Reddit reviews Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup

I just finished reading this book to try and expand my background on this subject. I've always been against these kinds of massive events (and others, like publicly funded sports stadiums) as the benefits are always massively overstated and the IOC/FIFA/Team Owner walks away with everything.

https://www.amazon.ca/Circus-Maximus-Economic-Hosting-Olympics/dp/0815726511/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1487867513&sr=8-2&keywords=circus+maximus

That said, within the book lays out a couple of scenarios wherein hosting the games has been successful. The 1984 LA Olympics were a success, partly because they were in a similar scenario to what the IOC is in now. After Munich and Mexico City, the Olympics were seen as tainted. LA was able to leverage that in to a deal where they could use existing infrastructure, secured significant private funding, and actually had the IOC guarantee all operating losses.

Secondly, the 92 Barcelona Olympics. These were a success, to parrot the author, because the City used the Olympics to help achieve goals that it was already striving towards. After Franco fell, committees were put in place to revitalize Barcelona. Infrastructure, arena's, etc were already planned and did not have to be purpose built for the Olympics. The influx of tourism and global attention helped demonstrate that Barcelona was a world class city, so it proved to be a net positive.

When we look at other recent Olympics, nearly all of them have seen significant cost overruns. While Vancouver may have been profitable from an operations perspective, I don't believe that captures the actual infrastructure spend. The way the games are set up, the Organizing Committees come out ahead, while the City's themselves are left holding the bag. The IOC often asks specifically for new, purpose built facilities to host the games. These costs are massive and leave cities with older, useful stadiums and new, white albatross stadiums. The upkeep costs are then frequently overlooked when talking about legacy.

In light of Budapest dropping out of the 2024 bidding, and with many Scandinavian countries rejecting Olympic bids, I think the IOC is losing leverage. I believe it was a Dutch study that said it will only be countries with limited democracy who can host the Olympics/World Cup (I.e. Russia, Qatar, China) as they are the only ones who can divert enough funds to make it work.

Calgary has some significant infrastructure spends coming up, some of which would dovetail nicely with hosting the Olympics. If we can continue those programs and put forward a reasonable bid, I can live with that. If we instead have to build a bunch of purpose built stadiums that require additional money to repurpose (i.e. London's Olympic Stadium did not provide the legacy it was planned, costing more money and providing terrible atmosphere to West Ham United) then I am against it.

Edit To expand on these points now that I've done the survey, my biggest concern is that whatever benefits would be gained from hosting the Olympics can simply be gained by spending the money on those projects without the actually having the Olympics.

Within the book mentioned above, there was a study completed in the 90's looking at tourism and knowledge boosts. The '88 Olympics did provide a boost in recognition world wide for Calgary (mostly that it looked cold), but that boost was lost be 1989.

London actually saw a decrease in tourism during the year of the Olympics, which I think makes intuitive sense. While that does bring a huge number of people to a country, many more people who may have wanted to visit are going to be turned off by the prospective crowds and construction.

Long story short, I think the benefits are always overstated, because the folks pushing bids are those who stand to gain the most (hotel operators, construction companies, etc). The true benefits are minimal and can be achieved for the greater populous with smart civic planning.