Throughout 2020 will bring us many spectacular sporting events, including the 32nd running of the Olympic Games. This year’s summer events will take place in Tokyo, a city rightfully cemented among the world’s best and most equipped to handle the influx of tourists and athletes that often bring financial ruin where glory and prosperity is expected to accompany the bright lights and cameras.
The risky financials of the Olympic Games are well documented; debt can persist for years (three decades, in Montreal’s case) and persistent cost overruns can even push chosen cities to reject their host honors as Denver did in 1972.
To fix this issue, I believe there is a crafty compromise that can satisfy both the traditionalists who value the glory and culture of worldwide athletic competition and the quixotic metropolises that see some host duties as some kind of meaningful announcement on the international stage.
First, we must agree to host the Olympics as we know them in a single dedicated city or a rotation of substantially modernized and capable cities like Tokyo and London that don’t need billions of dollars in infrastructure renovations to accommodate the games. The stadiums, the subways and the hotels must all be mostly in place to set no outsized burden on the city that is inevitably levied on its taxpayers.
Second, we birth a new set of competition entirely, dedicated to exciting niche sports that require less exorbitant infrastructure and investment that come with each Olympics. Sure, cities could continue to put faith in a system that annually features at least $6 billion in cost that overruns for the Summer Olympics, or they could put on a different Olympiad that capitalizes on niche interests birthed from viral videos and click bait articles.
While the Olympics can parade the best athletes in traditionally meaningful sports, these new modern games would focus more on the entertainment that is missing in a 1600-meter race or dressage events. The only requirement for inclusion would be that the sports would have to be objectively thrilling. Give me jai alai and dodgeball over racewalking.
Given that these sports are accustomed to smaller audiences, the up-front costs of building new infrastructure for influxes of thousands of fans could be minimized, and many more public recreation facilities could be repurposed. Imagine your local YMCA with only minor alterations to allow for a 1,000 spectators and a well-equipped camera crew, ready to tell the story of underwater hockey to a world that only gets to see such bizarre and thrilling pastimes whenever ESPN feels like bringing back “The Ocho.”
Another advantage would come from the flexibility of the games themselves. With the possibility of a certain sport like sepak takraw (a southeast Asian take on volleyball with a smaller ball and no use of the hands) going viral, the modern games could pounce on the opportunity to use the fever for a 15-second video to bring sustainable interest to a new game that centralizes that excitement on one city willing to take a chance on hosting bizarre sporting events. Who wouldn’t want to be the city that catapulted chess boxing to international fame?
Nobody would want this contrived ‘spectacle.’ Realistically, no city should put forth the investment necessary for sports that struggle to hold interest beyond the length of a TikTok. Athletes and spectators couldn’t possibly be expected to spend money on travel and hotels for sports that amount to no more than hobbies for all involved. The reality is that the Olympics need, more than almost any other modern institution, to contract and restructure instead of finding new cities and people to cripple.
The last thing the Olympics need is another line of programming for cities to pour time and resources into. Far beyond simple financial irresponsibility, the Olympics as we know them are plateauing in viewership, at least partially responsible for the economic collapse and bankruptcy of Greece following the 2004 Olympics and therefore a contributing factor to the instability of the European Union.
The Olympics are a cultural institution that defines and showcases the competitive spirit of the human race; their existence and purpose are not in question. The games’ execution, however, must be definitively dealt with. Cities cannot continue to vomit up billions in shortsighted investment for a few precious weeks of media coverage and facades of prolonged economic benefit when viable. Let’s find new ways to minimize destitution while continuing the tradition, not discover foolish ways to gild a product that only debilitates each new city it parades through.
Jonah Baker can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @jonahpbaker.