This summer, the world will be watching as the Olympic industry descends on London, United Kingdom, where two of the largest sporting events on the planet – the Olympic and Paralympic Games – will take place.
For many, The Games are an opportunity for fun and celebration, a chance to participate in a movement that ostensibly fosters international goodwill and peace through friendly athletic competition. The fact these lofty goals might be achieved by hosting a colossal street party can be an attractive sell, even if the ideals only ever remain at the level of theory.
But with economies collapsing and austerity measures being implemented throughout the world, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the relevance of The Games – as opposed to the ideals – in our current environment.
Proponents continue to defend the Olympics on the ideological grounds people near and far will somehow benefit from its much-vaunted legacies. Media regurgitate platitudes about the positive spin-off effects that come from spending billions on The Games and print familiar examples to bolster its claims: The regeneration of urban environments; reclamation of environmental wastelands; more and better low-income housing; modern recreation facilities; better entertainment, jobs, food, social welfare programs; and, of course, enhanced national pride.
The list is like a potpourri of promises, only not as sweet smelling when one dares to take a long hard whiff.
Our own Canadian experience with The Games is instructive. While citizens struggle under the weight of cutbacks in vital sectors like health care and education, we can at least take solace in the idea the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games brought us closer together as a nation, or so we are told.
London (U.K.) is no stranger to hosting The Games. It has done so two times in the past: 1908 and 1948.
With only two-years preparation time for 1948, and still reeling from wartime measures and a massive debt brought about by the Second World War, it was remarkable the London organizing committee was able to host the Olympics at all. Often referred to as the ‘Austerity Games,’ the 1948 event operated on a shoestring budget of about £700,000 ($1.12 million Canadian today) and was short on housing, food and facilities. Male athletes stayed in military barracks; no new venues were built for The Games.
Fast forward 64 years to London 2012, where the conditions under which The Games are taking place have changed dramatically.
Now, each host is under tremendous pressure to organize the ‘best Games ever,’ and does so with the intent of using the platform only the Olympics can provide to obtain a stronger global position, economically and politically. And the stakes are high.
Originally estimated to cost £2.4 billion ($3.87 billion Cdn.), the 2012 Games are now predicted to run at least £11 billion ($17.71 billion Cdn.) and counting. While it is impossible to specify what the final costs will be when The Games are awarded to a host (seven years in advance of the Opening Ceremonies), organizers know with absolute certainty expenditures will eventually escalate to worrisome levels.
In the case of forecasting Olympic costs, it is a truism that history repeats itself: The final bill will always be more than what was initially anticipated.
Some members of the Olympic family are beginning to acknowledge that fact and have adopted more sobering views of what The Games will bring.
In February 2012, the Italian capital, Rome, mired in a debt crisis, pulled its bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, stating its national economy could not handle the financial burden of staging The Games. On the other hand, Spain, another troubled economy, remains committed to pursuing its Olympic dreams.
What remains unsaid is what happens when a city loses an Olympic bid (an untapped area of research).
New York, which failed in its attempt to host the 2012 Games, is promoting the upside of losing. Urban planning and development has been vigorous in an industrial section of Manhattan, and likely would not have happened had the city been forced to cover billions in cost overruns and maintain underused facilities that always accompany the Olympics (From Ashes of Olympic Bid, a Future Rises for the Far West Side, New York Times, Nov. 27, 2011).
More attention by researchers, media and the public needs to be paid to benefits of not hosting.
One of the reasons why people continue to believe in the Olympic industry is the ambulatory nature of The Games. Each setting offers boosters a new sense of hope that somehow that year’s Games will be better than ones before it and will bring more lasting benefits to citizens.
Yet, already in London (U.K.) private funders for 2012 Games have withdrawn their support from some projects, like the Olympic Village, leaving the public to foot the £1 billion ($1.61 billion Cdn.) bill (What is the Real Price of the London Olympics? The Guardian, April 4). The narrative is all too familiar; it took Montreal 30 years to pay off its $2.7 billion debt from hosting The Games in 1976.
The ideals promoted through the Olympic movement – that people can mobilize their resources for goodwill and the betterment of humankind – are worth holding on to. What needs to be called into question is whether those ideals can be achieved through the crass commercial vehicle that has become the Olympic industry.
Really, when has humanity ever appealed to McDonald’s, Coca-Cola or Dow Chemicals (all Olympic sponsors) to advance our civilization?
More than ever, the ideals are relevant, but the ways in which they have been operationalized are not. Rather than spending billions on the world’s largest party, massive changes to the structure of the Olympic industry are required so the hangover, after the party is over, doesn’t last generations.
Janice Forsyth is the director of Western’s International Centre for Olympic Studies in the Faculty of Health Sciences.