Jon Gabriel
  • Home
  • Words
  • Media
  • Design
  • Contact

Ricochet: Sorry, LA, But You’re Hosting the Olympics

9/13/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
On Monday, the International Olympics Committee “awarded” the 2024 Summer Games to Paris and the 2028 Summer Games to Los Angeles. The leaders of both cities were thrilled at the announcement, pointing to the honor, legacy, and other unmeasurable vagaries the Olympics will bring.
​
But hosting the five-ring circus hasn’t worked out well in modern history:

“Like anything worth fighting for, this was a long journey,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said. “Little by little, we got a victory.”

After the membership gave the cities a standing ovation, IOC President Thomas Bach added: “It is really this win-win-win situation we were all together looking for.”

Bach and Garcetti sat at a long table where the mayor signed the “host city contract,” obligating L.A. to serve as a financial backstop, paying off any debts should the estimated $5.3-billion sporting event run over budget.
Cost overruns have been a constant companion to the Olympics. The most recent Summer Games in Rio famously blasted through budgets, resulting in economic and political turmoil that helped oust Brazil’s president before her term was up. (And now her successor is under investigation for corruption.)

​Sochi (2014) came in 289 percent over budget, Lake Placid (1980) was 324 percent over budget, and Montreal (1976) ended up a staggering 720 percent over budget. The average overrun for Summer Games is 176 percent. From FiveThirtyEight:
The numbers above come from a new study led by Bent Flyvbjerg at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, who looked at six decades of Olympic budgets. It wasn’t easy — detailed cost overrun data is only available for 19 of the 30 games taking place since 1960, a paucity which Flyvbjerg and his colleagues found galling. “It means — incredible as it may sound — that for more than a third of the games between 1960 and 2016 no one seems to know what the cost overrun was,” they wrote….

​“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.”
Fortunately for Angelenos, a grassroots group called NOlympics LA is continuing their effort to stop the games. “The notion that ‘L.A. is going to have the Olympics, one way or another’ isn’t necessarily true, as many opportunities still exist to intervene and stop them entirely.”

​They have an uphill battle, but those living in the city better hope they succeed.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012

    Categories

    All
    Arizona
    Arizona Republic
    Art
    Business
    Buzzfeed
    Communication
    Culture
    Daily Caller
    Design
    Drugs
    Economy
    Education
    Energy
    Environment
    Family
    Food & Drink
    Freedomworks
    Free Speech
    Gender
    Guns
    Health Care
    Heartland Institute
    Humor
    Immigration
    International
    Journalism
    Military
    Music
    Neatorama
    NY Post
    Outrage
    Philosophy
    Photoshop
    Politics
    Red Tape
    Religion
    Ricochet
    Social Media
    Technology
    Unions
    USA Today
    Wall Street Journal

    RSS Feed

© 2017  Jon Gabriel. All rights reserved.
  • Home
  • Words
  • Media
  • Design
  • Contact