The Future of The Olympics

[Kyriakos]

Nothing to be sorry about, Marla, i mean Athens and corruption is nothing next to the games being hosted by France which infamously murdered a few hundred greek people so as to steal the Winged Nike statue and take it to the Louvre. But you are ideal for the current olympics, no problem

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Smaller cities which don't bid to host the Olympics can of course accomodate that many visitors. That's not their problem. What they fear though is to need to build facilities which won't be profitable in the long run. The "bad" example is Athens (sorry Kyriakos) which endebted itself in order to build stuff which are only decaying since then. Bigger cities actually have the domestic markets to make all facilities profitable over time, even for niche sports such rowing or canoeing.

"Smaller cities can of course accommodate that many visitors." Care to substantiate that? I live in a two city urban area with a total population of about half a million...that can accommodate about 10,000 visitors. That's 1% of the necessary capacity.

Las Vegas is four times the size and could probably accommodate the visitor load for an Olympics...but again that is their primary economic engine and even then they'd have to shut down to repurpose their accommodations to Olympic visitors since they run pretty close to full capacity.

I think the number of cities that actually have the requisite tourism carrying capacity is probably very limited, though I haven't yet found a comprehensive list of estimated values.

 

[Marla_Singer]

By "smaller", I meant cities with less than 10 million people, since the point being made was that it was the minimum population of all metro areas hosting the Olympics from 2008 to 2028.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

But are all the installations constructed for those Olympics still maintained and operational? The real tragedy is when they're only used for this one spectacle, and then left to rot. E.g. the stadia in Greece and Sotchi.

One of the reasons Calgary is optimistic about getting the 2026 Winter Games is because most of their venues from 1988 have been maintained, and are operational. Some things would need to be rebuilt, of course, and some other things would need renovations to bring them up to modern standards, but it's a doable prospect.

Do you mean badminton ? It's great ! Every kid in school plays it in France, because it's really simple to set up and really fun to play

Badminton is one of the sports I was actually good at.

By "smaller", I meant cities with less than 10 million people, since the point being made was that it was the minimum population of all metro areas hosting the Olympics from 2008 to 2028.

I assume you're talking only about the Summer Olympics. Vancouver is one of Canada's largest cities, but it has nowhere near 10 million people, even counting the surrounding towns and smaller cities.

Assuming Calgary wins its bid for 2026, there aren't 10 million people in the entire province, let alone one city. And yet they did just fine 30 years ago and if they have another go in 2026, it should go well enough again.

Of course I would expect that some people look back at 1988 with a lot of nostalgia... that was the year of the Battle of the Brians (in men's figure skating), Eddie "the Eagle" Edwards (in ski jumping), and Alberto "La Bomba" Tomba (in men's downhill skiing). Oh, and the Jamaican bobsled team, too.

 

[dutchfire]

Tbh it is somewhat stupid to force as olympic events some sports which neither have history in the games nor are played by most of the global population. Eg that funny type of tennis with very light 'ball', or other hipster stuff inevitably would lead to venues that have no use after they are done.
Not that i doubt for a second that the usual party (with foreigners bribing and making a fortune) didn't happen here in the olympics.

Yeah, because it is totally impossible to play any other sport in a venue built for badminton.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Nothing to be sorry about, Marla, i mean Athens and corruption is nothing next to the games being hosted by France which infamously murdered a few hundred greek people so as to steal the Winged Nike statue and take it to the Louvre. But you are ideal for the current olympics, no problem

Yeah, thanks for that. It does represent "Nike" but it's known as "Samothrace's Victory" over here. I love it personally, it's really cool.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yeah, thanks for that. It does represent "Nike" but it's known as "Samothrace's Victory" over here. I love it personally, it's really cool.

Well, yes. Point being - as you gathered - that bothering with less important stuff leaves one exposed to reference to more glaring paradoxes. As in having a french regiment summarily execute the people in Samothrace cause they dared to try to prevent the statue from being stolen. Somewhat doesn't shed a positive light to France re the olympic games (or other issues).
Re Athens, afaik it has more visitors per year than the entire population of the country, likely due to minor sites including the Acropolis. They may suck in various ways, but have the infrastructure to acommodate visitors in massive number.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

@Kyriakos: I'm surprised you don't know the history of badminton, considering that it was played at least 2000 years ago in ancient Greece.

