Quote: (07-03-2016 10:56 PM)Teutatis Wrote:
Why do cities still want to host the Olympics anyway? It's billions down the drain for a couple of weeks or publicity, not worth it.
Mostly world recognition, its a pride thing. Same reason why cities build new professional sports stadiums in many cases. I was watching a video on the financial disaster that was the Montreal Olympics in 1976. It went a billion dollars over budget and took 30 years to pay off. One of the local politicians in the video said to the effect "once you heard the crowd roaring all of the worries about the financial situation went away. We wanted the world to come to Montreal."
I predict in the future that the Olympics will start to get "boring" and award it to many of the cities that have hosted it in the past who have the experience and infrastructure to handle it. It'll be the only way to save the Games. I know that there was hope for an Olympics in Africa or the Middle East one day and to include countries on the lower end of development in the Olympic movement but now that is looking slim. Expect to see cities such as L.A, Paris, Berlin, etc. mainly European and North American cities (with some NE Asia thrown in) to dominate in the host selection for years to come. The South American experiment is proving to be a huge embarrassment.