From IOC Executive Board Meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland – A study released by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Monday revealed that people around the world generally accept that hosting an Olympic Games provides economic opportunities and other benefits.
In a commissioned survey conducted by KantarSport held after the Sochi 2014 Games in February and taken in 15 countries across all age groups, 68% believed “hosting the Olympic Games is an opportunity for economic development,” while only 19% thought “hosting the Olympic Games is an Economic burden.”
Additionally, 73% said that “staging the Olympic Games leaves host city/country with many benefits” and only 13% answered that “staging the Olympic Game leaves host city/country with no benefits.”
Yet early in the current 2022 Olympic bid campaign three cities have already dropped out – one as a result of failed referendum and another due to the perceived costs – and other cities didn’t even apply after losing plebiscites. It’s becoming clear that people do not want to host the Games.
At the Executive Board meeting in Lausanne Tuesday IOC President Thomas Bach couldn’t explain the inconsistency.
“Sometimes you have a difference between the published opinion and the public opinion,” Bach said.
“But obviously we need to explain this better and more, and we have to explain better and more the system and the logic of the two different budgets.”
It is widely thought that Sochi’s legacy of the 2014 Winter Games is a $51 billion price tag and not the two cities that were built to host the Games and that remain as a resort and sports hub for Russia.
City governments and taxpayers won’t accept the risk of a potentially high price tag.
“It’s just not logic, but sometimes in this business it’s more about perception than it is about reality so we have to keep explaining.”
“This is easy when you speak to a financial or business community – they understand very well that you cannot depreciate the investment for housing for thousands of people within 16 days to zero. But obviously the broader public does not understand this, that this is an investment budget.
“With a house-warming party, that is as if you would calculate as the cost for a house-warming party the construction cost of the house.
“What you could put in the Olympic Games budget and what is Olympic-related, there you could argue is the rent for the four-weeks where this housing serves to the Olympic Village.
On Monday, IOC Executive Director Gilbert Felli explained that the IOC must do a better job communicating with bid cities and getting involved with them sooner so that the false perceptions don’t evolve. He suggests that if the IOC doesn’t ask about capital costs in the bid city questionnaire, the numbers won’t appear and be misunderstood.
Bach said “we have to explain in the Olympic Agenda to make sure it is first of all up to the candidate cities to tell us how the Games fit into their environment.”
“That means which investments have they planned anyways to develop their city, their region and how can the Games fit into this and then not blaming at the end the IOC and the Olympic movement for infrastructure projects that they wanted to do anyway but using the Games just as a catalyst because they know that without the Games they would have never got the approval to put them in place.”
The 15 countries surveyed included many of those who have recently hosted or are currently organizing the Games such as Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United Kingdom. While that sampling may skew the number to a more positive level – they represent the experience, and not the perception.
