By Gioia Hollingsworth, Year 12
The 2021 Tokyo Olympics, having cost $3 billion just to postpone the event, had to face unmatched challenges due to COVID-19 and this has highlighted the ever-growing expensive and problematic price tag of the Games to the world.
Indeed, Tokyo had claimed a budget of $7.3 billion, but the actual spending has turned out to be approximately $28 billion. Though this may come as a surprise, we have seen that since the 1960 Olympics, there has almost always been a huge budget deficit, and Oxford analysts say that this figure amounts to an average of 172% (inflation-adjusted) of added costs.
These numbers, being so large, showcase just how considerable of an undertaking this project is to “host countries” and they have resulted in an increased amount of political clap back against the I.O.C, meaning the International Olympic Committee for focusing more on which host country will provide the most revenue as opposed to the genuine purpose of the Games: sports. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the Olympics, I love the togetherness, and the peace, but as economist Andrew Zimbalist says, “It’s very expensive symbolism”.
Opposing this, some say there are also economic benefits to the Olympics which we will look over. For one, some argue that the event provides more jobs. Although this is partly true, economists Matheson, Robert Baumann, and Bryan Engelhardt studied the 2002 Salt Lake City Games and found only a short-term boost of 7000 additional jobs (a tenth of what officials promised) and more remarkably no increase in long-term employment. In fact, jobs created by the Olympics are more often than not temporary and the jobs mostly go to workers who are already employed.
Another possible economic “benefit” is more tourism and hospitality services. Although this is partly true, we must look at the cost to the local population of these places. For example, during the 2014 Sochi Olympics, President Putin only gave construction contracts to his closest friends which inflated the cost of the games and resulted in more than $50 billion burden and befell upon the Russian citizens. A nearby town named Akhshtyr went without running water for a year due to Olympic-related construction.
A third so-called pro of the Olympics is the improvement of infrastructure, but these also cause difficulties for host countries in the shape of “white elephants”. “White elephants” are expensive facilities that have limited post-Olympic Games use because of their size or specialized nature; these usually have a very large cost, such as Sydney’s Olympic stadium which costs $30 million a year just to maintain, or Beijing’s “Bird’s Nest” stadium which cost $460 million to build. Such stadiums tend to sit mostly unused or abandoned and are budget heavy for the countries’ economies and populations.
All in all, I am aware that I present quite a gloomy outlook on one of the most famous events in the world, but I want to mention that I don’t believe we should stop the Games entirely, yet I think it is important that we review how the I.O.C. selects host regions. Economist Zambalist suggests that the same city should host the Olympics so the entire infrastructure does not have to be rebuilt. This not only makes sense from an economic standpoint but would also decrease our impact on climate change. Whatever the outcome, I simply hope that the Olympics stops being centered around money, and once again highlight the beauty of sports and dreams.
