We should host the Olympics in the same place every time

What is your city / country?

Oh yeah. Let those Europeans have it. No corruptions! No country would have an edge because no country is within 1000km radius of Switzerland.

Better yet, do what you can to ignore and shun these corrupt proceedings. The Olympics depends on people treating it as something special. Same for FIFA. Mock people wearing Qatar shirts, just as you would someone promoting homeopathy.

Beijing shipped out the Uyghurs, not the Mongolians (there aren't that many Mongolian migrants to begin with).

It’s practical in the sense that it would logically work.

But it’s impractical in the sense that it doesn’t actually satisfy the needs of anybody in the IOC or the bid committees that try to get tax money to enrich themselves, or the needs of politicians who want to bask in the halo of “winning and hosting the games."

And what about the part of doing it in a inhabitated island? That's just trolling, provocative or on crack.

'Greece has an extremely large number of islands, with estimates ranging from somewhere around 1,200 to 6,000, depending on the minimum size to take into account. The number of inhabited islands is variously cited as between 166 and 227.'

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_Greece

And it would not even have to be uninhabited I guess. Greece is very poor and really needs any investments it can get (as is in the article).

Given the size of Greece (incl the islands) everything is nearby. With a budget of billions it would not be a problem to spend (only once) some money for a new airport (I guess now its spend every four years in some city to modernize their nearest airport).

Not sure if it will attract the kind of sponsors the IOC wants to go public with...

But given the public broadcast censorship of most non-European countries it will probably attract more visitors ;-) Which is better for the local economy anyway !

That's the new women's beach volleyball uniform they've been trying to adopt.

Well, there are women athletes, so that wouldn't work. (Entry to Mount Athos is only allowed to men)

> The original Olympic games were held in honour of Zeus (God) so really the games should be held in the Mount Athos region of Greece an autonomous monastic stare in Greece.

I don't follow the "logic" here at all. What makes Mount Athos more appropriate than, say, Olympia, the traditional site of the Olympic games?

What does Christianity have to do with Dodekatheism at all? Also, have you seen mount Athos? It's mainly only trees and it's very mountainous http://www.star.gr/publishingimages/2014/08/020814141543_327...

Besides, access to the region is prohibited for women and such a big event would completely fuck up their culture and lifestyle.

The article is about the summer olympics.

If it's there permanently, you can make it good. You can buy a ton of snow machines, you can make the slopes the way you like.

We just had the Winter Olympics in a tiny Russian resort.

I don't think distance is all that big a deal. Sure, you can't just drive there if it isn't near, but for most people the Olympics is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that they're willing to take a week off to visit. No different from any other trip, eg people will come to Paris from Australia just to see the Eiffel tower and the Notre Dame. Why wouldn't they fly to some other town to see the Olympics?

And let's face it: you have to be from a wealthy country to be able to do this in any case.

What if we hosted it on a ginormous floating barge? If it was that big it could possibly be stable and not be subject to the movement of the ocean. Then to solve the issue of equal average location you just float it around the world. Heck, you could road trip it around the coasts.

Distance doesn't matter that much, as olympics in general are expensive enough to make transportation not the major part of the total price.

If they were held in my home town, that would be significantly cheaper because I wouldn't have to pay for accomodation; but if they were held in a city in a few hours driving distance, then it might as well be in a different continent, the tickets+hotel+food+driving will be just a bit cheaper than tikcets+hotel+food+planes.

If you want to siphon cash, you must be near a flow.

FIFA doesn't insist on building new stadiums so much as they award bids to countries that don't already have sufficient stadium capacity. Brazil and Qatar need/needed to construct stadiums, and so does Russia probably, but had they accepted the England and USA bids for 2018 and 2022, respectively, no stadium construction would have been required (at most, perhaps some renovation). In fact, either country could host a World Cup with only a few months' notice.

I suppose the grass may be repaired or even re-laid after the first round or something like that. Is that actually happening?

For most European countries this is not a problem. Each club which plays in its countries top division already has a big enough dedicated football stadium.

It becomes a problem when you let FIFA bribe BRIC or even third world country politicians (or vice versa). Then you get stadiums located in deserts or rainforests without a club nearby that is even remotely capable of filling it on a weekly basis.

