Contents
- Summary
- What you will find here
- Disputing the cost overrun amount
- Comparing against whoever lost the vote
- The tourism legacy
- Sochi, with all its figures
- What the literature says as a whole
- Why cities keep bidding
- How to handle this, practically speaking
- Frequently asked questions
- What remains unknown
- References
There are two figures in circulation about the Olympic Games and both deserve examination. The first is the cost overrun: a frequently cited University of Oxford study put the average deviation from Olympic budgets between 1960 and 2012 at 179% in real terms and 324% in nominal terms. The second is the benefit: the economic boost that justifies the bid.
What makes this instance fascinating is that each has faced scrutiny using empirical figures. A re-examination released in 2022 failed to duplicate the findings of the Oxford study covering the 2000-2016 timeframe, instead registering direct investment cost overruns ranging from 13% to 178%, while also pointing out that total expenses for the Games account for under 0.28% of the host nation’s GDP. Furthermore, when evaluated against the proper benchmark — those municipalities that competed for the Games but were unsuccessful — the advantage emerges as 3 to 4 percentage points of regional GDP during the hosting year and the preceding one, alongside long-term impacts that lack statistical robustness.
And one specific case no discussion should omit: Sochi 2014 cost $55 billion, 4.5 times the bid budget, with 96.5% public funding and a subsequent annual burden of around $1.2 billion.
Summary
It is worth checking in each row whether the event year or the long run is being measured, and whether the subject is Summer or Winter Games. Those are four distinct cases and the results do not coincide.
| Finding | Result | Study and year |
|---|---|---|
| Average cost overrun per the Oxford study | 179% real and 324% nominal, 1960-2012 | Schmidt (2017) |
| The same calculation, re-analysed with more official data | 13% to 178% on direct investments, 2000-2014 | Preuss, IJSPP (2022) |
| Weight of the Games’ cost against national GDP | Less than 0.28% | Preuss, IJSPP (2022) |
| Effect on regional GDP, Summer Games | +3 to +4 points in the event year and the one before | Firgo, RSUE (2021) |
| Effect of the Winter Games | None positive; if anything, a temporary decline | Firgo, RSUE (2021) |
| Long-run effect against runner-up cities | None in population, GDP per capita or trade openness | Billings and Holladay, EI (2012) |
| Short-run tourism legacy across nine cities | Little evidence to support it | Moss, Gruben and Moss, JPRTLE (2019) |
| Total cost of Sochi 2014 | $55 billion, 4.5 times the initial budget | Müller, EGE (2014) |
| Share of public money in Sochi | 96.5%, the highest on record | Müller, EGE (2014) |
| Overall conclusion of the economic review | A money-losing proposition in most cases | Baade and Matheson, JEP (2016) |
What you will find here
- The world’s most-cited cost overrun figure and why a re-analysis could not reproduce it.
• What happens when the host city is compared against the city that lost the vote.
- Why the Summer and Winter Games produce opposite results.
• What is left of the tourism legacy when it is measured with air passenger data.
- The Sochi case, complete with all its figures.
- Despite what the literature suggests, municipalities continue to submit bids.
Disputing the cost overrun amount
Start with the one everyone cites. Sascha Schmidt summarised it in 2017 — in a book chapter, rather than a peer-reviewed article — using the phrasing that has since become standard: between 1960 and 2012, the Olympic Games consistently exceeded their budgets, averaging a 179% overrun in real terms and 324% in nominal terms, as uncovered by researchers at the University of Oxford.
His complementary observation describes the state of the debate well: although politicians and interest groups continually justify the overarching costs by promising future economic benefits, economists have a hard time finding any economic impact from hosting the Games when engaging in ex post analysis of indicators like GDP, employment rate and trade volume.
Holger Preuss, of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, subjected that figure to re-analysis in International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics in 2022. It is worth being explicit about what this piece is: a commentary and methodological dispute, not an independent measurement, and its author has worked extensively within the Olympic sphere, which is part of the context of his position.
That said, his objections are concrete and checkable. He starts from the fact that the so-called Oxford study shows cost overruns of 170% to 750% with a substantial risk of further overruns in future, and sets out to re-analyse them using a method in accordance with the international convention of comparing across time and geographies, with a dataset containing abundantly more governmental data.
His results: he could not replicate the Oxford study’s results for the period 2000-2016. His own calculation yields, for the Games from 2000 to 2014 and for direct non-organising-committee investments, cost overruns in the range of 13% to 178%. And he adds the figure that sets the discussion in macroeconomic scale: the costs of the Olympic Games represent less than 0.28% of GDP; hence it is clear that the Games cannot cause a severe national economic crisis.
Preuss also identifies six typical «misperceptions» in this debate and disputes the assumption that host cities give a blank cheque to the International Olympic Committee, arguing that the demands are fixed in the Host City Contract. That the two estimates differ so widely — 170-750% against 13-178% — does not mean one is false and the other true: it means the answer depends on which line items are counted as a cost of the event. And that accounting decision is, in practice, the heart of the controversy.
| Study | What it measured | What it found | What it cannot establish |
|---|---|---|---|
| Schmidt (2017) | Summary of the Oxford study | 179% real and 324% nominal, 1960-2012 | Book chapter; not an original measurement |
| Preuss, IJSPP (2022) | Re-analysis with more governmental data | 13% to 178% on direct investment | Commentary and method dispute, not new measurement |
| Firgo, RSUE (2021) | Hosts against runners-up in the vote | +3 to +4 points in the event year | Long run positive but not robust |
| Billings and Holladay, EI (2012) | Hosts matched with finalists, 1950-2005 | No long-term effect | Does not rule out non-economic effects |
| Boto-García and Santana-Gallego (2025) | Panel 1991-2023, dynamic differences | Notable effects on employment and GDP per capita | National aggregate; no regional breakdown |
| Müller, EGE (2014) | Costs and impacts of Sochi 2014 | $55 billion and a $1.2 billion annual burden | An extreme case in a singular political context |
Comparing against whoever lost the vote
The central methodological problem of this literature is obvious once it is named: the cities that host Olympic Games are not just any cities. They bid because they have ambition, growth, fiscal capacity and political support, and all of that affects their economy in its own right. Comparing a host against the national average credits the Games with what was in fact the city’s profile.
