Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Olympic Boondoggles

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

Hosting the Olympics can be a huge honor for the city that hosts the event. Cities from around the world have competed for the privilege. However, some cities which have hosted the Olympics have come to regret the decisions. In fact, they paid for the privilege of hosting the event decades after the fact. Learn more about Olympic boondoggles and the very complicated economics behind hosting the Olympic games on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosting the Olympics can be a huge honor for the city that lands the event. Cities from around the world have competed for this privilege. However, some cities which have hosted the Olympics have come to regret their decision. In fact, they paid for the privilege of hosting the event decades after the fact. Learn more about Olympic boondoggles and the very complicated economics behind hosting the Olympic Games on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the Hello? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day, or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why

Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to nothing much happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. The Modern Olympics have changed and evolved radically since its inception. The first modern

Olympics in Athens in 1896 only had 241 athletes from 14 countries. There were 43 events in nine sports. It was about the size of a high school track meet. with a few more events. By comparison, the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo had 11,656 athletes from 206 countries, and there were 339 events in 33 sports. As the Olympics have grown, everything surrounding the games has changed, including the process for how a host city is selected and reasons for why a city might want to host it. The first Olympics was basically given to Athens by default, because the goal of the modern Olympics was to revive the ancient games, which were always held in Greece, Athens was the natural and only choice.

The 1900 Olympics were held in Paris. Again, there really wasn't much competition for the location. The Olympics still weren't really that big of a deal, and the head of the International Olympic Committee, Pierre de Cobertan, was French, and most importantly, Paris was hosting the 1900 World's Fair. By hosting the Olympics alongside the World's Fair, there really wasn't that much additional expense for the city. At the time, hosting a World's Fair was far bigger and far more prestigious than hosting an Olympics. In 1904, it was pretty much the same story in St. Louis when it held the World's Fair. I went over the story of the St. Louis Olympics, and especially how the marathon was the worst event in Olympic history in a previous episode. In 1908,

there was a big change in the Olympics. For the first time, there was an honest competition to host the Games. Four cities, London, Rome, Berlin, and Milan all tried to get the Olympics. Eventually, Rome won out, but with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the Italian government, and had to spend money to reconstruct Naples, so they moved the Olympics to London. 1908 also marked a huge growth in the Olympics, the number of athletes more than tripled, and the number of countries went from 12 to 22. The other thing that made this Olympics unique was that London built a stadium specifically for the Olympics. White City Stadium was opened in 2008 and remained operational until 1984.

The 1912 games were railroaded through the International Olympic Committee immediately after the London Games. Stockholm ran it through with the support of the Swedish government. Moreover, they had an actual budget for the games, which was the equivalent of $115,250, or about $3.2 million in inflation-adjusted currency. As part of the deal, it was agreed that Berlin would host the 1916 Olympics. And at the meeting where the 1912 and 1916 hosts were decided, Pierre de Cobartan gave a speech, which he said, quote, The games must be kept more purely athletic.

They must be more dignified, more discreet, more in accordance with the classical and artistic requirements, more intimate, and above all, less expensive. End quote. That quote would prove to be highly ironic years later. The 1916 Olympics didn't happen because of World War I. The 1920 games saw the most cities ever to compete to become an Olympic host, which was a reflection of the increased status of the Olympics. Atlanta, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Amsterdam, Leon, Budapest, and Havana, all submitted proposals, but it was awarded to Antwerp. The decision was made in 1918, and the war hung heavily over the debate, with Belgium having received the brunt of so much of World War I. Over the next

16 years, the Olympics became seen as a route for national recognition and pride. The 1932 games in Los Angeles were significant because no one else actually bid to host the city because it was in the middle of the Great Depression. The number of athletes and countries represented decreased from 1928 because of the economy, but it was largely considered to be the best-run games at that point. It was the first Olympics to have an Olympic village and to have an Olympic mascot. The financials for the Los Angeles Games were never fully released, but they did report that they made a $1 million profit. The 1936 Olympics were famously held in Berlin, and Hitler wanted to use the games to show the superiority of his system of government to the rest of the

world. The Nazi government spent an estimated $30 million, which was considered a number of more than any previous Olympic host ever spent. After the Second World War, the first several Olympics were pretty subdued affairs, at least relative to what they would later become. When things really started to change was the 1960s. There were several factors that radically changed the hosting of the Olympics. Television meant that more people were able to watch the competitions as they occurred, rather than just hear results after the fact, and they had advertising money. Jet aircraft meant that more people could attend the games, and an improving global economy meant there was more money to go around and more money at stake.

The 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, set a record with an $80 million budget with cost overruns. The 1964 Olympics in Tokyo was budgeted for $72 million, but ended up costing several times more. 1968 in Mexico City had a budget of $172 million, and it too ran over substantially. Up until this point, the Olympics were certainly getting more expensive to host, but there wasn't any wide-scale backlash at hosting an Olympic Games due to cost yet. Where things started to get out of hand was 1976 in Montreal. The original budget for the 1976 games was $207 million Canadian dollars.

