Top 10 Times the Olympics Bankrupted a City

hosting the olympics is just a terrible idea welcome to watch mojo and today we're counting down our picks for the top 10 times the olympics bankrupted a city by 1984 no country wanted to host the games the bottom line here is that we've paid off the loan not exactly but the ruins of its olympic venues will not prove as lucrative as those of ancient delphi or olympia for this list we're looking at the cities that took the biggest financial hits to host the olympic games let us know in the comments which you think is the most embarrassing number 10 athens 1896 for over a thousand years the olympic games were held in ancient greece until eventually disappearing in the 4th century a.d so it makes sense that greece was the country to bring back the olympics in the 1890s for the first modern games winning a unanimous vote despite already being in dire financial straits greece's crown prince had to rally the greek public to foot the bill and even then came up short fortunately businessman george average made a substantial donation that kept the dream alive the events were of course immensely successful relaunching the olympics but they certainly didn't leave greece financially better off number 9 sydney 2000 decades on it remains unclear how positive the 2000 olympics ultimately were for australia at least from a financial standpoint the feel-good factor returned in sydney but that came at a cost close to nine billion dollars in today's money however the real cost may be one of lost opportunities the sydney olympics themselves were definitely a successful event it was widely watched and a lot of fun but it overran on costs so significantly that the new south wales government had to step in and take control of the event from the original committee the olympics also didn't draw many more additional tourists to sydney and many of the stadiums stand unused and therefore aren't earning any money to give australia back its investment the scale of the place in one sense is the enemy of place making so to try and make intimate spaces and you know people-focused spaces just the sheer scale of what was created to get the volumes of people in and out make that a retrofitting challenge number eight alberville 1992. france took a huge financial hit on what would be the country's last olympic games until the competition heads to paris in the summer of 2024. the problem was that like many olympic cities alberville didn't have the necessary infrastructure but its own plan definitely made this even worse the organizing committee decided that instead of taking place in one central location the games would be split across 13 venues which meant even better transport links were needed in the french alps it more than doubled its initial budget and didn't draw in the tourists like it was supposed to losing a huge 56 million dollars number seven lake placid 1980. lake placid new york the site of the 13th olympic winter games was truly a global arena the united states has hosted some of the most successful olympic games of all time most notably the hugely profitable 1984 games in los angeles you know no one really wanted to host it los angeles kind of got it by default and then you look at 92 the next time there's a bidding process countries are lining up to host the olympics everyone wants to do this after they see this success in los angeles but only a few years previously lake placid's second turn at hosting the winter games didn't go as planned it seems like the olympic organizers didn't quite solve the problem of how to transport people to the events or even how to sell unsold tickets you needed a ticket to get to the ticket booth the games have also had an unpleasant legacy on the area with the former olympic village now being the federal correctional institution ray brook a medium security prison even with that lake placid was still millions of dollars in debt number six rio 2016. all this money being spent on the olympics is is anything getting better for you or for the people that live in the favelas no no the investment is not for us it's for the foreigners many people questioned rio's ability to foot the bill for the olympics in the lead-up to the 2016 games the first ever to be hosted anywhere in south america and those fears may not have been unfounded brazil is the epicenter of the mosquito-borne zika virus in advance of the rio games olympic organizers and local authorities have been spraying facilities and struggling to assure the world that it's safe for athletes and tourists to come here at the time brazil was already facing a severe economic crisis and an outbreak of the zika virus not to mention a high profile money laundering scandal protests planned against brazil's vast spending during these olympics and it's allegedly vast corruption there were public protests against the events before they happened because of the huge expense of hosting and in the end the debts piled high leaving the city over 100 million dollars worse off many of the expensive venues sit totally abandoned and brazil has yet to recover these crumbling facilities left vacant are the byproduct of a city struggling with debt and colossal maintenance costs number 5. nagano 1998. you know something went horribly wrong when the olympic organizers would rather burn all the financial documents than admit just how deep into debt they were that is exactly what happened in the wake of japan's 1998 winter olympics when it came out that the details of the successful olympic bid had been incinerated nagano overran by much less in real terms than other games