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Since its beginning, the Olympics has been the prestigious forefront of athletics, often showcasing the best global talent from different nations across the world. In the past, various countries made tireless efforts to host the Summer or Winter games, although nowadays the bids to host are not as common.
Hosting the Olympics in the past has generally been a good thing by giving the home nation exposure to the rest of the world. But, in recent years, only countries that can afford all of the hassle that comes with the Olympics have offered bids to host. That’s why in this article, we’ll outline the economics of hosting the Olympics, including the good and bad, winners and losers and much more!
The first major advantage to hosting the Olympics in your nation is the scale of temporary jobs it creates. Inherently, hosting a major global tournament requires you to have enough venues and seating, to which if you don’t, you’re going to need to spend upwards of millions to build stadiums and other venues required for the Summer or Winter Games. For example, the 2016 Rio Olympics in Brazil allowed for the construction of 15,000 new hotel rooms specifically for tourists. This creates an entirely new set of jobs for potentially unemployed people, including helping construct stadiums, hotels, parking spaces, etc.
Along with creating tens of thousands of new jobs for its economy, the hope of hosting the Olympics is to drive up tourism in your home nation. Basically, by showcasing your nation’s cultural tendencies, interesting architecture and more to the rest of the world, onlookers will want to get more involved with that country causing their economy to rise significantly. There’s also a residual effect from hosting the Olympics, leading thousands of sponsors, media, athletes, celebrities etc. to continue to drive in revenue for several months before and after the event has concluded.
Hosting the Olympics or any major four year tournament isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. When taking everything into account, it’s possible that hosting the Olympics in your home nation can actually hurt the economy. For instance, many stadiums are constructed because there wasn’t enough seating prior to the Olympics, but after the event ends within a few months, those stadiums are no longer used, leading the entire venue to turn into a waste of time and money (except for the several thousand jobs it created).
For the London 2012 Olympics, the U.K. reportedly generated $3.18 billion with an expense of $3.14 billion. For the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, Canada generated $1.88 billion while spending about $1.88 billion. You can see from the deficit or lack of profit in these several Olympics that hosting doesn’t only come with economic advantages, oftentimes it’s the opposite. While it can appear at first glance that hosting the Olympics creates a mass quantity of new jobs, it’s only for short-term, and the profit acquired from hosting doesn’t always profit the local economies anyway.
Liam has been a major sports fan and soccer player for over a decade, with a particular focus on major top-level soccer leagues, including the EPL, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and MLS. He has written numerous promotional articles for various top sportsbooks and continues to publish historical and factual sports articles covering the NFL, MLS, NHL, MLB, EPL and more.