the average cost overrun was 179 percent, noting that Montreal's extreme cost overrun led to the city paying off its Olympic debt for thirty years. While the stadium now serves as a tourist attraction for the city, the "Big O" stadium is a tremendous money pit; it required $1.4 million to repair in 2014, and had its roof torn in 6,776 separate places in 2015 due to its inability to handle snow, an debilitating structural issue considering the severity of Canadian winters.
Many stadiums, as documented by National Geographic, are simply left to dilapidate over time. In recent years, however, there has been much discussion regarding the practicality and economic benefit of repurposing stadiums. Brazil has announced that its arenas and aquatic stadiums will be disassembled and that the material will go towards building facilities that will be used by the Brazilian public. An article from Wired outlines the plan in greater detail:
Future Arena, the handball venue, will provide the material to build four 500-student primary schools in the city's Jacarepaguá neighborhood. Workers will disassemble Olympics Aquatics Stadium and use the components to erect two community swimming centers; one in Madureira Park and one in the Campo Grande area. The International Broadcast Centre will become a high school dormitory. And Barra Olympic Park-a 300-acre, triangular peninsula that features nine Olympic venues-will host public parks and private development after the Games." While utilizing the material from these stadiums for public infrastructure is an excellent plan, there is still the issue of the tremendous toll the Olympics has taken on Brazil, and Rio de Janeiro more specifically. Brazil is in the midst of an economic downturn, and truly does not have the nearly $6 billion necessary to finance the Olympics; the Games placed a tremendous strain in Rio, leading to the displacement of over 1.5 million residents. To continue hosting the Olympics in this way is, ultimately, not sustainable.
One of the more radical ideas to emerge in recent years is to simply host the summer Olympics in the same city every four years. Athens, Greece has been deemed the appropriate choice should this be the route that the IOC chooses to take for two primary reasons: Greece is the birthplace of the Ancient and contemporary Olympic Games, with the first modern Olympics being held in Athens in 1896; and, more importantly, the steady income and increased tourism every few years could provide Greece's economy with a necessary boost to kick start their ailing economy. The plan has even gained the support of International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who stated that she believed this was a "good idea that is out of the box." While making Athens the permanent home of the Olympics seems like a radical break from tradition, it is certainly possible that the benefits would far outweigh the costs.
