'The Olympics are dead': Does anyone want to be a host city anymore?

[jimmy olsen]

I got to agree, no sane government should want to pay the price demanded these days for the Olympics.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jul/28/the-olympics-are-dead-why-should-anyone-want-be-a-host-city-anymore

'The Olympics are dead': Does anyone want to be a host city anymore?

With Boston's bid collapsing due to lack of support, it seems now more than ever the Olympics exist solely for cities looking to make a political statement

Les Carpenter

Tuesday 28 July 2015 15.28 BST 

The reason Boston's residents didn't want to be Athens is the same reason the residents of Oslo or Krakow or Stockholm don't want to be Athens. Hosting an Olympics is a corporate sinkhole sucking billions of dollars and a city's future into a bottomless abyss of excess.

The internet is clogged with slide shows of empty, broken, useless stadiums built in the euphoria of a coming Olympics or World Cup then abandoned soon after, allowed to fill with weeds, rodents and other signs of human escape. Is there a better sign of Greece's collapse than a pile of useless sports facilities crumbling since the torch went out in the summer of 2004? What use did Athens have for a baseball stadium anyway? It's crumbling among the weeds just like the field hockey venue, the canoeing center and the training pool green with algae.

Those who were going to force the Olympics on Boston vowed their Games would be frugal, insisting they would build upon existing facilities and erect temporary stadiums, cutting costs. But even the $4.5bn required to organize the Games and $6bn needed in new roads and parks seemed perilously low when considering the massive amount of building needed to placate the International Olympic Committee. While Rome and Paris will fight for the right to put itself in financial peril a bigger truth should be clear:

Why should anyone want to host an Olympics anymore?

On Friday the IOC will vote to see which city is going to host the 2022 Winter Games. The vote is between Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan. And this may well represent the future of Olympic bidding – cities in countries who will spend any amount to run a Games hoping to make an international political statement.

"The thing I've learned is that you have to have local support," said Jeff Ruffolo, an American who was heavily involved in operating Beijing's 2008 Olympics, has helped China prepare its 2022 bid and has worked on other bids in the US, including a failed attempt in Honolulu for 2024.

Boston did not have local support for the 2024 Summer Games. A small group of businesspeople, signing up for six-figure salaries, forced the bid through the US Olympic Committee despite strong opposition in the city's neighborhoods. A similar grassroots opposition worked against the bid proposals in Oslo, Krakow and Stockholm for the 2022 Winter Games. The costs of hosting the Olympics seemed too extreme, the rewards too small.

"The idea of a bidding process is a joke," Ruffolo said. "Everybody's laughing about it except for the people in Lausanne (Switzerland, home of the IOC). They don't realize they are riding a dead horse. There was a time when the Olympics was a good thing – Los Angeles in 1984, Barcelona in 1992, even Beijing needed 2008 to prove to the world it could do this – now since 2008 it's a poison pill.

"The Olympics are dead. It's a dying concept no one wants to touch."

After Rome, Paris, Hamburg and maybe Toronto or Doha – all fighting to host the 2024 Games – the list of Olympic hopefuls may quickly dwindle until only bidders will be places like Beijing or Qatar or breakaway Soviet republic. These are places that won't need to worry about local opposition when writing checks in the name of national pride. The concept of getting one big city to compete against another, with each promising more extravagance is probably an old one. Fewer municipalities will have the money to waste.

Ruffolo has spent much of the last 10 years in China, working for a government that would spend whatever it takes to prove to the world that its system is the best. China had little trouble building its grounds for the Beijing Games and seems to care little that the facilities from those Olympics remain unused. The point was never an eternal, reusable city.

As part of its 2022 bid, Beijing's organizers will pull from a nearby lake to manufacture the piles of snow needed for mountain sports and will construct a giant, high-speed rail line to whisk athletes and spectators from the city to the remote outdoor locations. Who can compete against this? Who would want to?

China will keep bidding for every international event that comes along, overwhelming competitors from more democratic nations by promising to deliver anything necessary to land those games.

"The Chinese don't give a crud about the Winter Olympics," Ruffolo said. "What they really, really, really want to do is host a World Cup. They put in a [Winter Olympics] bid because they were asked to do it. We need to think like the Chinese [in the US]. We need to put our efforts behind one city."

If the US wants to be able to host another Olympics, Ruffolo said, it must build momentum for a single city, pushing that city for as much as 10 years. Failed bids in New York for 2012 and Chicago for 2016 should have shown how ill-prepared American cities are to compete for an Olympics in today's world. Boston's withdrawal on Monday said volumes about the effort to generate local interest in hosting a Games.

