As Brisbane celebrates its historic selection as host city for the 2032 Olympics, one of the questions which will be increasingly asked is whether the IOC’s “new normal” supposedly lower-cost Games are worth it or not.
The Games involve billions of dollars of spending, with budgets that always blow out beyond the original estimates.
Officially, the 2032 Games are estimated by the bidding city to be held at a cost of $5bn in 2021 dollars with an event that uses many existing venues, which can be modified with temporary structures, or venues such as the $1bn revamped Gabba which one could argue was justified anyway.
According to documents, the Brisbane bid will use 80 per cent of venues already existing or planned to be developed via temporary solutions.
But 2032 is a long way away.
We have already seen the costs of the Tokyo Olympics blow out to $20bn with the success of the Games very much in question, depending on how bad the Covid situation gets.
The line is that the 2032 Olympics will provide a “green and gold runway” for South East Queensland. But as anyone who has followed the Olympics knows, they can be far from events with roads paved in gold.
Olympic organisers in their budgets focus on the direct cost of the Games themselves, which will be partly offset by revenue from the International Olympic Committee (which funnels to the organisers a percentage of money from sponsorships and TV revenue), as well as domestic sponsorships, ticket sales and merchandising. But there are always other costs, including supporting infrastructure.
With an 11-year runway, who can tell how much costs will blow out or what unforeseen costs may emerge? Since Sydney hosted the Games in happier times in 2000, the cost of security around major events has skyrocketed in the post 9/11 world.
Plans for development of the Olympic site at Homebush also had to be revised to accommodate for the green and gold bell frog whose habitat was suddenly essential to save.
In the London Olympics of 2012, optimistic plans for Games security to be handled by private contractors such as G4S fell apart when the company was unable to secure enough workers, forcing the government to secure the Olympic sites with the military.
When Tokyo was chosen as the host city for 2020 back in 2013, who could have foreseen that the world would be gripped in a global pandemic?
That said, as Star president John O’Neill, an adviser to the Queensland 2032 bid, said on Wednesday, Brisbane’s selection will help put it on the world map.
“If you look at Olympic cities – London, Tokyo, Paris (2024), Los Angeles (2028), Brisbane – it already elevates Brisbane to the ranks of being a world-class city.”
As far as O’Neill sees it, the decision guarantees the region and his Star Group with hotel, casino, and retail properties in the two Olympic cities of Brisbane and the Gold Coast an 11-year run of free publicity as a tourist attraction.
While Sydney is lauded for being well run and one of the happiest Games in recent times, it is also well known for not generating the post-Games tourism revenue potential that many had hoped.
There are examples of the Games leaving a host city with cost burdens and white elephants, including the 1976 Games in Montreal, Athens in 2004 and the sad Rio Olympics of 2016.
Brisbane is seeking to compare itself to Barcelona, which hosted the 1992 Olympics, transforming a rundown port area into a vibrant tourist precinct.
The 1992 Games put the Spanish city on the map as a tourist and convention centre destination, its problem now coping with too much tourism (pre-Covid) rather than not enough.
“Like Barcelona before it, Brisbane 2032 will be a defining moment in the history of the city and the worldwide Olympic movement,” the Brisbane bid told the IOC session in Tokyo.
The London Games of 2012 was also an expensive but successful exercise in urban regeneration, with the site in the once rundown section of East London now a thriving part of the city, the centre of a world-class rail hub.
Frank Lowy’s Westfield group, with a store on the railway line literally at the entrance to the Olympic site, was a major player in the transformation of the area.
South East Queensland was already a fast-growing area and has a well-thought-out plan for the Games which has put it head and shoulders above any other candidates.
The 2000 Games did go a long way to cementing Australia’s reputation as a country which can successfully stage major events.
The successful staging of the 2000 Games highlighted Australia as a country that takes sport and major events seriously, attracting strong support from government, the private sector and the community.
The 2000 Games generated an unprecedented number of sports and events specialists who went on to work around the world, including Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates who is now a key player in the IOC overseeing the Tokyo Games.
As O’Neill points out, Sydney’s mistake was to see the 2000 Games as an end in itself.
Olympics minister Michael Knight was determined to host the Games without leaving the state with a major cost burden.
He achieved that, but those Games highlighted the need for planning on how the Games fits into the long-term goals of the host city.
There are also the intangibles of inspiring a new generation of athletes.
Many will question the economic viability of hosting a Games.
Ultimately hosting the Olympics is a moonshot project whose success will depend on the success of those involved in keeping costs down and making decisions for the long term of the host region.
Australia has the commitment and the experience to host a successful Games but anything can happen on a green and gold Olympic highway that is longer than ever.
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