Olympics and Cost.

  It is that time of year when people are beginning to gear up for the Winter Olympics.  They begin on February 9th in South Korea and end on February 25.  I loved the Winter Olympics as I grew up because I was in awe of the ice skaters.  The men and women made the sport seem so easy and graceful.  The first time I tried ice skating, I fell a few times, felt as if my ankles were trying to fold faster than someone in a game of poker, and it left me sore.

I realized there are two ways one can look at the cost of the Olympics.  The first is the actual cost of the games themselves.  There are articles out there such as this one which states the Olympics hosted in London were predicted to cost $6.5 billion but ended up costing a whopping $20 Billion.  Almost 3 times the original amount. The games in Sochi ran $50 billion, making it one of the most expensive in history.  The Olympics in Rio were less expensive but still almost $5 billion, who knows how much of a hardship it was on the country's overall budget?  This site also  has a wonderful infographic on the percentage overrun of both summer and winter Olympics.  It appears that every set of Olympic games have experienced overages since 1960.

This article looks into how such a debt effects the countries after the games.  For instance, Montreal ended up with a debt of $1.5 million which took three decades to pay off.  This article has in infographic depicting the revenues earned from television broadcasting.  It also takes time to explain why several potential bidders for future games have withdrawn.

The other way to look at the Olympic Games is to look at the cost of attending the games.  One has to calculate the airfares, the hotel cost, food, souvenirs, tickets, etc.  Money has a sample budget for attending the Winter Olympics in 2018.  They calculate the cost is close to $5000 per person to attend only a few activities.  I looked up prices and if you could still get tickets for any event, you could be paying between $500 and $2000 for a package.

Although the article chose to use $950 for the average cost for airfare, its actually better to use the cost from your local airport because it adds a more realistic element.  I can guarantee traveling from Alaska to South Korea is going to run between $1500 and $2000 per person depending on the airline itself.  They quoted $1800 for the hotel for the Olympics but I've seen rates of more like $3500 to $7000 for the whole time through Booking.com.

It would be interesting to have students figure out the cost of a trip to the Olympics.

Let me know what you think.  I'd love to hear.