I like what the UEFA (Europe's FIFA) is doing here: Bigger countries get to host the European Championship on their own, smaller countries share it, lately Poland + Ukraine and Switzerland + Austria. From 2020 on the Cup will not take place in a single country anymore, instead cities will apply on their own, which is of course impractical for the World Cup or even continental cups on bigger continents.

For best performance, natural grass needs to rest at least 4 or 5 days after a real game takes place. Artificial grass is not comparable, its almost a different game.

Plus they're about to build a massive new NFL stadium. They wouldn't lack for venues most likely.

The Olympics are more than the direct cost of infrastructure or tickets sold.

Barcelona was hugely changed by the 1992 Games and was transformed into one of the richest cities in Europe and one of the most visited spots on Earth. It's significance, quality of life and wealth grew because of the event.

That's the point of most Olympic events, as former London mayor Ken Livingstone said it: It's not about three weeks of sports, it's about getting funds to rebuild your city. A lot of them don't pull it off, but Barcelona for one did it fine.

you can see here plenty of articles citing profits for ~50% of olympics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_the_Olympic_Games (estimates obviously don't include a bunch of intangible costs/profits).

I'm sure you could construct a list that shows no profits ever, and a list that shows massive profits every time (using the same level of evidence for both sides).

the primary issue is that it's extremely difficult to measure costs/profits for something as massive as an olympics. the secondary issue is that people tend to support their 'sides' narrative (keynesian or otherwise).

Actually that's probably based on lists of Olympic budgets, and actual costs which gets cited pretty often. Very often olympic cities spend more than they budgeted for, and that's considered a loss.

That however has everything to do with X (how much is budgeted, and how much was spent. i.e. what was the cost), and still absolutely nothing with Y (actual revenues/benefits). That was his entire point.

We have to remember that the budgets aren't necessarily meaningful because politicians have to sell their own taxpayers the idea of applying for an olympic bid with a budget. Obviously that budget will be severely underestimated to create as little resistance as possible, despite the possibility that the true budget which is higher, would still be worth it. This isn't always the case but my point here is that the politics are set up such that there are good reasons to underestimate the true budget even when the true budget is worthwhile for the city, and thereby end up registering a net loss because you ended up going over budget.

For example, Brazil could very well benefit from these olympics (although it's too early to tell). Yet their projected budget was less than $2.5 billion, despite the fact last two olympics averaging $25 billion in one country richer and one country poorer than Brazil. Obviously budgeting $2.5 billion is a complete and utter joke, and everyone knows, everyone, that it'd be way higher. But it doesn't mean it's a loss to the city.

Meanwhile when China spent close to $50 billion, but early reports showed it was a tiny bit cheaper than its budget, it didn't mean that this in and of itself constituted a profit, either.

You are absolutely right. But shall we agree that displaced is not the same as lost homes, and the latter is more emotional and less factual?

You're not quoting a profit or loss. You're quoting a budget and actual expenses.

If Apple decides on a $1b budget to create the iPhone and it turns out it ended up costing $2b, that's not a 'loss' of $1b, and if it turned out to cost $500m that's not a 'profit'. It's merely going over budget or under budget.

Profit would require you to actually look at the revenues of the iPhone, too. You're basically quoting R&D / Investment budgets+costs, and not looking at all at the outcomes, e.g. the effects it has on a city's infrastructure and standing in the world. (and how that affects everything from tourism, improved diplomatic relations, export of national products & culture, cheaper access to finance etc)

Not that I don't agree with your larger points. Studies have been done to measure those outcomes, too, and very often the costs of the Olympics are still not worth it. Although a lot of these things are really tricky to measure, and some are intangible and possible to measure but difficult to express in financial terms. (what pride for example must the Chinese have felt in 2008, I'm all too familiar with the many human rights issues but this was an absolutely spectacular event that must have inspired hundreds of millions of Chinese on some level.)

In the case of Vancouver, the city got a massive and much needed upgrade to the light rail system that might never have happened without the Olympic budget.

But why the world should fix their economic problems?