The origins of the game of badminton date back at least 2,000 years to the game of battledore and shuttlecock played in ancient Greece, China, and India.

A very long history for one of the Olympics newest sports! Badminton took its name from Badminton House in Gloucestershire, the ancestral home of the Duke of Beaufort, where the sport was played in the last century. Gloucestershire is now the base for the International Badminton Federation.

The IBF was formed in 1934 with nine members: Canada, Denmark, France, Netherlands, England, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The United States joined four years later. Membership increased steadily over the next few years with a surge in new members after the Olympic Games debut at Barcelona.

I'm not sure what an ancient Greek hipster looked like. Are there any among the surviving statues or depicted on any pottery?

 

[Kyriakos]

@Kyriakos: I'm surprised you don't know the history of badminton, considering that it was played at least 2000 years ago in ancient Greece.


I'm not sure what an ancient Greek hipster looked like. Are there any among the surviving statues or depicted on any pottery?

Well, ok, i just mentioned that cause people would know it as a game. Obviously the stadia-tied ones wouldn't be the badminton in the first place. But a great many team sports which are not played in most of the world tend to leave behind stadia which can't easily be changed to something else -- though i am sure that a good plan would help there, but as noted i am sure a lot of money was lost to bribes by our euro friends as always.

 

[uppi]

The Olympics in Atlanta averaged 500,000 spectators per day. If you assume that every day was average so the peak is 500,000 (no way, so the peak was probably a lot higher), and that the same people watched every day (agin, no way that's realistic), then your host city 'only' needs the infrastructure to deal with half a million visitors. How many cities have that? And again, that's unrealistically low by a huge margin.

Las Vegas can accommodate three million visitors per month, and they are a smallish city with only about two million in the metro area...but their entire economic engine is built on accommodation. So I think that's a fair indication of the kind of infrastructure required.

There are quite a few cities that can host several million visitors per week.

Spoiler :

One notable example is Kiel, which hosts over 3 million visitors in 10 days every year, despite having a population of less than 250000

 

[Timsup2nothin]

There are quite a few cities that can host several million visitors per week.

Spoiler :

One notable example is Kiel, which hosts over 3 million visitors in 10 days every year, despite having a population of less than 250000

Notice that your map tops out at cities hosting >300K visitors. No doubt that some of them could host the 500K plus that is required, but I still think that calling it 'quite a few' doesn't counter the fact that the vast majority of cities that don't bid to host the Olympics simply couldn't do it.

BTW, things to note about Kiel...the metro area population is more like 600K than 250K, so about the same size as my little two city urban center. Kiel is also able to host visitors without having to accommodate them, since Hamburg is only fifty miles away with a population of five million in the metro area. I mean, Palmdale could host the Olympics too, and just have everyone stay in LA, but that's not the point.

 

[uppi]

Notice that your map tops out at cities hosting >300K visitors. No doubt that some of them could host the 500K plus that is required, but I still think that calling it 'quite a few' doesn't counter the fact that the vast majority of cities that don't bid to host the Olympics simply couldn't do it.

A 25% increase over what already happens every year isn't something that couldn't be handled with some additional investment. And just in Germany, there are 6 cities were confident enough in their abilities to host the Olympics that they made a serious attempt at bidding (4 for Summer Olympics, 3 for Winter Olympics). In the recent attempts, the issue wasn't that they wouldn't be able to support it, but that they weren't able to convince the citizens that it was a good idea.

BTW, things to note about Kiel...the metro area population is more like 600K than 250K, so about the same size as my little two city urban center. Kiel is also able to host visitors without having to accommodate them, since Hamburg is only fifty miles away with a population of five million in the metro area. I mean, Palmdale could host the Olympics too, and just have everyone stay in LA, but that's not the point.

