Thank you for that explanation. I was thinking of the Sydney Olympic Stadium and how it’s currently being used for many other organizations (mostly non-profit) that didn’t have offices before and whether things like this were taken into account. I didn’t even think about the cost of maintenance, repairs etc. I’ve read about the claims politicians make about economic benefit in a single year and realize how incomplete, and usually incorrect, they are.

And I’ll certainly check out those studies – they look really interesting. I’m so glad i found this blog – you’ll be hearing from me often!

However, I will note that in many cases cost and upkeep of the facility continues into the future, as does debt servicing. A good case is the 1972 Montreal Olympic Stadium called The Big O (Or “The Big Owe” by locals), which originally cost around $200 million, but had a final bill in the billions because of construction, maintenance, repairs, debt financing, which was not fully paid off for 30 years. Often we see facilities now not even lasting more than a few decades, and taxpayers feel the burden of these facilities for long periods of time as well.

Additionally, politicians and those claiming large economic impact are usually focused on a single year. Thus, the research is more reliable than these studies because they focus on net changes in the economy. We will need to wait longer to have more data to have a 50-year study as you suggest.

Finally, there are studies called Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) studies which you may be interested in. They look at fan willingness to pay for stadiums, and some of them use a method that extrapolates over long periods of time, in some cases over infinite amounts of time. In this way, some researchers have created a method which attempts to look at how willing local residents are to pay for stadiums.

Also, thanks for reading our blog, we will have more Olympics coverage here from a financial and economic perspective.