The Olympics are said to be the most prestigious games. Hosting the Olympics is considered a matter of pride for any country. Every country sends its best athletes to the games. Recently the Tokyo Olympics took place and were a huge success. Even in a time of pandemic none of the participants tested positive for covid.
The Tokyo Olympics were set to be held in 2020 but were delayed as a result of the pandemic. Even though the Olympics were held in 2021 the event retained the name 2020 Olympics for branding purposes.
Tokyo was selected to host the Olympics during the 125th International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 7 September 2013.
Tokyo Olympics 2020 is the fourth Olympic Games to be held in Japan, earlier it held the games in Tokyo 1964(summer), Sapporo 1972(winter), and Nagano 1998(winter). Japan is the only nation in Asia that has held the Summer Olympics twice. The Tokyo Olympics ended on 9 August 2021.
The Tokyo Olympics is also the most expensive summer Olympics to be ever held so far. The cost of the Tokyo Olympics is estimated to be around 26 billion dollars. However, the initial estimated cost for the games was 7.4 billion dollars. That puts the cost of games over three times the initial budget.
This might sound surprising, but this is not just with the case of the Tokyo Olympics. This has been happening since 1960. Since 1960, the cost of the Olympics has gone way overboard then the estimated budget of the hosting nations.
Why are the Olympics so Expensive?
The Olympics are no matter of joke, any country which wants to host the Olympics has to plan before 10 years. This happens because the IOC has set certain parameters that the hosting has to meet, and for that, a huge expenditure has to be made. In the bidding alone a nation spends tens of million dollars.
In the bidding process many countries take part, out of these the IOC narrows down to the final country which will be hosting the Olympics.
In this process, the IOC checks the sites where the games will be held and where the stadium will be built. The cost incurred by the other nations in the bidding process goes down the drain as it cannot be reversed.
After the bidding ends the hosting nation has to build up the entire infrastructure necessary for hosting the games. These days a hosting nation is required to build 35 different athletic vendors.
They require an Olympic village which costs around 1.5-3 billion dollars. They require a media and television production facility, which can easily cost 0.5- 1 billion dollars.
They require a media village, a ceremonial space, and a green space. Amongst all of them, they require transportation for the athletes from the Olympic villages to the stadium, for this separate lane need to be built. There are many more expenses that are not counted in this list.
However, not all blame can be put on the IOC alone, the hosting nations sometimes go overboard to build the stadiums and Olympic villages.
After the games are over most of the nations don’t know what to do with the buildings. Maintenance of these buildings could easily cost up to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Many of the buildings have fallen into decay after the Olympics are over. This is one of the reasons the Tokyo Olympics this year cost so much. As the games were delayed the Japanese government had to pay extra for the maintenance of the buildings, to keep them working till the games happened.
These buildings not only hurt the taxpayer's pocket but also the environment. For instance, for the 2018 Pyeongchang, winter Olympics Mountain slopes were cut, trees were cut down. This destroyed a whole mountainside, trees, and animals some of which are close to extinction were displaced.
The Olympics have long-term effects on nations, as sometimes due to extravagant costs of the games nations are drowned in debts.
In the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the Canadian Government spent 1.5 billion dollars, while the original estimated cost was 120 million. Canada paid off its debts in 2016. While some countries like Greece are having economic crises because of crippling debts.
It was not like this from the beginning. Earlier the hosting nations used to earn profits from the games. This could be possible, as they partly collected revenues in TV rights.
But over the years the IOC has been taking a larger percentage. For instance, in the ’90s the IOC only took 4% of revenue, compared to the 70% of the revenue it pocketed from the 2016 Rio Olympics.
The only time a nation profited from the Olympics was in the 1984 LA Olympics. The games generated a profit of 215 million dollars, this was because LA already had the infrastructure and it was the only bidder for the Olympics back then. So they had the upper hand and could negotiate with the IOC.
So is that it, No more Olympic Games?
As the years are passing by less and fewer countries are bidding for hosting the Olympic Games. The IOC announced that for 2024 Paris has been selected and for 2028 Los Angeles has been selected to host the Summer Olympics.
This is the first time two consecutive hosts are selected, this happened due to a lack of bidders. Even after this, it is very hard that the Olympics will end.
The IOC chief has come up with a plan to reduce the cost incurred by hosting nations. It suggests that the hosting nation and IOC will work together in selecting blueprints for the infrastructures to cut any useless cost. This however is on paper and is still to be seen.
Written by: Priyanshu Bhardwaj
Edited by: Gourav Chowdhury
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