No, they cannot all stay in Hamburg, because you cannot transfer back-and-forth 400k people every day with two four-lane highways and a two-track railway line. For German standards, the infrastructure and population around Kiel is almost rural.

 

[Arwon]

The Olympics in Atlanta averaged 500,000 spectators per day. If you assume that every day was average so the peak is 500,000 (no way, so the peak was probably a lot higher), and that the same people watched every day (agin, no way that's realistic), then your host city 'only' needs the infrastructure to deal with half a million visitors. How many cities have that? And again, that's unrealistically low by a huge margin.

Las Vegas can accommodate three million visitors per month, and they are a smallish city with only about two million in the metro area...but their entire economic engine is built on accommodation. So I think that's a fair indication of the kind of infrastructure required.

This shouldn't imply a need for 500k tourist accommodation rooms or anything like that, because locals buy most of the tickets. In Sydney about 6.7m tickets were sold (which also is probably 500k per day, more on peak days). 77% of those sales, about 5m, were to the public within Australia and a big chunk of that was surely the 4.5m Sydney residents or the 6m in New South Wales. Means the infrastructure test at the 500k level is more just moving people into the sites rather than finding accommodation.

Sydney gets about 14m visitors and about 100m visitor nights a year, which is about 270k visitor nights per day, so that's the background level of visitor. You'd assume non-olympic travel dried up during the Olympics, but total visitors were probably still higher than this. At least half of these typical visitors stay in things other than typical tourist accommodation - private short term rentals are very common for international visitors and domestics often stay with friends and family.

My best statistics research on the tourist situation in Sydney during the Olympics suggests there was maybe 35k hotel/serviced apartment guest rooms in Sydney each night and about 80k beds. Plus obviously an unknown number of hostels and other informal "non-registered" rentals etc. Sydney also chartered 7k worth of cruise ship beds and found 20k beds through a private housing rental program. Overall those expanded capacity by quite a lot (33k rooms to potentially nearly 60k?)

Overall it is thought that there was 110k to 130k foreign visitors (but that includes the 20k actual Olympics people) and about 350k domestic visitors who were coming specifically for the Olympics. Two thirds of the domestics either daytripped from outside Sydney or stayed with friends/family, or otherwise found something informal. So it was about 100k foreign visitors needing accommodation for one assumes at least 4 days, and another 120k domestics who mostly came for shorter periods.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

The Paris olympics are going to be held in areas in need of investment. It looks like it will solve some of the infrastructure problems in the north of Paris.

A No Go Zone Olympics?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Right. It's fashionable in wonky city politics circles to complain about how publicly funded stadium projects are a bad idea, because there is very little economic return on the investment. Which is true, mostly - it depends on many localized factors as to what kind of return one can expect on an expenditure of public funds for stadium construction, but public underwriting to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars is likely never going to be recovered.

But I have to point out again that really the question is how best to use the funds that go towards these kinds of projects. I'm happy that cities that hosted the Olympics sometimes get great infrastructure projects that they really need but the question remains - what was stopping them from getting them in the first place? People shouldn't just be happy that their cities finally got around to improvements when they won the Olympics, they should be pissed they didn't get the improvements they needed when they needed them.

And infrastructure is fine and all but there are lots of other areas that cities are underfunding outside of infrastructure like healthcare, education and so on.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

A 25% increase over what already happens every year isn't something that couldn't be handled with some additional investment. And just in Germany, there are 6 cities were confident enough in their abilities to host the Olympics that they made a serious attempt at bidding (4 for Summer Olympics, 3 for Winter Olympics). In the recent attempts, the issue wasn't that they wouldn't be able to support it, but that they weren't able to convince the citizens that it was a good idea.



No, they cannot all stay in Hamburg, because you cannot transfer back-and-forth 400k people every day with two four-lane highways and a two-track railway line. For German standards, the infrastructure and population around Kiel is almost rural.

We transfer 200K people back and forth to LA every day with one six lane highway and a vastly underused single track railway with several passing sidings.

I'm pretty sure that the winter games are an order of magnitude smaller than the summer games, so certainly more cities would be equipped to host those.

