Cities spend millions/billions/zillions of dollars lobbying to be chosen as a host city for the Olympics and building the stadiums, pools, and so on. When a city is confirmed, hoteliers start putting up new locations in/around the city like mad-scrabble. This is all for an immediate gain: tons of tourists come to see the games, they spend money on hotels/food/museums/souvenirs/tolls/parking/transport/etc (a huge boom for local businesses) and all of that money gets taxed (a huge boon for the city; I imagine that downtown Chicago $1 bottled water tax alone would net somewhere in the quadrillions).
BUT, does this always produce a net gain? For all the money spent, is the few weeks of tourism enough to make it worth-while? Or are they so interested in the positive attention on that city across the globe, that they’re alright if they spend more on promo than they make back?
Are Atlanta and Salt Lake City the better now for hosting all those years ago? Had anybody never heard of Atlanta? Or Beijing, for that matter. My interest in visiting Beijing is not any higher now that I’ve seen the Olympics take place there.
So what are they after? The immediate rush of Olympic participant/spectator visitors, or some kind of global marketing campaign? If it’s the former, all of those hotels are just going to go out of business once they crowds dissipate, right? Seems like riding a bubble to me.
Atlanta is still enjoying many features built for the Olympics. Centennial Olympic Park is used heavily, and many business and tourism venues have been built around it (new World of Coke, Georgia Aquarium). Centennial Olympic Stadium was renamed Turner Field, the new home of the Atlanta Braves since 1997, the year after the games. Olympic Village became dorms for Georgia State University (although I think GaTech just bought them). The Bike racing circular stadium is now a nature trail in Stone Mountain Park, and the tennis venue is still used by area teams and for competitions. Whether or not these are monetarily beneficial, they are still in fairly constant use and enjoyed by millions.
There are lots of infratstructure improvements due to the games (Athens Metro was built in part due to the games), the area where the games are held gets a lot of attention (East London) and a city gets to showcase its self (Seoul).
The Olympic Stadium (AKA the Big Owe) isn’t really used much, especially since the Expos baseball team moved away from the city; they don’t have a main tenant there anymore. The Alouettes (CFL football team) play a few games there occasionally (notably last year’s Grey Cup game), but the building has cost a fortune to build and maintain, the retractable roof has never actually been retracted and parts have collapsed many times, and structurally is considered unsafe in the dead of winter. I happen to think it’s a pretty building, but it really is rather useless at the moment.
The adjacent velodrome has become a successful museum/nature centre; the Biodome. The Olympic Village are a set of structurally interesting and yet abominably fugly apartment buildings.
Some of the infrastructure which benefited Montreal for the Olympics came, I think, from the World Expo in 1967 - Île Notre-Dame was built in the St-Lawrence river using dirt and rocks excavated by the construction of the metro system. The city was able to gut/remove unusable buildings from the Expo on Notre-Dame to build the Olympic Basin; I’m competing in a dragon boat race festival at the Olympic Basin this weekend. The island also is home to the Montreal Casino, and the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, the F1/NASCAR racetrack.
While much of these are still used, the city is facing the problem of having a lot of it begin to crumble - all that concrete and rebar just isn’t holding up. Unfortunately, this is also true of out bridges and highways, and who knows when, or if, the next true face-lifts of the Olympic and Expo facilities will happen.
Its a mixed bag—Here in SLC there is use of some of the venues (Olympic Oval Ice Rink) for year round training and competition, and other things (like the Ski Jumping facilities) are used for training purposes and some (Luge/Bobsled Tracks) are actually available for the general public to use for a fee…
That said, there was no huge spike in increased tourism (which was promised to Salt Lake taxpayers) after the 2002 games, instead we got a few weeks in the spotlight, and afterwards we have a few buildings and ski jumps left as expensive souvenirs.
Could be wrong, but I think maybe people don’t care as much about winter games. I don’t remember where the last one was. Nagano? Naganagolook, I know that much.
Obviously the sporting facilities constructed can be used after the Games, but I think we need to ask more before deciding if the city has benefitted. Do the facilities generate revenue to justify the investment involved? Or, would the expendtiture involved have produced greater utility for the city if spent to meet citizens needs, rather than to meet the needs of the games with the needs of citizens being only a secondary consideration?
I would have never knew there was a place called Lillehammer if there weren’t an Olympics held there when I was younger. I’m thinking I’m one of 2-3 billion’ish people who knew of the Olympics being held there, but never have any intention of going there has to count for something.
As far as long term, if I ever found myself in the vacinity of that city, I’d probably take a trip there just to check what was going on. If 1% of those 2-3 billion people who now know of the city stop by when they’re in the region, your talking 2-3 million people coming into the city over their lifetime just bringing tourism.
