The cost of hosting the Olympics has varied massively in recent years, from Sochi’s $59.7bn in Russia to Salt Lake City’s $2.9bn in the United States. Yet while the cost can be huge, the economic benefits are far from clear.
One of the biggest costs associated with hosting the Olympics is infrastructure. This includes sports facilities (such as arenas), housing, and transportation. Costs are typically higher for summer Games, because hundreds of thousands of tourists can descend.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) requires cities to have at least 40,000 hotel rooms for spectators and an Olympic Village that can house 15,000 athletes and officials.
In 2019, the IOC adopted changes to make it less expensive, extending the bidding period and broadening the geographic requirements to allow multiple cities, states, or countries to co-host. But this has not yet translated into more bidders.
When the IOC voted to give the 2030 Winter Games to the French Alps and the 2034 Winter Games to Salt Lake City, both were the only candidates.
When you consider that it took Montreal until 2006 to pay for their 1976 Games, and when you remember that the billions Greece spent helped bankrupt it, a lack of bidders comes as less of a surprise.
Paris budgeted about $8bn for the 2024 Olympics when it won the bid in 2017. That budget has since grown. Still, unless it has completely ballooned, the city could soon have hosted one of the cheapest summer Games in recent history.
