Sports mega events do not produce major financial gains for host cities.
There has been a resurgence of interest by countries who want to host the Summer Olympics. Political and business leaders in Madrid, the capital of Spain, are thinking of bidding for the 2040 Summer Olympics. There are people in Berlin, Germany who want to land the 2036 Summer Games, which would be the 100th anniversary of the Hitler Olympics. For whatever reasons, people want the Olympics. Some of those reasons include national pride, increased tourism in the future because there is something about being an Olympics host or some infrastructure that was built for the event such as the train from the Vancouver, British Columbia airport to downtown. But that could have been built without the 2010 Olympics. In Paris, the 2024 Summer Olympics was not a catalyst for increased tourism but the city does have a new bathing area as parts of the Seine River were cleaned up for Olympic events and is now used by the general public. But the Paris Olympics cost a lot of money and was not an economic driver.
The 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics cost France €6.6 billion or more than $7.7 billion US in public spending which was more than the initial estimate of €5.9 billion or around $6.6 billon US. Was the event successful? Of course it was according to political and business leaders but the 2024 Paris auditors painted a different story. “The Games’ impact on annual economic growth in 2024 is estimated at +0.07 percentage point of GDP once indirect effects are factored in,” auditors said. “The benefits have been modest, both in the run-up when soaring prices limited the real effect of infrastructure spending and during the Games themselves, as regular tourism was partly crowded out. The medium to long-term economic benefits remain uncertain.” Once the event is gone, it’s gone leaving a murky financial tale.
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