The total cost of the Paris Olympics is expected to significantly exceed the seven billion euros announced by the organizing committee when it submitted its bid in 2017. However, these Olympic Games will likely be significantly less expensive than certain previous editions.
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Organizing the Olympic Games is expensive, sometimes even very expensive. An implicit rule even states that the cost of the competition announced by the organizers must generally be multiplied by two to get an idea of what the Olympics really cost.
Paris’s bid to host the 2024 Games therefore had one watchword: cost as little money as possible. Unsurprisingly, the seven billion euros budget announced in 2017 should be exceeded, but by using a large number of already existing sports infrastructures to avoid having to build new ones, the 2024 Olympics should succeed in avoiding an explosion the invoice’s. To date, their cost is estimated at 8.9 billion euros. According to the Asteres firm, the final cost could however reach nearly 11.9 billion euros. A very high amount, but nevertheless “ significantly lower than that of most past editions, especially when we take into account the evolution of prices over time and the increase in the number of tests », Specifies the firm.
Sochi and Beijing, the excess of authoritarian regimes
Paris should thus find itself far from the podium of the most expensive editions in history, including the first step of the podium occupied by the Sochi Games in 2014. The Winter Olympics are generally less expensive to organize than the Winter Olympics. summer, but for Putin’s Russia nothing is too good and there was no question of missing such media exposure for the regime. The Black Sea resort then has no infrastructure to host such a sporting event and everything will have to be built from A to Z for a total cost estimated at more than $50 billion.
China also spent lavishly on the organization of its Games in 2008. According to estimates, the two weeks of competition would have cost the Middle Kingdom nearly 32 billion euros, making it the Most expensive summer games in history. In 2022, the Chinese capital once again hosted the Games, this time winter. Their official budget was $3.8 billion, but it would have been largely underestimated, especially since they took place in the middle of the Covid-19 health crisis. According to the American media Business Insidertheir real cost would be closer to $38.5 billion, or nearly ten times the amount announced.
Athens and Rio, abandoned infrastructures
In 2004, 108 years after their first edition, the Olympic Games returned to Athens. Their organization would have cost Greece 13 billion euros, a colossal sum for such a small country with already fragile finances at the time. The organization of the competition weighed down the country’s debt, the deficit of which soared that year. In 2011, IOC President Jacques Rogge estimated that the cost of these Olympics had contributed up to “ 2 to 3% to the country’s external debt » which went through a terrible economic crisis from 2009.
The Rio Games in 2016 also cost nearly 13 billion euros. Colossal investments were made in sports infrastructures which are today, as it was the case in Athens, completely abandoned.
Read alsoRio 2016: grandeur and decadence on every level
Tokyo and London, from singles to doubles
In Tokyo, the competition was postponed for a year due to Covid, but the cost of these Games was also largely reduced by the organizing committee. The price of the 2020 Olympics is estimated at $12.1 billion, two and a half times what was originally announced. In London in 2012, the final bill of €11 billion also turned out to be twice as high as expected.
Paris is therefore warned, the bill could quickly turn out to be much higher than expected, but if the 2024 Olympics stick to the figures announced, they could well be among the least expensive in the last 30 years, a long way off however. of the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and those of Atlanta in 1996 which cost 5.4 and 1.3 billion euros respectively.