RE: World Cup - Escape from Reality aka "Bread and Circuses"
Smart nations are moving away from these gigantic wastes of money.
Brazil's government could fall over the cost of the WC and the Olympics. Brazil spent 20 Billion on the WC. What did they get for their money? A month of tourism, and multiple stadia that will have no use after the games. Manaus, where they spent several hundred million on a stadium, doesn't even have a soccer team. Brasilia's stadium cost over a billion bucks. Brasilia doesn't have a top level Brazilian soccer team.
Putin spent over 51 Billion for the Olympics in Sochi. Russian Oligarchs spent another 20 Billion. Games are over and now....there's little use for those facilities. Russians would rather go to Europe to ski, Turkey/Spain are warmer and nicer, and the whole place is empty.
Russia has announced that it will spend 20 Billion for World Cup 2018. Given the level of corruption and overruns at Sochi, as well as the extreme reluctance of Russian buisnesspersons to donate heavily again, the cost is estimated to rise to 75 Billion. Russia is building massive stadiums in places where there will be little, if any, use for the stadiums after the games. Yekaterinburg and Kaliningrad are two examples.
Qatar isn't even pretending that there will be any use for its stadiums after they host the World Cup in 2022. They're planning on tearing down all the stadium's save one after the games.
And then there's the distaste of the corruption needed to 'win' the games. Many places aren't going to go that route anymore.
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But people are getting smart about it. The IOC opened up bidding for the 2022 Winter Games. They want the games in the Americas or non-CIS Europe. Well there are exactly zero bids from the US, Zero bids from Canada, and Zero bids from Europe. As of now, only two bidders, Beijing and Almaty in Kazakhstan. The IOC is apparently deeply offended and worried that the West, from whom the vast majority of the IOC's legal revenues come from (TV etc.) have basically said "we're washing our hands of the whole mess". If no one in a civilized country is willing to host, then the Winter Games will sink into irrelevance. The feedback that the IOC is getting from some Western venues is, 'we really don't want the games in 2022 and we really don't think we're going to want them anytime in future if this is how we have to bid for the games and spend to produce them'. There are limited places the IOC can host a Winter Olympiad.
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I think the US should bid on the World Cup in 2026. They should announce that the bid will take the following form. "We will not build any stadiums, but will place the turf of your choosing in the existing stadiums used to host the games. We have any number of fantastic, already built stadiums to propose as venues'. Obviously there's security costs and other costs of putting on the games. So while everyone else is bidding 20 Billion while planning on spending 40 Billion, we will bid 4 Billion to put on the games (which would make the games profitable as a result of TV revenue, licensing revenue etc.).
Basically our bid is a nice way of saying 'you can make the games an orgy of waste, or you can host them without the waste'. We know you'll choose waste, but we just want to highlight that you are choosing waste.
There is some value to hosting the World Cup. The number of fans are greater, they're spread out over a greater area, and they stay for longer periods. But it isn't worth 20 Billion.
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The Summer Olympics is considered valuable by many nations. I fail to see why. They generate more income than the Winter games, but still involve a ton of wasteful and duplicative spending. Studies have shown that host cities actually have less total tourism in hosting years because the number of people avoiding the host city outweigh the number of tourists who travel there for the 2 weeks of the games. Hosting the games also usually involves massive disruptions to commerce. Every single Summer Olympics has lost money since Barcelona in 1992. And most have lost massive amounts of money. They'res no shortage of cities wishing to host the games. I hope none of them are in the US. But its not like any US city will be awarded the games. The IOC, which is largely funded by the US, is extremely anti-American.
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