I already posted that nobody has any plans for the Olympic Stadium itself (apart from one event years away.)
Football is already at Wembley; Rugby at Twickenham.
What’s the point in spending $760 million on an empty stadium?
Yes, that’s something I hadn’t considered in the OP, I still think its difficult to justify the amount being spent on it when the economy is in bad shape though.
I find it hard to reconcile what appears to be our leaders throwing sums of money around in the order of billions of pounds for the Olympics and other showpieces (Millenium Dome?) when we’re told that our public services are having ‘extraneous’ extras pared off when those ‘only’ cost in the millions or tens of millions, a lot of money without a doubt, but not that much when compared to the billions being spent on what is in the end just a sporting event.
Bread and circuses springs to mind.
I can’t get my Google skills to confirm this but, as an aside, I think I am right in saying that Twickenham was built without a single penny of public money. The Millennium Stadium is possibly the best stadium in the country and was built using only £46m of public money - with the rest coming from the Welsh Rugby Union’s coffers, pre-selling of debentures and the like.
I am at a loss as to why stadia cost so much money to build when some of the best ones have been built cost effectively (and, in at least some cases, without public subsidy - the Emirates (cost £470m) is another example that also received no public subsidy).
As I see it, the main issue is the Olympics’ aversion to blatant commercialisation of “their” games - this stadium (and other venues) could have been built using sponsors money, in return for naming rights, exclusive food and drink rights, etc, as has been done elsewhere - but we’re not allowed to finance the stadium this way due to Olympic rules. Granted, we knew this when we went in - but that doesn’t make it any less silly.
I’ve already delivered numerous screeds against spending tax dollars of sports arenas, but governments keep doing it no matter what I say.
So, I don’t expect nations to stop spending vast amounts of money for the chance to host the Olympics.
Still, as a purely practical matter, how hard would it be to pick ONE city to host the Games every four years? For the sake of argument, doesn’t Athens still have the infrastructure in place from the last time they hosted? Since they have history and tradition on their side, why couldn’t Athens host every 4 years?
Or why couldn’t, say, St. Morritz host the Winter Games every 4 years? It wouldn’t be necessary to build new facilities every 4 years, just to maintain the ones in place (which could then be the Olympic Committee’s job).
Olympics in a different city every 4 years is a money loser. Olympics in the same place every 4 years would be a massive money-maker. So the answer to “why couldn’t” is - “why should this particular country receive such a boon?”.
You accept my contention that the Olympics could be much moe profitable if done in one place. I merely suggest that Athens, home of the ancient Olympics (and host of the first modern Olympics) is a logical permanent home for the Games. Especially since they hosted not long ago and already have most of the needed facilities and infrastructure in place.
Reality is not logical.
I think the opposite of most people. I love the Olympics and think any cost is worth it to bear. If cities have to lose money to host then they’re just going to have to lose it. It doesn’t matter if its in a struggling economy or a terrible one, it only happens once every 4 hours and for a few weeks people get to forget about their troubles and bask in the global spotlight.
Of course, if people really cared about the money, they could simply decline to spend so much. At this point in the process, with Brazil just 4 years away from hosting the games, does the IOC really have the capability of withdrawing it and giving it to another city if Rio decides not to build any new venues and just use local ones? It would look pretty crappy, but what can the IOC do? And if all the countries protested by not building new venues? The IOC would just have to accept that
Regarding the security guards cost from your second link. The report there gives figures of 23,700 security guards costing a staggering 553 million pounds. So each security guard costs 23,333 pounds for the duration of the Olympics? Someone’s making out like a bandit here, and it isn’t the UK taxpayers.
I think whoever won the construction contracts is also charging like wounded bulls, and ripping off the UK public. And what’s this olympic opposition towards commercialisation of which you speak? The IOC fairly wallows in sponsorship deals, with ads touting companies of official this and official that of the olympic games all over the place. They’re only opposed to host nations striking their own sponsorship deals and cutting the IOC out of the loop.
No wonder I get sick of them so fast!
I agree it looks bad.
But I don’t think cancelling the Olympics now would help anything. The vast majority of money must have already been spent, the loss in prestige would be huge, and I bet it would involve breaking any number of contracts.
I don’t quite understand the “When the economy is in bad shape” angle.
The Olympics confer a set of benefits on the host city and nation; revenue, prestige, national pride, and a number of high quality athletic facilities. They have commensurate costs; a huge outlay of temporary labour cost, infrastructure costs, bribes and graft to the IOC, inconvenience and bother, and ongoing upkeep of the facilities.
If you feel that the benefits do not merit the cost, I don’t understand what the economy has to do with it; if they don’t merit the cost, *they wouldn’t have merited it six years ago, either. * If X is less than Y, it’s less than Y.
