The World Cup and Olympics should be totally privatized
- Thread starter A2K78
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- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
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- Johnnypenso
Actually they aren't prohibitive, because if they were done privately, you wouldn't have all the huge legacy assets built that commonly accompanies Olympic bids, you'd use existing facilities. The L.A. Olympics in 1984 did this to a great degree and I believe it was profitable. What they have become is a bragging rights contest to see who can waste the most taxpayer's money with no accountability. Doing it privately would keep costs way down and with the massive ticket sales and tv rights revenue, they could easily be hugely profitable....
And for the OP's suggestion, the cost of hosting events of those magnitude are just too prohibitive. Hell, even hosting a F1 race needs to have a state support.
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I'd say 1984 was a bit skewed, because I think LA was literally the only place that was willing to do it that year so they were able to tell the IOC to go screw on some of the things (and/or corruption) they usually get when they go through a formal bidding process; and a decent amount of the private investors in 1984 took a bath over it anyway even if the city itself made out well.
Plus if you narrowed it down to cities that have the kind of infrastructure and existing sporting facilities that LA has to make private funding feasible, it would probably devolve to some sort of LA/London/Toronto/Seoul handoff unless "private industry" in certain other countries got involved and started another spending war with actual private businesses. At which point we'd be back where we are now, where host cities actively don't want to bother with it because they can't compete with whatever military junta wants to throw tons of money at it instead of things like" food" and "not slaughtering their civilians"
Plus if you narrowed it down to cities that have the kind of infrastructure and existing sporting facilities that LA has to make private funding feasible, it would probably devolve to some sort of LA/London/Toronto/Seoul handoff unless "private industry" in certain other countries got involved and started another spending war with actual private businesses. At which point we'd be back where we are now, where host cities actively don't want to bother with it because they can't compete with whatever military junta wants to throw tons of money at it instead of things like" food" and "not slaughtering their civilians"
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A privately-run Olympics would be much different from the current Olympics. It would be much smaller. There's little to no profit for private businesses to build the kind of facilities needed to host all the games at once.
At which point, it would be no different than what happens now during non-Olympic years:
At which point, it would be no different than what happens now during non-Olympic years:
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...I was under the impression it was '88 Seoul that actually was in black for the first time...or should I hit the history books again?
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Publically owned infrastructure to support the event might be a sticking point. Crucifying London transport for a couple of weeks wasn't that popular with the locals, I'd imagine it would be even worse if it was done in order to line the pockets of SuperMegaGlobalHyperCorp Ltd.
Joey D
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There isn't any incentives for a company to put on the Olympics, however there are plenty of incentives for companies to be associated with it. If you're a hotel chain, you don't really want to outlay any money for a swimming race or a bobsled run, but you will gladly sell your rooms to people coming to see those events.
Really, all cities need to do for the Olympics is stop trying to outdo each other and instead focus on providing a safe, clean atmosphere that focuses on the game itself. They also don't need to build costly stadiums if there are already stadiums intact that will work. It will still be a costly endeavor, but there will be less ground to make up to make it profitable or at least break even.
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- Johnnypenso
If the event was privately funded, that would be even more incentive to shut down transportation for a couple of weeks. The benefits to the city are massive, tens or hundreds of millions injected into the local economy at little to no cost beyond inconveniencing the locals for 2 weeks of their life.
The incentive is profit. Your point about using existing facilities is spot on. Privatizing the Olympics would put the onus on the private investors to arrange for facilities and of course using existing infrastructure would be more profitable. This would limit the number of places that would bid on and host Olympics but would avoid the financial boondoggles that occur in places like Greece, Russia, Brazil, Montreal etc.
The 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics are a hint of what strong free enterprise leadership can do. Mitt Romney was brought in to turn things around and ended up turning a $100Millon profit and brought in massive amounts of sponsor dollars to the games, record amounts I believe. Our recent Winter Olympics also left a positive financial legacy
http://www.olympic.org/news/vancouv...al-bow-with-positive-financial-figures/234833
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- I_Grayson_Fox_I
The way the Olympics should work is each country bids, the winner gets to host but all nations that are competing chip in some money for construction.
This way one country does not spend millions building a stadium that will be used once.
Or each country that wants to host, must promise to use the stadium for other sporting events.
Sydney uses the old olympic stadium for the cricket, rugby, ect.
Greece used their stadium once and now it is falling apart.
This would have also contributed to their huge debt since they would have borrowed money to build it all.
This way one country does not spend millions building a stadium that will be used once.
Or each country that wants to host, must promise to use the stadium for other sporting events.
Sydney uses the old olympic stadium for the cricket, rugby, ect.
Greece used their stadium once and now it is falling apart.
This would have also contributed to their huge debt since they would have borrowed money to build it all.
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Meanwhile, Beijing has won the rights to the 2022 Winter Olympics, becoming the first city to host both the Summer and Winter Games:
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-...historic-day-after-landing-2022-games/6664834
It was a surprisingly close contest, with Beijing beating Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan (of all places - but if Formula 1 can go to Azerbaijan, then I guess that the Olympics can go to Kazakhstan) by just four votes.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-...historic-day-after-landing-2022-games/6664834
It was a surprisingly close contest, with Beijing beating Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan (of all places - but if Formula 1 can go to Azerbaijan, then I guess that the Olympics can go to Kazakhstan) by just four votes.
Tired Tyres
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If it's left to private enterprise, they wouldn't be using taxpayer funds for anything. They'd either have to have the facilities built, or use existing.
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