Hi everyone, today we are going to present to you the pros and cons of the Olympic games.

We will see
if they respect or not the social responsibility. By definition, social responsibility is an ethical theory in
which individuals, compagnies or even organizations are accountable for fulfilling their civic duty, and
also their actions must benefit the whole of society. In this way, there must be a balance between the
economic growth, the welfare of the society and the environment. If this equilibrium is maintained, then
social responsibility is accomplished.
Thus, we will show you many examples of different Olympics so you can make up your mind to
participate at a debate at the end of our talk.

First of all, we will present to you some pros and cons of the effect of the Olympic games on the local
and national economy. You will understand how Olympics can debt an entire country or conversely can
develop the economy of a city.

Then, we will talk about the environmental aspect of the Olympics, the difference between the Olympics
of the XX century and the XXI century and how has ecology become an important point for the
development of events like the Olympic games?

To conclude, we will let you know our point of view of the Olympics’ responsibility.

The cons of the Olympic games:

 The Olympics are a financial drain on host cities.

No Olympics Games since 1960 has come in under budget. As some people say, “in the Games
the budget is more like a fictitious minimum that is consistently overspent”.

For example, Tokyo forecast $7.3 billion in their 2013 bid, but a January 2021 study found that
losing foreign spectators due to COVID-19 restrictions could cost Japan as much as $23billion.
Of course, these figures are only estimates because we don’t know for the moment the real
amount of these games. But we can now suspect that the displacement of the games in addition
to the health crisis should affect the economy of Japan.

Moreover, each host city is responsible for these cost overruns, in addition to their original
budgets. The average cost overrun for host cities from 1968 to 2010 was 252% for the Summer
Olympics and 135% for the Winter.

However, we can say that with the 1976 Montreal Summer Games, the initial costs were
exceeded by 796%. The consequences are that Montreal’s 1976 cost overrun took 30 years to
pay off, and the people of Quebec still pay $17 million a year to maintain Olympic Stadium,
which is still without a roof over 40 years later and needs $300 million worth of repairs.

Another example of overtaking games is the 2014 Sochi Games. Indeed, they ran between $39
and $58 billion over the $12 billion budget, an amount that is more than spent on all previous
winter Olympic games.
 We can then wonder if all these additional costs could have been avoided if they are worth it
since some countries still pay the costs today.

 The Olympics force host cities to create infrastructure and buildings that fall into disuse.
Many Olympic venues worldwide sit empty, rusted, overgrown with weeds, covered with
graffiti, and filled with polluted water.

We can cite several examples:

1- First, Sydney’s 2000 Olympic Stadium was demolished in 2019 in favor of a smaller, more
useful.
2- Then Bejing’s 2008 Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium costs the city $11 million a year to maintain,
and the stadium that seats 91,000 mostly sit unused.
3- In Rio de Janeiro, the $700 million athlete’s village for the 2016 Games was turned into
luxury apartments that are now “shuttered” and the Olympic Park is “basically vacant” after
failing to attract a buyer.
4- Moreover Sofia Sakorafa, Greece member of parliament and former Olympian, stated of the
2004 Athens Games venues, “We are left with installations that are rotting away because we
don’t even have the money to maintain them. “

Thus, through these examples we have saw that many infrastructures are created only for the games
and are then either demolished or left abandoned, which leads us to ask ourselves questions about
environmental responsibility of countries and of the world organization of the Olympic Games.
Furthermore, in the case of Rio de Janeiro, games have created inequalities between rich and poor.

The Olympic games or not only bad for the host country or city. It also brings a lot of positive effects.

 The first and major effect is the boost of the local economy and the increasing of the tourism.

For example, in Rio for the summer games of 2016, the audience was about five billion with the
games broadcast in 200 countries.
And more than 56% of foreign visitors to brazil for the 2016 summer games were new visitors
and brazil set tourism records with 6.6 million foreign tourists and $6.2 billions of dollars

This type of valuable effect has been seen in several Olympic games. As in England, which
welcomed more than one visitor every second in June 2013 after the 2012 London Summer
Olympics, a 12% increase over 2012. Those visitors spent more than 2.57 billions of dollars in
June 2013 which is an increase of 13%.
 We talked about summer Olympics but there are also winter Olympics. In 2018 in PyeongChang,
this winter games reported a 55 million of dollars surplus that was used for the benefit of sports
in South Korea.

As we have seen the Olympics can be benefic for the economy of a city or a country even many
years after the events.

 Now we are going to talk more about the ecological side of the Olympic Games.

After the Olympics of Montreal in 1976, the IOC, International Olympic Committee, decided to
think about the reuse of Olympics structures. So, each games needs to show the ecological part
of their buildings. Here are some good examples:

In 2008 for the summer games of Beijing, The Beijing National Aquatics center, also known as
the Water Cube, had a capacity of 17,000 and took 3 years to construct. Following the
competition, the Water cube was opened to the public on select days of the week. In 2009, it
underwent a massive renovation to become a water park with water rides and slides, a wave
pool, and multiple spa areas. This building will also host the 2022 winter Olympics games curling
competition.

Today we can attend to the construction of the 2024 Olympics of Paris. One of the major
objectives of these Olympic games is to include an environmental side, as the major of Paris,
Anne Hidalgo is an ecological activist.

For example, the media village located in the commune of Dugny sur seine will host around
4,000 journalists from all over the world. From 2025, it will become a new neighborhood in the
town, with homes, local shops, schools, and sport facilities. The project is built around an
approach favoring the legacy of Olympic facilities for the inhabitants after the time of the
Olympics games, universal accessibility of public and private spaces and zero carbon
construction.

The IOC learned from their mistakes by forcing host cities to build structures that will last over
time and won’t pollute the surroundings either by the size and the form of the buildings or just
its maintenance.