A two-fer - first from this September 15, 2015 post at Reason:
Why Boston's Sports Fans Rejected the Olympics Boondoggle—and L.A. Said Bring It On
As the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) submits the city of Los Angeles as the country’s official nominee to host the 2024 Summer Games, sports fans in Boston are whooping it up like they did after the Red Sox finally won another World Series.
And with good reason. Earlier this year, the USOC had picked Boston to represent America in the Olympics-host sweepstakes. Then the sports-mad fans of the Red Sox, the Bruins, the Celtics, and the Patriots told city fathers—especially Mayor Martin J. Walsh—to pound sand when it came to hosting the Olympic Games with tax dollars.
How Boston’s rabid sports fans rejected the Olympics—and how chumps in Los Angeles enthusiastically stepped up to potential bankruptcy—is a tale worth understanding, especially the next time your city or state tries selling voters on a new stadium or venue for billionaire sports team owners.
And the decision is final - from yesterday's post written by Nick Gillespie - again, at Reason:
Los Angeles Just 'Won' the 2028 Summer Olympics. That Is SUCH Bad News
So Los Angeles will be hosting the Summer Olympics for a third time, in 2028 (the city previously hosted Olympics in 1932 and 1984). The city had originally tried to win hosting rights for the 2024 Games, which went to Paris instead. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which has had trouble finding cities willing and able to host its quadrennial summer boondoggles, went ahead and gave LA the nod 11 years from now.
My advice for residents in the city I once called home and where Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website, is to start packing your bags.
Really, just GTFO. 2028 may seem like a long time away, but it will sneak up on you and the last place anyone wants to be is in a city that has pledged billions—over $5 billion, in LA's case—to stage a boondoggle that will almost certainly suck all sorts of tax dollars and private resources out of the real economy and flush them down a unisex toilet in the basement of the Edifice Complex.
As Garrett Quinn explained for Reason in 2015, it's virtually impossible for a city to break even when hosting a Summer Games. The expected revenue is around $6 billion and the gate is split between the host city and the IOC (which takes a whopping 70 percent of the TV revenues alone!).
So before the first athlete gets bounced for failing a drug test, LA is already $2 billion in the red, assuming the bidders' cost estimate is correct, which it almost certainly isn't. The Beijing Games cost $40 billion and the London version cost $20 billion. Russia ponied up $50 billion for the poorly provisioned Sochi Games and Brazil has consistently lied about how much its Rio Games cost (officials say $13 billion while outside analysts put it closer to $20 billion). Montreal hosted the Games back in 1976, arguably at the peak of Cold War interest in the Olympics, and spent 30 years paying off its debt. But at least Bruce Jenner defeated communism (in the figure of Nikolai Avilov) in the decathlon back then. Americans will doubtless be more interested in the Games when they are held in LA than they are elsewhere, but history is rapidly leaving the Olympics behind for all sorts of reasons, including all the awful mascots.
Come on Nick - why don't you tell us what you really feel. A great rant. If they wanted to really symbolize the Olympic spirit, they should build a permanent stadium in Greece and use that for every event. No opportunity for bribery or kickbacks though...
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