Riding the Dead Elephant

And some would look towards Rio, and say – ‘Alas! The quadrennial circus has finally started.’

The number of such naysayers is definitely and rapidly increasing. The event, which used to be a matter of a city’s and a nation’s pride, is gradually finding few takers. The Winter Games of 2022 will be hosted by Beijing, which defeated Almaty (in the dictatorship of Kazakhstan) in the voting – after seven of the nine candidate cities withdrew from the race. Cities like Oslo, Stockholm, and Quebec City were no longer willing to host those Games. And this reluctance is not limited to Winter Games only. Boston, Hamburg, and Toronto have already withdrawn their bids for the 2024 Summer Games; and the race is now between Rome, Budapest, Los Angeles, and Paris only – and there is growing public discontent, at least in Rome and Budapest, against their bids.

The writing on the wall is clear: There is a growing aversion among the populace from hosting the games – which is forcing democratic governments to stay away. And only dictatorships/autocracies, which value the so-called ‘national pride’ above the public sentiment, remain willing. As Christopher Gaffney, a prominent voice in anti-Olympic movement, puts it – “Wherever we see an educated population that has a relatively free press, relatively high levels of governmental transparency, and that has put it up for a referendum, in every one of those cases we have seen the Olympics be rejected.  Without exception.” No one wants to play host any more.

If we compare today’s situation with the unmatched financial success of 1984 Games at Los Angeles and the subsequent increase in the number of bidders, we realize that things have gone terribly wrong somewhere in between. In fact, the seeds of this deterioration were hidden in the success of 1984 itself. Pre-1984, the Games used to be relatively low-key, largely amateur, events – yet the 1976 Montreal Games were a huge financial disaster. The city took three decades to pay-off its Olympic debts; and the interest in hosting Olympics suddenly waned. Los Angeles remained the only bidder for the 1984 Games, and was, therefore, able to dictate terms to IOC. The IOC was cut out of all the TV and sponsorship deals, and the city succeeded in making a sizeable profit from the Games (maybe for the first and only time).

However, the IOC was subsequently able to use the situation of 1984 for its own advantage – by showcasing the financial success of that event to motivate other cities to bid. The number of bidders rapidly increased to eleven for 2004 Games. IOC became a monopoly right holder, which had a large group of cities raising the stakes to out-do each other. As a result, the Games gradually began to display illogical, and often vulgar, lavishness.

And then came Athens (2004), Beijing (2008) and London (2012). Athens became the perfect example of what the Games should not be. The internet is clogged with slide-shows of empty, broken, useless stadiums, built to welcome the coming Games, and then abandoned, allowed to fill with weeds, rodents and other signs of human escape. Does a European or Asian city really need a baseball stadium, or a canoeing centre? No wonder the residents of Boston, or Oslo, or Stockholm don’t want their city to be the next Athens. This, followed by the excesses of Beijing and London – which actually spent as much as four times the original budget – woke people up. And hence the resistance came.

The most irrefutable argument against the Games is on account of civic priorities. Does it make sense to spend billions of dollars of tax-payers money, and to displace the poor away from inner city areas, to construct a stadium which no one will care for after the end of Games? Aptly put forward by Chris Dempsey, one of the leaders of No Boston Olympics campaign – “… if our governor and mayor were focused on building a stadium and building a velodrome, they are going to be less focused on improving education and fixing roads.” And Gaffney adds – “We’re not going to spend tax money on hosting a three-week party.”

It is high time that IOC realizes that it is riding a dead elephant. The powers of IOC exist only if cities show up to bid – and, if the status quo continues, the bidding between Beijing and Almaty will soon be the future of Olympic bidding – among cities in countries which will be ready to spend any amount just in hope of making a political statement.

And the opposition to hosting the Games will gradually turn into opposition to Games itself. As Gaffney is already saying – "We need to have a serious rethink about the way these events drive inequality on a global scale. And the best way to do that is to stop them. Full stop."