Transcript
Introduction
Matt
Welcome back to Business Breakdowns. This is Matt Reustle, and today, we are diving into the economics of the Olympics. It's a timely episode with the Paris Games ongoing right now, and the economic reality for host cities is extremely poor. It's estimated that Paris is going to spend $9 billion for these 2024 games. Now, that's an improvement versus the $35 billion spent by Tokyo in 2020, the $60 billion spent by Sochi in 2014, and a similar number spent by Beijing in 2008.
But even with that improvement, with Paris spending, let's say, $9 billion, it's a loss compared to the revenue that they'll generate, which is somewhere in the mid-single-digit billion dollars. Our guest today is Andrew Zimbalist, author and economics professor at Smith College. Andrew has written extensively on the economics of the Olympics, specifically for host cities.