Are the London Olympics finally going to pay off?

I guess I was bound to use this debate today as we are finally on the point of finding out whether the Olympics really are a good investment. Some of the team sports, like football have already started, the opening ceremony is only hours away, and then the games really begin. The focus will be on the track, the velodrome, the pool and other venues and all the athletes who are competing in pursuit of a medal.

And yet while the sport and the medals may be what the Olympics is about it is not the reason that countries host the Olympics. They do it for the prestige, for the chance to show off to the world, and because they hope it will be a good investment. Yet past events have often shown that this is very difficult to pull off. There is a huge cost involved in creating all the venues and then once the Paralympics have gone there is nothing big enough to fill them all.

Britain is in desperate need for the Olympics to be a success; it has had three quarters of negative growth and so is well into a double dip recession. If the games turn out to be an economic flop even if they are a prestige success it will mean the games have not been a success. The intention all along was that the London games would be cheaper than Beijing and would pay for itself. Unfortunately costs (particularly for security) spiraled and this has been becoming less likely.

None the less Britain is doing its best to make money out of the games. Yesterday marked the start of a global investment conference with the aim of drawing more investment into Britain. With so many national and business leaders in town the Olympics provide the ideal time for business deals. The Prime Minister David Cameron has gone so far as to claim that £13 billion would come from deals struck during the games. Of course even if they do happen we will never know if these deals would have happened anyway if there were no London Olympics.

What do you think; are the games going to pay their way?

Debatabase debate: This House believes that hosting the Olympics is a good investment. http://idebate.org/debatabase/debates/sport/house-believes-hosting-olympics-good-investment

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18988181

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/07/26/who%E2%80%99d-want-to-host-the-olympics/