But let’s get to the, the economic side of it, right?
Um,
is, is the Olympics good for the cities?
Is it good for the economies?
The simple answer is no. There is absolutely no benefit, uh,
for any city to hold these,
these Olympic Games, right?
There is, look,
there is the promise of, um,
uh, of the,
the state, this,
what you call, what’s the word I’m looking for,
the status that goes with, hey,
our city is holding the Olympics.
And then there’s the opportunity to show off your culture to the world.
Uh, and then there’s the promise of an influx of tourism through the,
the participants, the supporting crews and tourists that are coming in.
But has that all proven to be true?
No, it hasn’t.
None of it’s proven to be true because on one hand,
if you really want to show your,
your culture, there’s other ways of doing it.
There’s much, much cheaper ways of doing it.
The second thing, as far as, uh,
the status goes, yeah,
maybe there’s that. I’ll give them that.
There is a bit of status that my city is holding the,
the Olympics, but that’s just a veneer.
That’s just, you know,
gold plating a third,
that’s all you’re doing. There’s nothing, uh,
more to it that the Olympics can offer.
So, uh,
that, that’s a small win compared to the losses.
And as far as the economic thing goes,
it’s a disaster.
I was watching one Of the, the,
the news media and they were interviewing, um,
business people in Paris. To give you an example,
Paris is a wealthy city. France is a wealthy country.
So the restaurant here said that since the Olympics season kicked in,
my business has dropped by half. Why?
Because his customers are locals.
And when the Olympics moves in,
guess what the locals do? They move out.
They move out. Yeah.
I mean, we did that, right?
2010 World Cup in Johannesburg,
the opening ceremonies, which we had,
we headed for the mountains.
We literally, ha,
ha, ha,
ha, ha.
We went to the Drakensberg.
I mean, the traffic in Joburg is bad enough as it is. Yeah.
During a massive event like that,
it was crazy. Traffic, congestion,
crime, everything goes up.
That’s why they spend like over $1 billion on security.
So the locals move out and the tourists move in and not,
not in droves because a lot of tourists opted out of Paris,
strangely enough, right?
They don’t wanna be there in the crowds and the congestion
and the crime also.
So they go into the countryside.
And that’s what happens in pretty much every Olympic.