As to investing in raising the tourism carrying capacity...I think that might be an example of where things can go wrong. Our TCC, as I said earlier, is only about 10,000. We've had a few events that exceeded our limits and required people to day trip from LA and be unhappy, but our solution is to be more responsible about scheduling so that normal flow plus event flow aren't fed by multiple events that will push past capacity. To invest in increasing that capacity would require committing to generating enough events to use that capacity consistently, and that's not easy.

 

[Arwon]

And infrastructure is fine and all but there are lots of other areas that cities are underfunding outside of infrastructure like healthcare, education and so on.

Not that cities should really be funding those if you're interested in geographical equity anyway...

 

[dutchfire]

A 25% increase over what already happens every year isn't something that couldn't be handled with some additional investment. And just in Germany, there are 6 cities were confident enough in their abilities to host the Olympics that they made a serious attempt at bidding (4 for Summer Olympics, 3 for Winter Olympics). In the recent attempts, the issue wasn't that they wouldn't be able to support it, but that they weren't able to convince the citizens that it was a good idea.



No, they cannot all stay in Hamburg, because you cannot transfer back-and-forth 400k people every day with two four-lane highways and a two-track railway line. For German standards, the infrastructure and population around Kiel is almost rural.

An ICE train can take 750 sitting passengers and 1500 passengers total. A well-functioning train network [not Germany...] can easily handle 1 train every 15 minutes on one track, and 1 train back every 15 minutes on the other track. If you do that for 12 hours a day [incoming trains from 06:00 till 18:00], that double track carries 70k people per day.

That's already a solid chunk of the 300k visitors per day that we're looking for, using a single train line. And Kiel is somewhat unusually in that it is effectively a dead end in the train network. Most cities have trains in at least two directions.

 

[Hrothbern]

The real metropoles have an advantage
but urban clusters can do very well, depending on the density and quality of the logistics, train, subway, motorway,
such a cluster allows more hotels in reach and spreading of sport facilities for re-use.

A relatively small city like Amsterdam (population 850,000) handled 18 mio tourists in 2016 (average 50,000 a day)
and on Queens/Kings birthday it is handling about 800,000 visitors (indicating the logistic strenght).



From this article some economy: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/economics-hosting-olympic-games

To consider is that the income of tickets is with less than 10% only a fraction of the cost.
2008 Beijing: total cost: FC 20 Billion USD, Actual 45 Billion USD, and ticket revenue only 274 Mio USD, or 0.6% !!!
2012 London: total cost: FC 5 Billion USD, Actual 18 Billion USD, and ticket revenue much better but only 1.2 Billion UDS, or 7%

TV is delivering much more than tickets. In Beijing 4% of the total cost, in London 22% of the total cost.
The economics however of the Olympics is rather perverse because the IOC takes away 50% of the TV income to sustain her fancy VIP organisation !

An organisation that is so fantastic that Toronto decided not to bid on the 2024 Olympics because they decided that the needed 60 Million bidding cost were already too high.
Imagine.... all that money burning at the bidding from all these countries trying to get it.

I think the madness is at the IOC, and once that is adressed, practical solutions are much more likely to evolve.

on that madness and corruption of the IOC: https://www.flotrack.org/articles/5053760-the-iocs-true-ideals-corruption-and-greed

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Some of the politicians here in Alberta are very enthusiastic about hosting the Winter Olympics in 2026.

Thank goodness the Mayor of Calgary is saying that it has to be good for Calgary, and not just because of his own preferences.

There is a lot of nostalgia for the 1988 Olympics, and as the article says, Calgary has taken good care of its venues. It already has most of what's needed to host the Olympics again.

One issue that has come up is where to hold the alpine skiing. It was at Nakiska in 1988, but somebody is now suggesting Banff-Lake Louise. That's not good, because it would mean Olympic hordes descending on sensitive National Park areas. The federal government would have to give permission for that, and I would expect there to be protests from the environmentalists and conservationists.

The price tag mentioned in the article - $4.6 billion - is an obscene amount of money to spend on a 16-day sports festival, when that kind of money could do so much more for the people of Alberta who aren't in the economic class of people who could afford to attend these games.