May 27, 2026

Is The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics Worth It? | Really? no Really? Podcast

34 minutes

Jason had an emergency this week and could make this episode but Peter held down the fort. With the Olympics heading to Los Angeles in 2028, the issue on how cities bid to hold the Olympics is one that drives Peter crazy. On this episode of Really? no Really? Podcast, Peter speaking economist, Andrew Zimbalist, author of the book, Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble Behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup, breaks down how the bidding process works and the aftermath these cities have to deal with.

You see all these executives flying around the world and behind closed doors, always bidding for the Olympics. And then you look up the fact that the Olympics arrive in a city, zoning laws disappear, environmental reviews are rushed, homeless are moved, areas are renamed, cities that had the Olympics are paying off debt after 20 years. They bid these things out and you're told, "Oh, it's going to be $7 billion to do this." And it turns out to be $170 millionThey're always underestimated. The real question though is is it all BS or is it intentional?

As time passed in, the Olympics got bigger and bigger, and you had to build more and more stadiums and do more and more infrastructural work and so on and so forth. And it became impossibly expensive. We're still doing that same system. And the system back in 1896, which was a time when we didn't have international telecommunications, we didn't have international jet service. You basically had to move the games around every four years to get as much of the world participating in in the Olympics.

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