The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is a group of elected members that oversee all things related to the Olympics and the Olympic legacy. The IOC — which is a non-profit, non-governmental organization — is believed to really, really like profit and other similarly shady dealings. (The “profit” link focuses only on the Sochi Winter games.)
Meanwhile, Brazil, despite being one of the worlds’ burgeoning economies, is also widely thought to possess one of the more corrupt governments. Even though Brazil has tried to put protocols in place to promote economic growth, they have been slowed greatly by those pulling the strings. Oh, by the way, Rio de Janeiro is the 26th most populated city in the world, and the lavish plans for the Olympic development are somewhat neglecting of the people that occupy the land.
One of the biggest problems many people have with the Olympics is the cost that host countries undertake. From an Economist.com article about the risks of hosting the games:
The cost used to be fairly modest: London’s 1948 Olympics cost £732,268, or about £20m ($30m) in today’s money. Nowadays hosting the games is a different business. The 2008 Beijing games, the priciest ever, are reckoned to have cost about $40 billion. That is likely to be eclipsed next year by the Sochi winter games, which are on course to cost $50 billion. Tourism may help to offset the expense, but a spike in arrivals is not guaranteed: Beijing saw a drop in hotel bookings during its Olympic summer. And the chance to spruce up a city sometimes ends up creating eyesores instead. Some of Greece’s costly stadiums now look as run-down as the Parthenon (and have fewer visitors).
(While we are on the topic of Greece, many believe their economic downfall was the direct result of their extravagant hosting of the 2004 Summer games.)
So, back to Brazil.
Rio de Janeiro was already in the process (they said) of building stadiums for this summer’s World Cup. This likely was used as a point of emphasis as to why the 2016 Olympics should be the Rio Olympics.
We will already have all of those stadiums!
See, the problem is, they barely do. And the process of erecting those stadiums proved far more costly (and dangerous) than previously anticipated. So, the backlog on construction for the World Cup venue has subsequently caused a backlog in construction for the Olympics.
In case you can’t quite frame the level of panic that Brazil is operating under, let’s consider the Olympics that they are following, logistically speaking, that is. This excerpt is from a Forbes.com analysis of 2014 Sochi’s economic impact:
“If costs are the benchmark for a ‘successful’ Games,” says Janice Forsyth, Director of the International Center for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, Canada, “Sochi is the most unsuccessful games in history, bar none.”
That quote makes the recent statements from IOC vice-president John Coates, where he called the Rio de Janiero preparations “the worst I have ever experienced,” all the more damning. (For the record, Coates has been a member of the IOC since 2001.) They have apparently not even begun construction on eight different venues. This isn’t even mentioning what the country plans to do with the stadiums after.
Let’s say you typed, “how will Brazil use stadiums after,” into Google. The first article is regarding plans to use a stadium for processing prisoners. Surely that is the most cost effective way of accomplishing that.
This whole fiasco brings back to the public eye the question of whether or not countries should even want to host the Olympics. Ever since 1984 when Los Angeles ran the first profitable Olympics, host countries have lined up hoping to repeat their success. Unfortunately, one of the key differences between the Los Angeles Olympics and most of the following events is that the LA games were privately financed. The U.S. government wasn’t shelling out money, but rather wealthy individuals. Are those financial resources really worth it when they’re coming from the pockets of the people?
Many host countries bring up the goodwill generated within the host country, as residents feel as though they are now the center of attention. But is this psychological band-aid worth the risk of a crippling financial future?
If we learned anything from the 1984 Olympics, it is that in order to be profitable, you have to be utterly meticulous and run it like a cutthroat corporation. Budgets, deadlines, contracts. Every “i” has to be dotted and every “t” has to be crossed.
As it stands today, the Rio Olympics (and World Cup, for that matter) are being written on looseleaf in very sloppy handwriting. Generally speaking, world powers use better systems of documentation than that. If they aren’t careful, their effort to paint Brazil — and Rio de Janiero in particular — as having “arrived” on a global level, may only shine light on just how far they have to go.