only around 50 percent and was generally seen as a success for the region because of the infrastructure development it led to but it still landed japan in significant debt it would be over 20 years until the olympics returned to the country number 4 vancouver 2010. there's a lot of praise for this place not only is it downtown waterfront location but it's also one of the most environmentally sustainable neighborhoods in north america in 2010 canada was back to host the winter olympics once more like lake placid the vancouver committee designed the olympic facilities specifically the village with a secondary purpose in mind after the games were over but when the olympics and paralympics wrapped up the transformation was slow condos were expensive the economy wasn't strong and many felt the olympic village was being used as a political football the village was set to become hundreds of luxury condos that the city could sell to make back some of the expense unfortunately they overestimated the demand for high-end condos and very few of the former village buildings were sold after the games due to sluggish condo sales people started calling the village a ghost town but even the dark days weren't all that dark the deserted look attracted a certain clientele that helped keep businesses afloat the events landed the city 630m million dollars in debt and it took an additional four years for the condos to be sold and vancouver to be back in the black number three athens 2004 more than a hundred years after athens relaunched the olympics greece had a successful bid to host again between 2001 and 2004 they went beyond target spending 7 billion euros to host the olympic games but even in 1999 the budget deficit was reportedly at 3.38 of gdp unfortunately hosting in the early 21st century turned out to have dire consequences at a cost of 13 billion euros the athens olympics played their part in the saga of greece's public debt which last year reached 165 of gdp not only was greece's economy already in danger by the early 2000s but with the benefit of hindsight we can see how the olympics harmed the country as both the greek debt crisis and the 2008 financial crash happened shortly afterwards though technically the 2004 games did potentially turn a profit for greece many of the stadiums are today lying empty and unused and greece is still struggling economically so since the 2004 olympics athens has olympic venues that are now white elephants on the one hand and a thriving infrastructure on the other two sides of the same coin we'll leave you to think about the merits of hosting the olympic games number two sochi 2014 they were the single costliest games on record and despite the sochi authorities apparently sparing no expense when you look at the bill they were absolutely disastrous everything is wonderful i don't see any problems everything is absolutely great they were also the biggest winter olympics so far at the time in terms of the number of events held which required even more infrastructure ultimately it cost over 50 billion dollars making it significantly more expensive than even the summer games on top of that the games were plagued with controversies including the russian doping scandal and allegations of labor law violations the world anti-doping agency releasing findings from their investigation saying over one thousand russian athletes competing in summer winter and paralympic sport can be identified as being involved in or benefiting from manipulations to conceal positive doping tests it's even been speculated that sochi's vast expense contributed to political unrest throughout russia as it didn't boost the economy as hoped the gold and the glories are gone leaving the city and its surroundings with a tarnished legacy before we continue be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos you have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them if you're on your phone make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications number one montreal 1976 it was this poorly organized event in canada that led to widespread skepticism about the viability of the olympic games and the detrimental effects they could have on their host cities montreal 1976 was an extremely expensive summer games plagued from the beginning by poor labor management lots of strikes and construction delays so severe many of the venues weren't finished in time was not very well managed as a financial project and we had a fabulous stadium but i think it cost more than all of the covered stadia in north america put together it took montreal 30 years to pay off the immense debt that hosting the games cost and it remains the first and only time canada has ever hosted the summer events it overran by an enormous 720 from its initial projected budget and caused many countries to rethink and even withdraw their own olympic bids do you agree with our picks check out this other recent clip from watchmojo and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos you

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Views: 581,062

Keywords: Sports, athens olympics, bankrupt cities, bankrupt countries, list, mojo, montreal olympics, most expensive olympics, most expensive summer olympics, most expensive winter olympics, nagano olympics, olympic games, olympics, olympics bankrupt, rio olympics, sochi olympics, sydney olympics, times the olympics bankrupted a city, times the olympics bankrupted a country, top 10, vancouver olympics, watch mojo, watchmojo, worst olympics

Id: M-uSfsZmcGU

Length: 11min 20sec (680 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 09 2021