Overview of the mega-event: “The Olympic Games”
The Summer Olympic Games were first held in 1896 in Athens, Greece. At the time, only few competitions were set up and a small number of athletes competed. Until the games of 1948, only one candidate for each Olympic proposed to host. But as the Olympics started to grow rapidly, more countries started to develop an interest in hosting which has led to the creation of the bidding process by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In 2012, the games encompassed more than 300 events and 10,568 athletes from 199 nations hence turning the Olympics to a “Mega” sports event.
In 1924, the IOC staged the first Winter Olympic Games also scheduled every four years at rotating sites. The Winter Games …show more content…
Even if we exclude the construction spending, the operating costs for the Summer Games normally surpass $1 billion. With expenditures of this scale, how can the economic impact of an event, even in the size of the Olympics, compensate the host country/city for the considerable infrastructure and operating costs?
On one hand, there are the “event boosters” who have always predicted economic windfalls from hosting mega-events. For the 1994 World Cup in the United States, boosters forecasted a result in a $4 billion boost to the United States economy.
In their article on the subject, R. Baade and V. Matheson mentioned a study by the Dentsu Institute for Human Studies where it is estimated a $24.8 billion impact from the Cup for Japan. As a percentage of total national income, these figures represent 0.6% of the total Japanese (Finer, 2002).
Other event boosters, such as Humphreys and Plummer (1995) estimated the short-term economic impact to Atlanta from hosting the 1996 games to be $5.1 billion, which later turned out not to be the …show more content…
The interest of people in sports has led to the creation of a whole industry only dedicated to that. Sport is supposed to be about fun but if some could benefit without harming others there is no wrongdoing and this is why nowadays we witness several mega-events around the year. The Olympic Games is the only event that gather such a big number of athletes of different nationalities in one city for three weeks so the continuity of this kind of event is important but recently the cost of hosting such event is taking all the fun out of it. When the developing countries got involved, as the BRICS countries have in recent years, the cost got higher as the competition has grown and the bidding process not altered in
The Summer Olympic Games were first held in 1896 in Athens, Greece. At the time, only few competitions were set up and a small number of athletes competed. Until the games of 1948, only one candidate for each Olympic proposed to host. But as the Olympics started to grow rapidly, more countries started to develop an interest in hosting which has led to the creation of the bidding process by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In 2012, the games encompassed more than 300 events and 10,568 athletes from 199 nations hence turning the Olympics to a “Mega” sports event.
In 1924, the IOC staged the first Winter Olympic Games also scheduled every four years at rotating sites. The Winter Games …show more content…
Even if we exclude the construction spending, the operating costs for the Summer Games normally surpass $1 billion. With expenditures of this scale, how can the economic impact of an event, even in the size of the Olympics, compensate the host country/city for the considerable infrastructure and operating costs?
On one hand, there are the “event boosters” who have always predicted economic windfalls from hosting mega-events. For the 1994 World Cup in the United States, boosters forecasted a result in a $4 billion boost to the United States economy.
In their article on the subject, R. Baade and V. Matheson mentioned a study by the Dentsu Institute for Human Studies where it is estimated a $24.8 billion impact from the Cup for Japan. As a percentage of total national income, these figures represent 0.6% of the total Japanese (Finer, 2002).
Other event boosters, such as Humphreys and Plummer (1995) estimated the short-term economic impact to Atlanta from hosting the 1996 games to be $5.1 billion, which later turned out not to be the …show more content…
The interest of people in sports has led to the creation of a whole industry only dedicated to that. Sport is supposed to be about fun but if some could benefit without harming others there is no wrongdoing and this is why nowadays we witness several mega-events around the year. The Olympic Games is the only event that gather such a big number of athletes of different nationalities in one city for three weeks so the continuity of this kind of event is important but recently the cost of hosting such event is taking all the fun out of it. When the developing countries got involved, as the BRICS countries have in recent years, the cost got higher as the competition has grown and the bidding process not altered in