ARE THE OLYMPICS WORTH THE COST?

Ah, the Winter Olympics.

A chance to see the whole world set aside its petty squabbles, its ideological differences, its trade disputes, all so that we can come together in unity and take in the sheer athletic prowess of men and women who have trained their entire life for events like… sledding. Cross-country skiing. Curling.

Okay, so, yes, the whole thing is faintly ridiculous, but the spirit of the Olympic Games is still alive and well, right? That spirit of camaraderie, of humanity, of a world so typically torn apart by strife able to come together, if only for a few weeks?

Yes and no.

It’s significant that this year’s Olympics are taking place in PyeongChang, South Korea: partly because it kicks off a triplet of Olympic Games taking place in East Asia (to be followed by Tokyo in 2020 and Beijing in 2022), illustrating a global shift to Eastern Asia in general, but primarily because even amidst the military tensions which have existed between North and South Korea since before America fought a war there, and which have if anything escalated since Kim Jong Un’s ascension to power, the world still watched representatives of both nations march together in the opening ceremonies as a united country, styled simply as “Korea.”

While this likely doesn’t signify any sort of serious re-unification efforts on the horizon, it’s still noteworthy. These were the first high-level diplomacy steps that have taken place in two years, and Kim Jong Un’s sister even showed up! Perhaps, then, there’s hope yet for the Olympics to serve as an international diplomatic tool.

Of course, the Olympics isn’t just about fostering international relations – there’s a lot of money to be made. Not, of course, for the athletes; a U.S. Olympian will earn about $40,000 for a gold, $23,000 for a silver, and $15,000 for a bronze, but other than that, American athletes get zero funding from the federal government. While sponsorship deals can be lucrative, not every athlete competing will be savvy enough to snag one, meaning many of the people you see up on that screen are doing what they do out of love, rather than for any sort of financial reimbursement.

So, then, surely the host cities stand to make boatloads of money, right? All those tourism dollars pouring in have got to add up!

Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case, according to economist Andrew Zimbalist. He says that the revenue generated by these huge events rarely even approaches the exorbitant cost of erecting the facilities necessary to host them. The Olympic Velodrome (high-banked bicycle racing oval) for the 2016 Rio Olympics cost $43 million, and the stadium for the opening ceremonies at the PyeongChang Olympics cost $100 million – this for a stadium which is slated for demolition with the close of the Olympics!

One Oxford study put the average cost of hosting the Winter Olympics at $3.1 billion.

American author Michael Meyer wrote a book on the 2008 Beijing Olympics, entitled “The Last Days of Old Beijing.” You think gentrification in Portland is bad? In preparation for the 2008 Olympics, countless citizens of Beijing would arrive home from work to find a red spray-paint tag on their front door. Far from the mark of a budding artist, this tag was government-sponsored: Roughly translating to raze, it signified that the government had slated this traditional, family-style home for demolition, to simultaneously clean up the city and make room for high-rises.

This trend is not unique to Beijing. According to Wikipedia, “the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions reports that the Olympics displaced more than two million people over two decades.”

Just so we’re all on the same page, let’s review: the Winter Olympics has dumb sports (no offense, curling, but you’re dumb), where the athletes don’t get paid, cost oodles of money, and kick the poor out into the streets, all in the name of global unity, which, realistically speaking, lasts for about 10 minutes during the opening ceremony.

Why on earth are we still doing this?