On Monday, at the 141st Session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), it was announced that the IOC’s Olympic Programme Commission (OPC) and Executive Board (EB) had accepted a proposal from the organisers of the 2028 Summer Olympic Games (LA28) to add five sports, namely, baseball/softball, cricket (T/20), flag football, lacrosse (sixes), and squash to the quadrennial event. Flag football and squash will be making their Games’ debut, whilst cricket (played at the 1900 Paris Olympic Games), baseball/soft ball (six previous appearances, most recently at the 2020 Tokyo Games), and lacrosse (1904 St Louis and 1908 London) will be returning to the fold.
The IOC Session also endorsed the EB’s recommendation to include the previously dropped modern pentathlon and weightlifting in LA28, thus, adding seven more sports to the 28 previously approved in February 2021. The EB has made no decision yet as to whether the sport of boxing will return at these games. Thus, the IOC continues its trend of adding more sports to each succeeding Olympic Games. At next year’s Paris Olympics the world will witness the new sports of breaking, skateboarding, sport climbing, and surfing in the 32 sports line up. It should be noted that in the convoluted world of the Olympics several sports branch out into varying disciplines consisting of one or more events, i.e. a competition in a sport or discipline which gives rise to a ranking. For example, while skiing is a sport, alpine skiing is a discipline, and the Super-G, giant slalom, and slalom are events.
“The hope of an Olympic dream just became an active pursuit for countless athletes around the world,“ LA28 Chief Athlete Officer Janet Evans said in a statement on Monday. “This remarkable journey over the next five years will undoubtedly change lives, inspiring athletes with the opportunity to represent their sport and country on the world’s biggest stage.”
While the decision to add more sports presents a wonderful opportunity for hundreds of athletes on the “world’s biggest stage”, Ms Evans has overlooked a crucial element in adding more sports to the already tightly stretched Olympic schedule; the incremental cost burden on the host nation.
Nations bidding to host the Games are taking a multi-billion-dollar risk, gambling that their hosting cities will attract the eyes of the world, advertisers and tourists, inspire a new generation of athletes and leave a legacy of new or upgraded venues. These wild dreams (mostly of political origin), while true in a few rare instances, are, often, a poisoned chalice. In their haste, nations pay little or no heed to their contracts with the IOC, which leaves them on the hook for all the Games’ expenses.
In a 2012 Said Business School study titled “Olympic Proportions Cost and Cost Overrun at the Olympics 1960 – 2012”, Oxford University students Bent Flyvberg and Allison Stewart wrote, “We discovered that the Games stand out in two distinct ways compared to other megaprojects: (1) The Games overrun with 100 per cent consistency. No other type of megaproject is this consistent regarding cost overrun. Other project types are typically on budget from time to time, but not the Olympics. (2) With an average cost overrun in real terms of 179 per cent – and 324 per cent in nominal terms – overruns in the Games have historically been significantly larger than for other types of megaprojects, including infrastructure, construction, ICT, and dams. The data thus show that for a city and nation to decide to host the Olympic Games is to take on one of the most financially risky type of megaproject that exists, something that many cities and nations have learned to their peril. “
The landscape is littered with examples of the burdens of these overruns and the resulting white elephants, with two legacies serving as stark warnings to future bidding nations. Built for the 1976 Olympic Games, Montreal’s Olympic Stadium took the Quebec taxpayers 30 years to pay off the costs incurred in its construction. Popularly referred to by proud residents of Montreal as the “Big O”, a warm reference to its purpose, and its doughnut-shaped roof, which was not completed until 1987, and had to be replaced as early as 1998. Today, following thousands of tears, it’s awaiting its third roof, at an estimated (2017) cost of CAN$250 million. Since the MLB Montreal Expos moved to Washington after the 2004 season, the multi-purpose venue has not had a permanent tenant to assist in the estimated annual exorbitant maintenance bill of CAN$37 million, earning it the nickname of the “Big Owe,” and the label of a white elephant.
Of more recent vintage was the 2016 Games in Brazil, where a government watchdog placed the price tag of hosting the Games at US$8.6 billion. One of the problems Brazil faced in hosting was its worst recession in a century, which dovetailed with poor planning and corruption, led to the creation of a herd of white elephants. A 2017 ESPN investigation found that a year after hosting the Games, only 15 of the 27 stadia utilised at the 2016 Games had hosted at least one post-Olympic event, as the others sat abandoned, with the Rio 2016 Organising Committee still owing US$40 million to creditors. Athens, Greece experienced still similar woes after hosting the 2004 Summer Games.
With the prohibitive costs of bidding on the Olympic Games now estimated to be in the range of US$50 – US$100 million, and the potential of harsh reminders for their folly in the form monolithic white elephants, fewer cities are bidding on the Games. When Rome withdrew from bidding for the 2024 Olympics, Rome’s Mayor Virginia Raggi observed, “We won’t be forced to pay for more cathedrals in the desert for years to come… We have nothing against the Olympics and sport … but we don’t want sport to be an excuse for more rivers of cement in the city.”
As the costs of hosting the Olympic Games continue to escalate and the IOC continues to add more events, thus increasing the odds for even more white elephants, something will have to give, as more potential cities shy away from the prospective financial millstone. Either the IOC, with its wealthy coffers, will have to share in some of the costs incurred by the hosts, and or, future Games will have multiple hosts like the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which is being jointly hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico. Perhaps it’s time to consider a permanent site. Whatever decision is taken, the burden of host countries being saddled with a herd of white elephants must end.