Recently here in Ontario there was a huge report, commissioned by the government, on the province’s disastrous financial position. The author, an economist named Drummond, cited hundreds of things the government was doing hopelessly wrong and had to change if there was any hope of not going bankrupt. One of his principal messages, though, was that almost everything he was saying would make just as much sense even in the province was in good financial shape. A program that blows $X is just as wasteful and stupid if you’re in debt as it is if you’re not in debt. If things turn around economically that won’t make the electricity subsidies - whereby the government pays people about a billion dollars a year to waste electricity - smart. They’ll still be stupid.
Logically, the Olympics are the same. If 12 billion pounds is, in your opinion, stupidly spent, it’d STILL be stupid even if England wasn’t in bad shape. But if you feel the benefits outweigh the costs, then it makes sense to host the Olympics anyway, doesn’t it?
The London Olympics are just like the Millenium Dome - arrogant, selfish politicians trying to boost their egos with our money:
- the project and exhibition was the subject of considerable political controversy as it failed to attract the number of visitors anticipated, with recurring financial problems
- Just before its opening Tony Blair claimed the Dome would be “a triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity”
- “the Dome was to be highlighted as a glittering New Labour achievement in the next election manifesto”
- However, before its opening, The Dome was excoriated in Iain Sinclair’s diatribe, … which accurately forecast the hype, the political posturing and the eventual disillusion
- The project was largely seen to have been a flop: badly thought-out, badly executed, and leaving the Government with the embarrassing question of what to do with it afterwards
The IOC kleptomaniacs make the money-grubbing Bernie Ecclestone of Formula 1 look like Mother Teresa. Man, am I glad New York lost out (or rather won) the bidding to London.
Perhaps I should have made myself more clear - I agree that there is rampant commercialisation of aspects of the Olympics but you are right that it benefits the IOC not the taxpayers of the country holding this little shindig. I stand by my point though that this means that the country involved is effectively held to ransom with little opportunity to get money in from non-taxpayer sources to build the venues that are required.
Interestingly, London beat Paris. London had to build a lot of venues. The attraction of Paris’ bid was that they had everything done already - athletics at the Stade De France for instance - so it would have been much cheaper to run it there.
I was only joking about cancelling them, although doing so with just a few weeks before they start would probably be more entertaining than the Olympics themselves. 
I’m not sure what you’re getting at either, in a good economy spending money on an unneccessary event like the Olympics may be justifiable because although it doesn’t make much economic sense its perceived benefits outweight the financial loss, because the economy has enough leeway to withstand it, spending the same money during times of economic strain is a different matter, when you are paring back essential public services and having a direct impact on the people of the nation non-essential events like the Olympics are a lot harder to justify.
btw it isn’t just England thats paying for the Olympics, its the whole of the UK.
I realize it’s counterintuitive, but look at it this way; there isn’t really any substitution effect going on.
The UK and the City of London are not paring back on anything else to pay for the Olympics. Governments can borrow money at low rates. The Olympics simply adds to the debt, but it’s not forcing the government to cut a social program. (If they say it does, they’re lying.) If the government is trying to bring other expenses under control, it’s because those expenses need to be systemically brought under control. If they’re costing too much money they are costing too much money - it’s irrelevant whether or not the Olympics are taking place.
If the Olympics cost 12 billion pounds and deliver, in your opinion, 11 billion pounds of utility, then it’s a waste of a billion pounds. It makes no difference what NHS is doing, or how much is being spent on defense. If, on the other hand, the Olympics cost 12 billion pounds and deliver 13 billion pounds in utility, they’re worth it. If I offered you thirteen bucks in exchange for twelve bucks that would be worth it to you, wouldn’t it? Doesn’t matter what your credit card debt is. But if I offer you eleven bucks for your twelve bucks, it’s NOT worth it to you, even if you’re rich.
Wait, they’re holding the summer Olympics in Canada? They just had one!
I agree that good value and bad value programs don’t change, and that it doesn’t make a lot of rational sense to argue “but there’s a downturn!” for large expenditures if they’ve been deemed good value.
However, I’d argue that the value of the Olympics changes in a bad vs a good economy. People are less likely to spend tourism dollars, go out to eat, buy little Olympic-logo keyrings, etc during a downturn. People are less likely to travel to the Olympics in the first place during a downturn. So I disagree with the point that the Olympics have a consistent cost/benefit value that is equally true in good and bad economic times.
That’s a valid point and I admit I was simplifying a little. Of course you do have to do an honest assessment of the revenues, but
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Again, it wasn’t possible when London bid on the Olympics to know what the state of the economy would be in 2012,
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Practically speaking the demand for Olympic crap is pretty inelastic; there really isn’t going to be THAT much of a difference in demand, as it’s largely always been a thing for the rich, and
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The Keynesian counterargument is that when things are bad, that’s when you get the most bang for your government buck, anyway.