As fewer and fewer cities in the world are capable of hosting the Olympic Games perhaps it’s time to look to Greece for their permanent home.
As the originator of the games, Greece could insist that Hellas become the permanent home of the Olympic games.
The Olympic Games are the most watched and the most expensive events on earth. This year, €4.38bn was budgeted for the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee, and IOC covered an additional €400m, including costs of host broadcast operations. But, host cities almost always blow their budget on the Games.
The delayed Tokyo Games in 2021, ended up costing an estimated US$15.4 billion, exceeding the proposed budget by 244 percent. And it was a similar story four years before – the Rio Olympics cost 352 percent more than the initial proposal.
As experts Sid Panayi and Borja García argue in a recent article in The Conversation fewer cities can afford to host the Olympics.
A total of 11 cities submitted applications to host the 2004 Athens Olympics, followed by ten bids for Beijing in 2008 and nine for London in 2012. After London, there was a significant reduction. The 2016 Olympics was awarded to Rio from just four bids, 2020 went to Tokyo from three and there were only two bids submitted by cities wanting to host the 2024 Games.
This declining interest prompted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to award the 2028 Olympics to Los Angeles, the only other bidder for the 2024 Games, without undertaking a public bidding process, they note.
Greece as a permanent home of the Olympic games
This declining interest is perhaps an opportunity for Greece to seek to become the permanent home of the modern Olympics.
The infrastructure is already in place, thanks to the 2004 games, and Athens has an excellent public transportation system. Roadways would not require a massive new economic investment nor the massive refurbishing of many of the sites and buildings designed for 2004.
There are three main arguments for hosting the Olympic games in Greece. Greece is the originator and home of the original Olympics, the corrupt bidding process will be eliminated and the massive cost of reinventing a city as a new Olympic venue every four years will be eliminated.
After the end of the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, the Greek king viewed it as such a success that he asked the IOC to consider making Athens the permanent home of the Olympics.
In a toast, King George I of Greece said he hoped “foreigners… will remember Athens as the peaceful meeting place of all nations, as the tranquil and permanent seat of the Olympic Games.”
Soon after, the US Olympic team at the time endorsed King George’s idea, writing that due to the existing infrastructure, Greece’s ‘competent’ administration, and the historical legacy, “these games should never be removed from their native soil.”
On the opposite side, many argue that the games need to expand their reach. The vision of Pierre de Coubertin in reviving the Olympics in 1896 was of a “perambulating games,” whose aim was to take the values of sport and the Olympic ideal of education through sport around the world, exhibiting the basic values of old-fashioned liberalism—freedom, equality, fairness and the rule of law.
Traveling Olympic Games Harm Local Economies
Local boosters for cities making bids frequently argue that the Olympics will produce a wave of economic benefits. Custom facilities, which have to be built quickly and to an absolutely hard deadline are necessary, which will undoubtedly lead to cost overruns to meet the hard deadlines. Transporting people between the venues may require costly infrastructure upgrades. The sites will need to be maintained, or turned into something else once the games finish.
And the economic benefits? Cities that host the Olympics don’t even necessarily see a burst of tourism. Although the Olympics certainly attracts a lot of sports fans, it scares off a lot of other tourists who want to avoid the traffic and other issues that might be problematic for a host city.
Some of the facilities can later be repurposed for revenue-generating sports but public stadiums do not have the best record at boosting local economic activity. Some of the infrastructure improvements, like investment in roads, may pay off, as long as these improvements facilitate local movement and not only Olympic movement.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) state their sustainability efforts include only building new sports venues in host cities that don’t have them.
“If a host does not need a new permanent sports venue, its leaders will not be asked to build one,” they said. “This has significantly reduced the costs of organizing the Games while ensuring their fundamental values of universality and diversity.”
How can Greece be the capital of the Olympic Games
Greek Reporter recently spoke with Paul Glastris, of the Washington Monthly and one of the proponents for bringing the games back to Greece.
Glastris spoke of what had changed since he initially advocated that the Games have a permanent home in Greece.
“The most important shift has been the steady strengthening of Greece’s relationship with Washington and with governments throughout the Eastern Mediterranean,” Glastris said.
“This has bought Athens considerable goodwill in places that matter. Whether that goodwill can usefully be brought to bear on Greece’s behalf with the International Olympic Committee I don’t know, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.”
Greek Reporter asked Glastris if there was some action that fans of the Games or Greeks themselves could take.
“My understanding is that the biggest hindrance to this idea is a lack of appetite for it, among the Greek political class,” he stated.
“If Greek elected officials and party leaders don’t want to fight for bringing the Olympic Games back to Greece permanently, it’s never going to happen. So probably the most effective thing Greeks in Greece and abroad can do is to let these political leaders know that this is a priority to them.”
A clear solution to the disastrous impact of the Games migrating from city to city is a permanent location. On an emotional level, athletes may not care where the Olympic Games are held. They simply want to compete in the Olympics. And there could be something meaningful about competing in the same spot where champions played years before.
