If the goal is really to put a city 'on the map' you could spend less than 5% of that money on an extensive cultural/tourism marketing campaign and have more of an effect. I've yet to meet anyone who's chosen Sochi as a vacation destination.
Far less hassle for someone from Germany to visit Cairo, Dubai, Nairobi, New York, than to visit Sochi.
Same issue with holding the world cup in 2018.
Give a 30 day tourist visa on arrival and they'd get far more tourists
The best bet seems to be a lesser known location which can use most of the infrastructure and has some non Olympics tourist destinations. Which isn’t a huge list, but there have been a few.
I would describe it differently, the facilities used for skiing events are usually already tourist locations, plenty of people take international skiing vacations.
That’s not a huge economy to absorb a short term spike in tourism when it’s focused on a few months out of the year. Worse it’s not like there is a massive untapped surplus of people doing international ski vacations. But don’t take my word for it their are actual studies looking into this stuff that come to similar conclusions.
Whistler. But then again it was a huge destination before the olympics too.