In think teach transform Molly Richard writes:
"The debate around Boston hosting the Olympics has many asking, “What makes a world-class city?”
Boston2024, the private entity that bid Boston to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, would like us to think a world-class city emerges from the benefits incurred by Olympic host cities. However, in a public meeting last week, Smith College Professor Andrew Zimbalist, author of Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup, debunked this notion:
The underlying promise is that if we are a world-class city, there are benefits that come to us. What are those benefits? The things you most often hear about are, ‘There’ll be increases in tourism, there’ll be increases in trade, and there’ll be increases in foreign investment.’ However, the scholarly literature on this subject comes to the conclusion that these things don’t happen…we can’t identify statistically significant gains in those areas. Indeed, there’s a lot of evidence recently that it actually hurts in those areas.
Zimbalist went on to explain that hosting hurts tourism, stymies local business, and derails infrastructure improvements (for more information, read here). Further, the cost is immense and taxpayers pick up the slack. Since 1960, direct spending on the Games has averaged around 324% of the original proposed budgets. Boston2024 proposed $4.5 billion, while the last Summer Games in London cost about $20 billion. Budget overruns from the London Olympics cost each UK taxpayer $216. That might seem manageable, but there are 64 million people in the UK and 6.7 million in Massachusetts. If the final cost of a Boston Olympics neared London’s, it would cost over $2,000 per taxpayer."
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