OLYMPICS EVERYWHERE DISPERSE THE GAMES ALL ACROSS THE GLOBE

摘要

The 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro will (probably) not be a disaster. Construction crews will finish the $43 million velodrome in the nick of time. There won't be an epidemic of Zika among athletes. Police crackdowns will prevent civil unrest from seriously disrupting the celebration. NBC's cameras will capture astounding beach views and triumphant competitors, and memories of the months of panic leading up to the games will melt away. But avoiding catastrophe isn't the same as achieving success: Contrary to the bold claims about economic development that accompany any mega-event, hosting the Olympics is almost always a financial disaster for cities in the long term, and Rio won't be the exception. Indeed, economists are uncommonly unanimous that hosting the Olympics is a bad bet. "The math just doesn't make sense," says Andrew Zim-balist, an economics professor at Smith College whose book Circus Maximus argued that even bidding on the Olympics makes cities a victim of a scandal-plagued International Olympics Committee. "They cost between $10 billion and $20 billion and generate in the range of $4 billion to $5 billion," he says. But there's a clear solution to this financial trap, one that would plant the games squarely in the age of streaming television and instantaneous global communication: We should split the whole thing up.