Is There An Olympic Curse?
Every few years, countries across the globe compete to host the Olympics. Conventional wisdom tells us that it is a “good” thing to host the Olympics but the “data” suggests otherwise. I was inspired to write this article after reading Ken Rapoza’s article, “Brazil’s Economy Hasn’t Been This Bad Since 1930” in Forbes this weekend. A small voice in the back of my head asked: Isn’t Brazil hosting the Olympics soon? If so, shouldn’t their economy be booming (or at least doing relatively well) now (leading up to the games)? So I decided to take a closer look and analyze the facts.
Conventional Wisdom:
Traditionally, the case to host the Olympics was pretty straight forward: it should lead to economic prosperity and raise awareness for the host nation.
Economic Growth Slows Considerably After Hosting The Olympics
The facts paint a very different story. In most cases, since 2004, economic growth has slowed considerably for host nations. I limited the study to the past 12 years because the global economy has changed so much in the last decade that data from the last century is not as relevant. I’ll let the facts do the rest of the talking:
Here is a list of Olympic venues since 2004:
Winter Olympics:
| 2006 Turin | Italy |
| 2010 Vancouver | Canada |
| 2014 Sochi | Russia |
| 2018 PyeongChang | S. Korea |
| 2022 Beijing | China |
Summer Olympics:
| 2004 Athens | Greece |
| 2008 Beijing | China |
| 2012 London | U.K. |
| 2016 Rio de Janeiro | Brazil |
Now let’s look at Economic Growth (GDP) for these countries:
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