If you’re talking about hosting Olympics in Beijing, L.A., New York, etc… yeah those places are already known by pretty much everyone. They just have to tackle it in a different way… aka. has to the be the biggest and the best EVER, it’s just a big prestige boost.
Some do and some don’t. Montreal is one that didn’t, while Seoul and Atlanta were ones that did.
It depends on the city and the games. As a general rule cities today benefit more than they didn in the past.
In the USA most cities need a lot of infrastrucure change, but because of politics can’t get much done. The Olympics provides an easy excuse to make these changes and push them through.
In other countries the Olympics serve as a showcase. This helped countries like South Korea and gave Atlanta a huge boost in international business.
Others like Montreal and Mexico City didn’t do well with their Olympics and the follow up to business didn’t happen. Admittedly in some cases like Montreal a lot of that was the 70s drain when many businesses left Montreal for Toronto, establishing Toronto as the countries main hub.
But the real key is how much international business it brings in.
Any local business doesn’t count 'cause it’s merely a shift in monies. For example if the Olympics were in Chicago, and let’s say locals spent 10 million dollars on it, most likely all that money would’ve been spent anyway on local business. So it’s merely a shift from local things like the Chicago Cubs to the Olympics. So the overall effect is negligable.
As you can see the Olympics may even harm local business, who are very dependent on month to month income. So you have to look at the success in terms of local and overall.
The biggest gain, as has been mentioned, is in long term structures and urban renovation.
Many foreigners perceive all the 1992 big things (the Expo in Seville and the Olympics mainly) as having meant a short-term source of revenue for Spanish companies and people, but it wasn’t so. We had unemployment over 24% while the construction crews were from New Zealand (Olympic village) or, in the case of the Expo, from each of the countries building their pavillions. The few weeks of the Olympics were an absolute pain for people from the towns where it took place, as main arteries were blocked to let “politicians, reporters and athletes” (1) race from their hotels and the Village to the stadiums. Many people fled town.
But it was a wonderful excuse to get funds from outside Barcelona to renovate the waterfront, Montjuic and the Barceloneta (mainly, other areas were also affected), open the Vallvidrera tunnel… Works that would have taken decades if they’d had to be performed using municipal monies took place in three years. Same for Seville, which turned an island on the river where only the addicted, their suppliers and the terminally stupid went into an exhibition area, commercial center and office center.
(1) popular perception
The jury is out on Beijing, however for the PRC, the Olympics were seen more as a symbol of national pride than an infrastructure improvement, not that the latter did not take place.
After reading all the responses, I think I’m grabbing onto a trend. If it’s a small city which has a limited amount of capital/resources, then suddenly gets millions/billions of subsidies from the federal government, how can that be a bad thing (for the city)?
Hell, if if the Olympics is a bust, you’re talking about a town that was previously getting maybe $10M/year in taxes to getting 10+billion tax dollars to host an Olympics. I think I’d greatly appreciate that income boost in my town, and that’s before the tourism $$ even kicks in.
The town wins hands down, if you want to take it to the national scale though, that’s probably debatable for some of the past crappy Olympics.
According to Wikipedia, “the 1984 Summer Olympics (in Los Angeles) are often considered the most financially successful modern Olympics.” Also, L.A. Games of 1932 were reported to have made $1 million profit.
I just was in Turin this summer and went to see some of the olympic remnants there. I went to the Speed skating ring and the olympic village and they seemed totally abondened; there were still signs that pointed to press rooms and restaurants, but the actual places were just empty. They also had some broad, long roads around this compound and if we saw 4 cars on them during the entire visit it was much. Sort of freaky to see pictures you only klnow from movies set in Nevada in the middle of a large city. Appearantly they do use the olympic stadium for footall (the one with your feet), but this si only because they are rebuilding the Della Alpi stadium.
That’s mainly because, unlike just about all the other cases that have been mentioned, in 1984 just about nothing new was built for the Olympics. The only new structures that were built were a velodrome and a swimming complex.
ETA: And even those two were built as cheaply as possible.
You got a bit more than that. You had that 17 mile expansion of I-15 and dozens of other road construction projects, for which the Feds coughed up what about double what they normally do for such projects.
You got a new light rail system. All previous applications had been denied. But the FTA funding suddenly became availible once the bid was accepted.
The U of U won big time getting a refurbished stadium, sports training facilities (which may help account for their rise as a football power), and new student housing.
And those are just three things of the top of my head. It may not have been a great deal for the US. But the feds dumped a lot more into SLC than it would have otherwise. So for that reason alone I would count it a win for the city and state.
