The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics are over. And I enjoyed watching every moment of it.

I can hardly wait another four years. Thank goodness we have the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Not the same but equally as entertaining.

However. Why do countries bid to stage the Olympic Games?

It is a terrible investment.

This is echoed by Clay Dillow in an article he wrote for the Five Thirty Eight web site.

He says:

“When Rio de Janeiro won its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics back in 2009, the Brazilian government estimated that costs directly related to hosting the games would run just shy of $3 billion. But by the time Vanderlei de Lima lit the Olympic torch at last week’s opening ceremonies, the country had already spent some $4.6 billion on venues, administration, transportation and the like, putting the games roughly 50 percent over budget. By the time the games close on Aug. 21, the tally for the games will likely be higher still.

“But it could be much worse. The 2014 Winter Games in Sochi blew their budget by 289 percent. The 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid overtopped projections by 324 percent. And the 1976 Games in Montreal ran a staggering 720 percent over projections; the city spent three decades paying down the bill. While outliers such as these distort the average cost overruns somewhat (176 percent for Summer Games, 142 percent for Winter Games), the median cost overrun for all games for which we have data is 90 percent, making Rio’s cost overrun somewhat lower than the historical norm, at least so far.

“The modern Olympic Games, in other words, are wildly expensive — and wildly more so than host cities expect when they make their bids. The Olympics have a well-deserved reputation for accelerated construction schedules and poor oversight, as well as for the cost overruns associated with them. Since the 1960 games in Rome, every single edition of the Olympics for which data is available has been more expensive than originally projected. But until recently it was unclear exactly how those cost overruns stack up next to each other, as well as next to other major civic megaprojects.”

Dillow quotes from a new study executed by Bent Flyvbjerg at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, who looked at six decades of Olympic budgets.

“For a city and nation to decide to stage the Olympics Games is to decide to take on one of the most costly and financially most risky type of megaproject[s] that exists,” Flyvbjerg and company wrote, “something that many cities and nations have learned to their peril.”

Dillow also quotes David Goldblatt, author of “The Games: A Global History of the Olympics.

“There’s this kind of relentless underestimation of costs, because if anyone knew the real bill at the beginning they would never sign up,” Goldblatt said in an interview. In other words, in an effort to win their bids, organizing committees are under intense pressure to present a low-cost budget — even if it doesn’t necessarily reflect reality. “If a realistic estimate was made in the first place, then the scale of overruns wouldn’t be quite as vast as they are.”

The article finally says:

“When countries bid for the games seven years out, it’s impossible to account for shifting political and economic circumstances, said Kevin Wamsley, academic vice president and provost at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and an expert on Olympic politics. Brazil is hosting the Summer Games while dealing with presidential impeachment proceedings and its worst economic crisis since the 1930s. While the Olympics didn’t cause Brazil’s current problems, they are a multibillion-dollar burden on a country already struggling to cover basic expenses.

‘“Look where Brazil finds itself,” Wamsley said. “They’re not paying their police officers and other public service workers, they’re not paying their professors, they’re in all kinds of trouble. That’s just an unbelievably horrible context in which to host an Olympic Games.”’

To read the whole story go to: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hosting-the-olympics-is-a-terrible-investment/

There has to come a time when no one is going to bid to host the Olympic Games.

Maybe the IOC Executive Board is aware of this. They have just announced the launch and operation of the Olympic Channel.

They have formed an Olympic Channel Commission whose responsibilities are to:

• Advise in the growth and development of the Olympic Channel from its initial launch phase through to its mature and established form;
• Be integral to the worldwide promotion of the Olympic Movement and its values, by means of the Olympic Channel;
• Provide a forum through which all key stakeholders of the Olympic Movement (specifically the International Federations, National Olympic Committees, Rights-Holding Broadcasters and Olympic sponsors), as well as senior professional experts, can contribute their specific know-how, ideas and feedback regarding the Olympic Channel, and provide comment on its approach, content, appearance and strategy;
• Be the key conduit through which the Olympic Channel will be able to draw upon the valuable knowledge and expertise of its core stakeholders, and ensure their contributions are made available to the responsible governing bodies of the Olympic Channel.
The Olympic Channel Commission is supported by Olympic Broadcasting Services and IOC Television and Marketing Services.

If in time the Olympics is all executed by computers there would be no need to build all these stadiums and infrastructure.

No countries will have to bid to stage the Olympics anymore. You will just stay at home and watch The Olympic Computer Games.