The final cost was $1.4 billion, or $6.5 billion in inflation-industed U.S. dollars today. A 720% cost overrun. The city of Montreal had to issue debt to pay for the games, which told you. them 30 years to pay off. The stadium was supposed to have a retractable roof, which never properly worked. It was supposed to be used for the Montreal Expos, but it was a horrible stadium, and that was a big reason why the team ended up leaving. In 1980 in Moscow, was a similar story. It probably cost more than Montreal, but Soviet budgets weren't really available for public browsing. The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles were significant for

one overwhelming reasoned. It actually turned a $250 million profit. The biggest profit, since the 1932 games, also in Los Angeles. They pulled this off because, like in 1932, they were the only city to submit a proposal, so they had more room to negotiate with the International Olympic Committee, and because they didn't really have to build anything. Plus, they had record television revenues and loads of marketing deals. As the Olympics began getting more and more expensive, the demands put on cities by the International Olympic Committees became greater and greater, which meant higher and higher

costs. Some host cities were able to make it work. Barcelona in 1992 spent a lot of money hosting the Olympics, but 85% of it went towards general infrastructure improvements, which didn't have anything to do with sporting venues. It really was the beginning of Barcelona becoming a top-tier world city. Likewise, Sydney managed to make its Olympic Park area a vibrant community after the games were over. After the 1998 Games in Seoul, the number of bids from developing countries dramatically increased. They sought as a way to increase the prestige in the world.

The International Olympic Committee began accepting proposals from cities with the most elaborate and expensive proposals. However, while Barcelona and Sydney were successful, there has also been cases like Athens and Rio de Janeiro. In both cities, there were venues built specifically for the Olympics at great cost and then abandoned after being used for little more than a week. The $109 stadium in Pyongchang, South Korea for the 2018 Winter Olympics was used four times. There have been dozens of photo essays online that show the Delafes, remodated remains of Olympic venues which weren't built all that long ago. What about tourism you might be thinking? Certainly hosting the Olympics brings in a lot of money from tourism, right?

Believe it or not, at the recent Beijing and London Olympics, there was a lower hotel occupancy rate during the Olympics than there was in the weeks and months before. The Olympics scared off everyone who had otherwise had been there because of high prices and threats of crowds. So, no, there isn't actually a tourism bonanza. Likewise, there are really no long-term economic benefits, it seems, from hosting an Olympics. Greece had a severe economic crisis after their games, and likewise, not much has happened in Rio de Janeiro afterwards either. The costs of hosting an Olympics have also gone from high to outrageous.

The Beijing Olympics is estimated to have cost $44 billion, and the gold medalist for Olympic budgets was the 2014 Soshe Winter Olympics in Russia, which cost $51 billion. Even London went $15 over budget in 2012. The rising costs of hosting an Olympic Games, the increased demands from the International Olympic Committee, and the small economic advantages to even hosting the event have created backlashes against cities that submit proposals. Every year since 2004, the number of cities submitting proposals to host an Olympics has gone down.

Boston, Chicago, Calgary, Krakow, Stockholm, Oslo, and Hamburg, and several other cities had citizens backlashes to their proposals which resulted in them withdrawing their bids. When it came time to select a host for the 2024 Olympics, only two cities had proposals, Paris and Los Angeles, and it looked like there might be no proposals for cities for 2028. So the IOC just gave Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028. Likewise, they just announced Brisbane would get the summer games in 2032, again, because no one else bothered to put in a bid. The Olympic Games are facing a huge problem when no one wants to host the games anymore.

There have been several solutions for solving this problem. One solution is to have permanent Olympic sites. Select one in Europe, one in Asia, one in North America for both summer and winter games, and then rotate them. Then every 16 years, the games could go to a brand new city, which would only have to host at once. The reason why Los Angeles can so easily host the games is that everything is already there. They have plenty of professional and collegiate sports venues already, dormitories and college campuses for Olympic villages, and plenty of

transportation and hotel rooms. Likewise, cities like Paris, London, Beijing, and Tokyo, who have already hosted Olympic Games, already have everything built. Another solution would be to not host the games in a single city, allow them to be spread over multiple cities in the same country or region. There is a bid for the 2030 Winter Games, which proposes that events be held in Barcelona and throughout the Pyrenees in Spain, France, and Indora. Barcelona would just do the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as some arena events like figure skating and hockey. everything else would be up in the mountains. By splitting things up, it might be easier for developing countries to also host an Olympics.

Whatever the solution is, the International Olympic Committee is going to have to do something. Else they run the real risk of having an Olympic game someday without a city to host it. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please join the list of patrons over at patreon.com. And also remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, you two can have it read on the show.