The Olympic movement has noble origins, and undoubtedly gives some good publicity to minor sports that otherwise would get very little. When else would we be glued to the TV to watch a curling event?
However, the cost has been getting alarmingly out of control. The cost of the Beijing games is of course a state secret, but has been estimated at around $50 billion. This is a lot of money even for a country as rich as China, and translates into a lot of rice that could otherwise be eaten by starving peasants.
Of course, nobody likes to be heard saying at the Olympic Games are rubbish. It's even as unacceptable as saying that the Paralympic Games are an embarrassment. The games are a perfect event for politicians, national and local, and media types, to get a free holiday at the taxpayers expense. Martin Lewis would definitely approve because, because of the extraordinary sums spent on preparations and security, the games are stage micro-managed to ensure that they produce only Good News.
Politicians always argue that the games bring in extra revenue in the form of tourism, even though the evidence is that real tourists actively avoid going to a country at the time that the games are taking place. Certainly the games are a perfect excuse for hotels and airlines to hugely increase their prices, but their windfall must be largely offset by low numbers. I was actually in Beijing at the time of the last games and the cost of accommodation had indeed increased around tenfold compared to normal. What I found amazing though was that hotel occupancy in the city was, during the period of the games, less than forty percent of normal. I am confident that during the London games we'll see a similar exodus of normal tourists from the City, to be replaced by a smaller, but infinitely better funded, members of the political class.
It is interesting to consider what long-term benefits accrued to Greece after its hosting of the Olympics in 2004. This article, written at the time, predicted that it would all end in tears: how prescient this now seems as we watch the collapse of the Greek economy brought about by its government's inability to get control of costs. One thing that is a racing certainty is that the London Olympics will cost many times more than the original budget, e.g. here. Don't forget that the original forecast cost to the public purse was a mere 3.4 billion pounds!
