There is a little over six months left until the Summer Olympic Games kick off in Paris, France. Most teams will host their respective trials in the coming months and the full Olympic contingent representing each country will be finalised.  

However, there is always some unrest in the host country of the Olympic Games. One will remember the protests in Brazil, after it won the bid to host the games in Rio in 2016. Local citizens complained of the cost of hosting the Games when the economy of the country was already so bad for residents. There were also environmental concerns as Brazil was already feeling the harmful environmental effects of surrendering their natural resources to commercialisation. It was felt that the Games would further destroy the delicate ecosystems present in the country.  

These were and still remain legitimate concerns for host countries/cities that win the bid to host the Games. Another major concern is the displacement of locals that happens in order to build the necessary infrastructure. It must be noted that separate from the venues and stadiums, there needs to be accommodation made for the athletes, their coaches, doctors and other support staff, as well as global media personnel.  

In an article written in 2016, “Five Reasons Why Your City Won’t Want to Host the Olympic Games,” by Bryan C. Clift and Andrew Manley, lecturers at the University of Bath, it was estimated that 1.5 million people in Beijing were forcibly evicted to accommodate the preparation of the city for the Games. Residents in Rio were also removed from their homes in local favelas in a confrontation with local law enforcement that actually left local residents physically wounded.  

Perhaps another obvious disadvantage of hosting the Games is the inability to use many of the facilities once the Games are complete. When you consider the many sporting disciplines on display during the Olympics (the upcoming event is set to stage 32 sport), then it is easy to imagine the magnitude of the infrastructure required for such an endeavour.

Specifically, the specialised infrastructure that is needed for each sport. The type of material needed for indoor flooring of basketball and volleyball courts, tennis facilities, gymnastics equipment, aquatics centres for synchronised swimming, swimming and diving competitions and many other venues.

It is easy to imagine though, that a lot of those facilities are not useful after the Games conclude. The cost of their maintenance of course, will become the responsibility of the city/country.  

In “Going for the Gold: The Economics of the Olympics,” economics professors Robert A. Baade and Victor A. Matheson note that “host cities are often left with specialised sporting infrastructure that have little use beyond the Games and that the cities must maintain them at great expense. ”This issue is an extension of the main issue of hosting the Olympics: the cost.  

The maintenance of the facilities post-Olympics further adds to the exorbitant cost of hosting the Olympiad. This was discussed by Bent Flyvberg, Allison Stewart, and Alexander Budzier, in “The Oxford Olympics Study 2016: Cost and Cost Overrun at the Games,” in 2016. The paper confirms that no Olympic Games since 1960 has run according to the original budget.

Flyvberg, Ph.D and Stewart, MBA, both from University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, did a similar study/paper in 2012 dealing specifically with cost overruns of the Olympics and found that on average, in every edition of the Games since 1968, the Summer Olympics is overrun by 252 per cent, with the Winter Games’ overrun usually averaging 135 per cent. They provided a specific and stark example: Montreal’s overrun took 30 years to repay and the people of Quebec still pay $17 million annually to maintain the Olympic stadium.  

In an even more troubling example, the Athens Games held in 2004 created a severe economic shift in the country and Nick Malkoutzis in his study, “How the 2004 Olympics Triggered Greece’s Decline”, published in 2012, found that the 60 per cent overrun of the Games played a major part in triggering the collapse of the Greek economy that took place from 2007 through to 2012.  

There are, of course, economic benefits to hosting the Games as well. Despite protests, the Rio Games were held and, according to reported numbers, Brazil saw 6.6 million tourists and generated US$6.2 billion from the Games.

Nathalie Thomas, in her paper, “UK Tourism Hits Record 12 Months after Olympics,” reported that England welcomed one visitor per second in June 2013, after London hosted the Games in 2012. According to Thomas, these tourists spent US$2.57 billion in June (a 13% increase) and US$12.1 billion in the first half of 2013.  

Hosting the Olympics can also improve the country’s global stature in trade talks. In the same paper by economic professors Robert A. Baade and Victor A. Matheson, the professors noted that “the very act of bidding [for the Games] serves as a credible signal that a country is committing itself to trade liberalization that will permanently increase trade flows”.  

After the Barcelona hosted the Games in 1986, Spain joined the EEC within a year, the liberalisation of South Korea coincided with its successful bid to host the Games in Seoul, and a successful hosting in Tokyo in 1964 led to Japan’s entry into the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  

There is also the argument that hosting the Olympics is good for morale and national pride by locals. Residents of host cities reported across many games the jubilation that was felt when a city wins a bid to host the Games. Watching a successful staging of a global event can instill feelings of pride and happiness in one’s country and can also lead to a rise in productivity.

Moorad Choudhry, MBA, PhD, treasurer of the Corporate Banking Division of the Royal Bank of Scotland, stated: “A genuine feel-good factor [of hosting the Olympics] can be very positive for the economy, not just in terms of higher spending but also in productivity at work, which in turn boosts output.” 

There are many competing factors at work when a country/city wins a bid to host the Olympics, and while we enjoy the athletic prowess of the competitors, it is important to consider the human impact on the people who call those host cities home and who must live there long after the Games end.