Hosting the Olympic Games in Your City

| How can hosting the Olympic Games positively or negatively affect a city? | Hosting the Olympic Games | | Floyd Ellison | Andrew Clink |

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How can hosting the Olympic Games positively or negatively affect the host city? There are many different views on this subject and this paper shall analyze many if not all of them. The Olympics are a fun and exciting event for a city to be a part of. But can a city really benefit from hosting The Games in the long run? To complete my paper a number of resources were used. A trip to the Newton County Public Library provided me with most of the sources and enough quietness to make my conclusions. The book Olympic Dreams: The Impact of Mega-Events on Local Politics provided me with a lot of information on past Olympic game figures and revenue created by countries and companies collaborating for the Olympics. The rest of my information was obtained from a few internet sources and some magazine articles on large-scale events and their effect on the economy.
Of course hosting an Olympic game produces a large amount of communal pride and public satisfaction as a unit, which in my opinion is much greater than a World Series victory or NFL super bowl win. When a host city is on television in front of two-thirds of the world’s population, the event becomes magnified. It becomes a public relations and advertising phenomenon. This phenomenon has many short-term benefits on tourism, real estate values and new business opportunities (Arroyo, 2012). For long-term benefits, host cities should focus on facilities that enhance urban life and do well for the community over a long period of time.
Olympic sports facilities should have great post-Olympic Game mass appeal for public use. Unless they are dismantled and materials recycled, as doing this would avoid losing a great part of the city. But not all the time are magnificent things built for the Olympic Games and forgotten in a city’s backdrop years later. Centennial Olympic Park would probably not have been constructed in Atlanta’s city center without the 1996 Summer Games (Bolduc, 2012). Currently the park is a centerpiece in downtown Atlanta as it still serves as an amazing event space. Usually monuments built for the Olympic Games in the form of stadiums and sporting venues quickly become little more than reminders of once glorious days. Actually the historical record of long-term benefit from Olympic-related sports facilities is tugged on by maintenance and operation costs (Zimbalist, 2012).
Economists find that local organizers and sports supporters exaggerate the benefits and underestimate the costs of hosting major events such as the Olympics. It may feel like a city is gaining while they really aren’t. For example, while Salt Lake City’s hotels and restaurants were booming with tourists during the 2002 Winter Games, other businesses not directly related the event suffered significant losses in sales. As a whole, economic activity the region actually fell during the Olympics. Studies of the 2006 World Cup in Germany showed that the country experienced little in areas of improvements in income or employment figures, just as some economists would have expected (Guerrero, 2010). However, surveys did notice an improvement in residents’ self-reported levels of happiness following the event. So the World Cup didn’t make the Germans rich, but it did appear to help them boost their overall happiness.
On the opposing side, there are some areas of The Games that do bring back long-term benefits to residents of host cities. They consistently focus on facilities put in place that improve transportation, communication and beauty. This enhances the quality of urban life in a city that could be on its way to descent and disappointment.
The Olympics are very costly, but they can also help create a more sustainable urban environment that encourages transit-use, revitalizes once-neglected urban districts, and enhances public luxuries. The 1992 Summer Olympics put Barcelona on the map as a world class tourist destination and the city has experienced a flow of visitors over the past two decades (Matthewman, 2009). Yes these are all short term benefits, but where are those long term assets? Well really expanded bridges, a few new roads, mass transit systems, and small environmental improvements are the only long-term benefits.
As you can see hosting the Olympic Games in your city could have its ups as well as it downs.
In conclusion, a city is losing more than it may feel like they are actually gaining by hosting the Olympic Games. There are some things you could gain but there are also important values and money you could lose after the Olympic Games. Mega-events such as these are exciting for citizens and politicians, but the economic costs tend to outweigh the economic benefits of holding such events.

-Perryman, Mark (2012) Do the Olympics Boost the Economy? www.thedailybeast.com 11/12/12 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/30/do-the-olympics-boost-the-economy-studies-show-the-impact-is-likely-negative.html
-Luna, Elisa (2012) How the 1992 Summer Olympics Benefitted Tourism in Barcelona http://ezinearticles.com 11/12/12 http://ezinearticles.com/?How-the-1992-Summer-Olympics-Benefitted-Tourism-in-Barcelona&id=4729740 -Arroyo, Federico (2012) Pros and Cons of Hosting Olympic Games http://prosandconshostingolimpics.com 11/12/12 http://prosandconshostingolimpics.blogspot.ca/ -Guerrero, Dani (2010) The Disadvantages of Hosting the Olympics Editorial http://hostingtheolympics5.blogspot.com/ 11/13/12 http://hostingtheolympics5.blogspot.com/2010/05/disadvantages-of-hosting-olympics.html -Matthewman, Richard (2009) Economic Impacts of Olympic Games http://www.locateinkent.com 11/13/12 http://www.locateinkent.com/images/assets/Economic%20Impacts%20of%20Olympic%20Games%20-%2009.07.09.pdf -Debatepedia (2009) Is it worth hosting the Olympic games? 11/13/12 -Fleming, Joe (2012) Hosting the Olympic Games: Is It Worth It? www.complexmagazine.com 11/13/12 http://www.complex.com/city-guide/2012/07/hosting-the-summer-olympics-is-it-worth-it -Zimbalist, Andrew (2012) 3 Reasons Why Hosting the Olympics Is a Loser’s Game www.theantlantic.com 11/14/12 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/3-reasons-why-hosting-the-olympics-is-a-losers-game/260111/