On August 16, 1936, the US foreign correspondent William Shirer penned the following sobering words in his diary on the Berlin Olympics: ‘I’m afraid the Nazis have succeeded with their propaganda. First, the Nazis have run the Games on a lavish scale never before experienced, and this has appealed to the athletes. Second, the Nazis have put up a very good front for the general visitors, especially the big businessmen.’
The formula has remained much of a constant. But over the decades, the pain of hosting such large sporting events as the Olympics has proved considerable. They exert a remarkable strain on budgets, disrupt commerce, compromise valuable real estate, inflict environmental harm, and often result in evictions and displacements of vulnerable residents. Then comes the matter of how valuable the post-event infrastructure actually is in terms of regeneration and community development.
Even in Australia, such grand sporting events are losing their appeal. The 2026 Commonwealth Games were shelved by the Victorian government in July 2023, despite featuring as an electoral ploy in the re-election of the Labor government. Premier Daniel Andrews put the original reason for hosting the event down to its potential to deliver ‘lasting benefits in housing, tourism and sporting infrastructure for regional Victoria.’ But it was an injudicious move, given the state’s ballooning debt fed by borrowing A$31.5 billion worth in emergency funds to combat the COVID pandemic.
The findings of the Victorian Auditor General on this costly debacle were alarming: the cancellation had cost A$589 million, comprising A$150 million in terms of employee and operating costs and the final A$380 million settlement.
In March this year, Brisbane, the planned host city for the 2032 Olympics, was awash with rumours that the Queensland state government might be getting cold feet. Advice had been sought by Cabinet about what price tag would arise from cancelling the entire event. The estimate: anywhere between A$500 million and A$1 billion. Not staging the event would also sacrifice some $3 billion in federal funding.
Disagreements about proposed infrastructure changes were also enlivened. That same month, a 60-day review of the Games recommended that the Gabba, that cherished venue of Queensland sporting folklore, be demolished rather than be rebuilt. Better, concluded the independent review panel, to focus on building a spanking new stadium at Victoria Park in Brisbane’s inner north. The response from the Miles government to such a dramatic recommendation was breezily dismissive. ‘The previously proposed re-build of the Gabba,’ it declared in a statement, ‘will not proceed, instead replaced with a more modest enhancement of the existing facility in consultation with AFL, Cricket Australia, and other stakeholders.’
The scholarly literature, in terms of expenditure and returns in hosting such large-scale sporting events, is also less than glowing. This is far from surprising, when considering that the Tokyo Games in 2021 exceeded the proposed budget by 244 per cent (coming in at US$15 billion), while the previous Rio Games did so even more spectacularly, costing 352 per cent more than initially proposed.
'While the ledger is increasingly weighted against holding such events, the Games will continue to exercise their appeal. Pageantry, uniforms and entertainments tend to.'
Alexander Budzier and Bent Flyvbjerg argue rather devastatingly that the Olympics ‘remain costly and continue to have large cost overruns, to a degree that threatens their viability.’ No Olympic Games have been spared that fate. ‘For no other type of megaproject is this the case, not even the construction of nuclear power plants or the storage of nuclear waste.’ The event’s organisers are simply not bound by such notions as set budgets, which are fictitious minimums. Instead, the ‘Blank Cheque Syndrome’ exerts its influence with impunity.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has not been entirely blind to this fact. Roadmaps and reforms have been proposed, focusing on sustainability and cost. But Agenda 2020 and Agenda 2020+5 have not arrested the trend. As Budzier and Flyvbjerg found, the costs of the Games are ‘statistically significantly increasing’. The costs for Paris 2024, based on estimates available at the study’s publication, came to $US8.7 billion, an overrun of 115 per cent in real terms. ‘Cost overruns are the norm for the Games, past, present and future. The Iron Law applies: “Over budget, over and over again.”’
Beyond the issue of cost, the Paris Olympics has also precipitated much criticism from what has become part of an international ‘anti-Olympic’ movement. The night before the opening of the Games, thousands of activists gathered at the Place de la République, an event of umbrella grassroots organisations coordinated by the collective La Revers de la Médaille (the Other Side of the Medal). This ‘Counter-Opening Ceremony of the Olympics’ was inspired by the statement ‘des Jeux, mai pour qui?’ (“Games, but for whom?”)
Prior to the event, the collective released a statement in Libération challenging the lofty claims by the event’s organisers that the Games would leave Paris more socially inclusive and community minded. This could hardly be reconciled with the eviction of some 12,500 vulnerable individuals as part of the city’s ‘social cleansing’ program. Paul Alauzy, an organiser with La Revers de la Médaille and Médecins du Monde, describes the philosophy at work as ‘a double logic of dispersion’, working to remove tent cities, slums, squats and marginalised groups in the city’s public space and ‘a dispersion within the whole country, so that to delocalize the unwanted and push the misery away from the Olympic city.’
While the ledger is increasingly weighted against holding such events, the Games will continue to exercise their appeal. Pageantry, uniforms and entertainments tend to. Shirer’s haunting observations about the success of the Nazis on staging the Berlin Games continue to be pertinent. The Blank Cheque Syndrome has a way to run yet.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University.
Main image: The Olympic flag is rasied at the Place du Trocadero in front of the Eiffel Tower during the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 on July 26, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by François-Xavier Marit-Pool/Getty Images)