Introduction
Olympic Games originated in Ancient Greece over 3000 years ago. The modern Olympics were then revived in the 19th century and took place in Athens, Greece. Since then, the host cities are chosen through an open bidding procedure seven years before the event. As a matter of fact, it is the responsibility of the host cities to pay the whole tab for putting on the event, however, the International Olympic Committee normally contributes a portion of the expense.
In general, hosting The Olympic Games has multiple various consequences. On the one hand, it contributes to the improvement of a city’s living standards and infrastructure, including roads and new amenities, and encourages the locals to set up businesses that eventually benefit them. On the other hand, cities that host the Olympics may also face difficulties due to the high costs of budget involved in hosting the sports event, thus making them suffer from the national debt. In addition, gathering of thousands of people from different countries in one place crates the risk of terrorism. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of hosting the Olympics from different perspectives. First of all, the advantages of this event for host cities will be discusses. They will be followed by disadvantages, conclusion, and personal opinion.
Advantages of Hosting the Olympics
Hosting the Olympics has proven to be advantageous to the host cities as it comes with substantial benefits. They include the increase of foreign visitors’ influx that enables foreign exchange and the creation of new jobs due to the high demand in goods and services as well as improvement in infrastructure in the host city (International Olympic Committee, n.d.). When tourists who attended the Games enjoyed their stay in the city, they become interested in returning as well as inviting their friends and family. According to the tourism ministry of Brazil, 95% of the tourists would return to the city after Olympic Games held in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 (Khraiche & Alakshendra, 2021). Thus, hosting the Olympics increased the number of foreign visitors making foreign exchange activities in the city successful thus improving the local economy.
Moreover, the Olympics provide new business opportunities in tourism and hospitality industry. Opening restaurants and travel companies by local people due to the high demand for services and commodities from the visitors attending the Olympics is economically advantageous to the cities that host the Olympics. Meanwhile, according to Baade et al. (2016), the host city must have sufficient hotel capacity, an athlete’s Olympic village, transport to and from the Games, security, and athletic facilities, including field stadiums of significant size. The majority of countries spend money on infrastructural development to prepare their cities for the influx of athletes and visitors. In 2016, despite being among the most popular tourist destinations, Rio de Janeiro required the construction of over 15000 new hotel rooms to accommodate the Olympic Games visitors (Khraiche & Alakshendra 2021). Nevertheless, the infrastructure improvement is advantageous to the host city residents as they take benefits from renewed and new roads and amenities.
Disadvantages of Hosting the Olympics
At the same time, hosting the Olympics carries some disadvantages, such as national debt due to the huge investment in infrastructure and insecurity, as these major events are highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks. As previously mentioned, a host city must invest heavily in infrastructure generating expenditures and losses (Sorkin & Kessler, 2021). According to Herstein & Berger (2013), the two worst disasters occurred when Munich lost £178 million in the 1972 Olympics and the succeeding one in Montreal. The latter suffered from a loss of $1 billion and had to take 20 years to stabilize itself after the Games. In Athens, despite a ten-billion-euro expenditure, the 2004 Olympic Games became a financial fiasco as due to the lack of a constant flow of tourists, the constructed infrastructure became difficult to maintain and mostly abandoned. This meant that the taxpayer’s money had gone to waste, affecting citizens’ living standards due to the economic crisis.
Hosting Olympic Games is associated with a serious threat for people as well. According to Spaaij (2016), terrorists may be drawn to the Olympics because of the global spotlight the sporting mega-event affords and the opportunity to do as much harm and terror as possible. Although they may not have a personal vendetta against the Olympic movement, extremist organizations may target the event due to its strong symbolic meaning in relation to their violent campaigns. Most attacks are aimed against the host country’s government or other countries or towns hosting the Olympics. Terrorism during the Olympics has far-reaching consequences. As part of Operation Black September during the Munich Olympics in 1972, six Israeli coaches, five Israeli athletes, and a police officer were murdered by extremists from Black September. Additionally, this tragedy directly impacted the US government’s efforts in counterterrorism and Olympic security operations, which sparked the creation of counterterrorism measures in America.
Conclusion
Hosting Olympic Games has both advantages and disadvantages for cities. This event improves their infrastructure and provide business opportunities for local people contributing to economy. At the same time, the Olympics are associated with substantial expenditures that may impact the country’s budget for long periods of time and serious threat of international and local terrorism. From a personal perspective, regardless of the major advantages of this event, Olympic Games have proven to have a predominantly negative effect on the host cities. Hosting them has a major financial toll and contributes to the probability of an economic crisis. Risks, such as terrorism, might be curbed by developing efficient security systems, but this adds up to the already tight budget and might not be optimal for a country’s national economy.
References
Baade, R. A., & Matheson, V. A. (2016). Going for the gold: The economics of the Olympics. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30(2), 201-18.
Herstein, R., & Berger, R. (2013). Hosting the Olympics: A city’s make-or-break impression. Journal of Business Strategy, 34(5), 54-59.
International Olympic Committee. (n.d.). Benefits of a candidature.
Khraiche, M., & Alakshendra, A. (2021). Hosting the Olympics: Why are we always getting the cost wrong? Managerial Finance, 47(6), 845-855.
Sorkin, A. R. & Kessler, S. (2021). Hosting the Olympics is a bad deal. The New York Times.
Spaaij, R. (2016). Terrorism and security at the Olympics: Empirical trends and evolving research agendas. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 33(4), 451-468.