200 days before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games, a refrain comes back hauntingly: certainly, the event will cost nearly 9 billion euros, but the economic benefits will be all the more significant. A recent note published by Asterès challenges this idea. The 2024 Olympics “will be above all a celebration of sport”, but “it is illusory to expect powerful economic effects”, it is written. The Games are expected to create 116,000 jobs and 9.8 billion euros of added value, according to the institute’s estimates, but these effects “are in reality modest when they are compared to the size of the French economy and spread across time,” the note continues. Concretely, the impact on French growth will be very low, around 0.1%, according to the Asterès institute.
In the case of Paris 2024, the Games will above all make it possible to anticipate and accelerate infrastructure work planned for a long time, such as transport, the renovation of the Grand Palais or the swimmability of the Seine. Because the budget for these Games is substantial: 8.8 billion euros (4.4 billion euros are dedicated to the construction of infrastructure and 4.4 billion euros to the organization itself). However, it must be taken into account that some of these expenses are not only focused on the year 2024, since several of them related to infrastructure are carried out before the event, and certain knock-on effects will have repercussions after 2024. However , the effect of the Games on tourism, attractiveness and the image of the country will be significant, although difficult to quantify precisely. This will largely depend on the success of the organization, the impact of housing prices on tourists, issues related to security or even the impact of teleworking which will be encouraged in a certain number of companies.
To draw up the best possible estimate of the economic impact of the Olympic Games, the institute led by Nicolas Bouzou also looked at past Olympics, and concluded that “the organizing countries have not experienced any notable economic stimulation “. “By analyzing the growth dynamics of each host country since Seoul (1988), we do not see a growth peak in the year of the Olympic Games (which would be linked to an influx of tourists for example), nor in previous years (which would be due to construction expenses) nor in the following years (due to the improvement in the country’s image which would lead to increased attractiveness”, it is written. South Korea was experiencing strong growth well before welcoming the Olympic Games, and this event apparently had no impact on it. In Spain, the 1992 Barcelona Games did not change the country’s growth trajectory either. Same conclusion in the States -United, after the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. More recently, the organization of the 2016 Olympics in Rio did not prevent the country’s GDP from contracting that year, in particular due to the drop in commodity prices. raw materials.
Through this note, the Asterès Institute is careful, however, not to criticize the organization of these Games in Paris. But he warns against those who would be tempted to only look at the success or otherwise of the event in economic terms. We should therefore focus more on the popular enthusiasm aroused by these Olympics: “The memories of the 1998 World Cup, where children played football in the playgrounds with the Footix jersey, thinking they were Zidane, remain anchored in the memory of many French people”, concludes the note.