La trampa olímpica

El gobierno británico vuelve a tener que sacar la cartera, apenas tres meses después y en plena recesión, para pagar los fastos de Londres 2012. La principal diferencia de los Juegos Olímpicos con las competiciones desarrolladas por equipos es que atraen a mucha más gente que desembolsa enormes cantidades de dinero pero durante un período muy corto de tiempo.

La enorme competencia por albergar este evento hace que los grupos de interés, empresas constructoras y políticos, minusvaloren los costes de los juegos y sobrevaloren su repercusión económica. Así ocurrió en los juegos de invierno de Lillehammer. Las altas expectativas generadas se tradujeron en numerosos nuevos negocios pero pocos años después el 40% de los hoteles quebraron.

Brad R. Humphreys es profesor de la Universidad de Alberta. En una reciente entrevista digital realizada por los lectores de un periódico canadiense hacía las siguientes apreciaciones sobre el enorme coste de organizar unos Juegos Olímpicos, un tema de actualidad en Canadá ya que albergará los juegos de invierno de 2010:

Jeff Labow, reportonbusiness.com: You have done quite a bit of research on the Olympic Games. Vancouver is already encountering significant problems with funding the event's facilities. What are your thoughts about what the Vancouver Olympic Committee has already had to deal with? How do you see the situation developing?

Brad Humphreys: The economic impact of hosting the Olympic Games is always overstated by the organizers. There is little evidence that hosting the games has any positive tangible economic impact, except to the extent that new infrastructure (roads and transport, not venues) is put in place. On the cost side, venue construction is always the biggest cost of hosting the games, and the International Olympic Committee does nothing to defray the costs. Also, there are always significant cost overruns in Olympic venue construction. Since venue construction is a big-ticket item that has to be financed through borrowing, the credit market crisis has had a big impact on Vancouver. Fortunately for the games, and unfortunately for the taxpayers, Olympic venue construction can always be government financed.

Geordie Lad writes: On the Olympics/World Cup, etc., is it not time for permanent sites somewhere where transportation links are excellent?

Brad Humphreys: It's clearly time for significant reform of the system of allocating host sites for the Olympic Games. The "bidding" process designed by the IOC is simply a mechanism for extracting economic rents from host cities and regions. The competitors "bid" by promising more and more subsidies to the IOC. This rent extraction has allowed the IOC bureaucracy to grow from a four-person operation in 1960 to a massive, bloated bureaucracy with thousands of permanent employees, lavish headquarters in Switzerland, and million-dollar perks. There is absolutely no reason to have a 'bidding" process to award the games, except as a rent extraction mechanism. Given the expanding security costs of hosting the games, as well as the facility problem (most Olympic venues are too big for everyday use - the Birds Nest Stadium in Beijing is barely used now, less then six months after the Games.), a permanent Olympic site would be a very good idea.

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Comentarios

  1. Qué razonamiento tiene el invertir grandes cantidades de dinero en unas cosas y en otras olvidarlas sin más, utilizando la prensa como arma de lobotomía?

    Saludos

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