Meanwhile, in Kuala Lumpur, the IOC gathers, this week, to choose the 2022 Winter Games. Beijing or Almaty. It probably doesn't matter. The choice might well be the future of Olympic bids.

[Monoriu]

I think there is still healthy competition among big cities for hosting the summer olympics.  Tokyo, Madrid and Istanbul fought to host the 2020 summer olympics.  The winter olympics is an entirely different matter. 

[Josquius]

International sports in general aren't what they used to be.

[Norgy]

The Olympics will become an event hosted in various countries most other countries try to disassociate themselves from.

Summer Olympics in Baku, anyone? The Kabul Winter Olympics?

When Norway hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics, the region around Lillehammer got a major boost, but the costs of being a host now are just eye-watering.

[Martinus]

Norgy is right - only insane autocracies want to host these things these days.

[Monoriu]

Norgy is right - only insane autocracies want to host these things these days.

Tokyo - 2020

[Zanza]

Hamburg is supposed to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, but I doubt they'll get enough traction for that. If there is a plebiscite, I predict a loss like in the case of Munich's application for the 2022 Winter Olympics. People here are disenchanted by the corruption and commercialisation of the whole thing and are not willing to destroy the environment or their cities for it.

Germany will apply to host the Euro 2024 though. But then investing money into football stadiums is not a big loss for Germany as they are all continously used.

[Norgy]

Norgy is right - only insane autocracies want to host these things these days.

Tokyo - 2020

I see your Tokyo and raise you: An Emperor.

[Zanza]

Tokyo is also the largest urban area on the planet. The likelihood that the stadiums will have continous use after the games must be higher there than just about anywhere else.

[Norgy]

True. We have a bobsleigh track that's virtually unused. Any takers?

[Brazen]

London would be happy to have it back again. The "legacy" has been great for Stratford area and the city as a whole. I quite often go to events at the Olympic Park and surrounding area, and finished a 10K race in the stadium itself last weekend, in the footsteps of the greats. It was also a great message of solidarity - the 7/7 attacks happened the day after we won the bid.

As far as money goes:

In the end, London spent $10.4 billion on the games, but reported (PDF) a profit of $87 million in March of 2013. Which is small—but better than losing cash, nonetheless.

So by now we should be even more in the black, especially with the rate of property development in the area. 

http://gizmodo.com/do-the-olympics-ever-break-even-1529295819

[Martinus]

London would be happy to have it back again. The "legacy" has been great for Stratford area and the city as a whole. I quite often go to events at the Olympic Park and surrounding area, and finished a 10K race in the stadium itself last weekend, in the footsteps of the greats. It was also a great message of solidarity - the 7/7 attacks happened the day after we won the bid.

As far as money goes:

In the end, London spent $10.4 billion on the games, but reported (PDF) a profit of $87 million in March of 2013. Which is small—but better than losing cash, nonetheless.

So by now we should be even more in the black, especially with the rate of property development in the area. 

http://gizmodo.com/do-the-olympics-ever-break-even-1529295819

I guess the question is whether this money could have been spent more productively, either in terms of profitability or meeting needs of the populace. Is there nothing people in London actually need to improve their quality of life?

[Norgy]

Oslo were contemplating a Winter Olympics bid, but were shot down by a plebicite during the last local elections.

The problem for many European cities is that the infrastructure needed would mean demolotion of areas still perfectly hospitable and really heavy investment.
However, I notice the IOC has become far more responsive to criticism than say FIFA, which still has its head up its arse.

When it comes to real winter sports, such as the biathlon, alpine events, ski jumping and cross-country skiing, the Olympics aren't that important anyway. There's the continous World Cup each season and World Championships every second year.

I, for one, would not be sad to see the Olympics being laid to rest.

[Brazen]

Best Olympic legacy ever. Weeeeeee!



http://metro.co.uk/2015/07/29/the-arcelormittal-orbit-tower-is-being-turned-into-the-worlds-tallest-slide-5317358/?ito=facebook

[Brazen]

I guess the question is whether this money could have been spent more productively, either in terms of profitability or meeting needs of the populace. Is there nothing people in London actually need to improve their quality of life?

More affordable housing.

By 2030, the Park will be home to more than 10,000 new households, among the first to live in the brand new E20 postcode.

Our plans will see five new neighbourhoods, planned around green spaces and squares, and built to be lasting homes for those who live in them. They will include contemporary homes taking lessons from London's traditional Georgian and Victorian squares and terraces, looking out over parklands and waterways.

Around a third of them will be affordable housing, with many of them built for long-term rent as well as to buy. Each neighbourhood provides play areas, schools, nurseries, community spaces, health centres and shops, with places to relax, play and exercise, all within easy walking distance.

http://queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk/the-park/homes-and-living