The elegant solution exists and two studies have used it: comparing against the cities that also bid and lost. They are cities with the same ambition and the same profile, minus the event.
Matthias Firgo applied it in Regional Science and Urban Economics in 2021 to examine both immediate and long-term impacts on the regional economy, utilizing runners-up in the Olympic bidding process to construct the counterfactual for Olympic host regions.
His results, by type of Games:
| Case | Short-run effect | Long-run effect |
|---|---|---|
| Summer Games | +3 to +4 points of regional GDP per capita above the national level | Positive but not statistically robust |
| Window of the Summer effect | The event year and the one before | Does not clearly persist |
| Winter Games | No positive impact on the host region | No documented effect |
| Winter Games, strict reading | If anything, a temporary decline in regional GDP per capita | No subsequent compensation |
| Seven European Games, independent analysis | Summer: positive in the post-event phase | Winter: no significant positive results |
| Hosts against finalists, 1950-2005 | Not assessed separately | No effect on population, GDP or trade |
The final row corresponds to Stephen Billings and Scott Holladay, who published in Economic Inquiry in 2012 the toughest study in this group. Their design: matching Olympic host cities with cities that were finalists for the Games but were not selected by the International Olympic Committee, and applying a difference-in-differences estimator to examine post-Olympic impacts between 1950 and 2005.
Their result, literally: regression results provide no long-term impacts of hosting an Olympics on two measures of population, real gross domestic product per capita and trade openness.
It is important to read exactly what that means and what it does not. It does not say the Games have no effect: it says that twenty or fifty years later, the host city is indistinguishable from the city that lost the vote on those four variables. The structural economic legacy, measured that way, does not appear.
What the most recent measurement does find
David Boto-García and María Santana-Gallego published in Tourism Management in 2025 the analysis with the most modern econometric apparatus: a panel from 1991 to 2023 with dynamic difference-in-differences estimators that distinguish anticipation from legacy effects, account for staggered treatment timing and accommodate heterogeneous effects.
Their result is more favourable than the earlier ones and should be recorded: moderate anticipatory effects on tourism and notable impacts on employment and GDP per capita, with the Summer Games exhibiting a stronger impact.
The authors frame their contribution by flagging precisely the field’s problem: empirical evidence on the overall impact remains inconclusive, largely due to methodological challenges, and they highlight the limitations of standard approaches. That a better method yields a more positive result is relevant and has to await replication.
The tourism legacy
The tourism narrative forms the second pillar of any bid: global audiences witness the city on screen and subsequently travel there. In 2019, Steven Moss, Kathleen Gruben alongside Janet Moss examined this premise within the Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events utilizing the most direct metrics available: monthly international air passenger arrivals for nine Olympic host cities, deploying a time series methodology that accounted for issues highlighted in earlier research—such as preexisting trends, external shocks, seasonality and displacement effects.
Their outcome: the data reveals minimal backing for the legacy impact over a brief timeframe.
Two studies on Brazil and on major events in general qualify that conclusion in a more favourable direction. Roberto Meurer and Hoyêdo Nunes Lins analysed in Tourism Economics in 2018 the effects of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Games on Brazilian international travel receipts, and Christian Vierhaus, in the same journal the same year, estimated the international tourism effect of hosting Olympic Games and FIFA World Cups. Their results point to detectable tourism effects, which is not incompatible with the absence of legacy measured in the airport data: an effect can exist in receipts and not in passenger volume, or concentrate in the event period.
Eleni Kasimati and Peter Dawson supplied for Athens 2004 the temporal pattern that sums up this entire literature, with an aggregate macroeconometric model published in Economic Modelling in 2008. They find evidence that the Games can successfully boost the host city’s economy by generating benefits that outweigh the preparation cost. And they add the coda: whilst the impact effects are quite strong during the preparation phase and the year the Games took place, the long-term economic legacy effects appear to be quite modest.
Strong during preparation and the event, modest afterwards: that is exactly the profile Firgo finds using finalists as the counterfactual, and it is compatible with Billings and Holladay’s long-run zero. Three studies, three methods, the same curve.
Sochi, with all its figures
Martin Müller published in Eurasian Geography and Economics in 2014 the accounts of the Sochi Winter Games, and it is the most thoroughly documented case in the whole literature. The figures are worth listing without ornament:
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total cost | $55 billion |
| Budget at the time of the bid | $12 billion |
| Cost overrun multiplier | 4.5 times |
| Sports-related costs | Around $16 billion |
| Ranking by sports-related cost | Second-most expensive Games ever |
| Ranking by cost per event | The most expensive ever held |
| Share of public funding | 96.5%, the highest on record |
| Estimated subsequent annual burden | Around $1.2 billion a year |
And the balance of outcomes: the benefit from this high cost is limited. Extensive construction led to hotel overcapacities, investors defaulted on state-backed loans, and there is no coherent plan for the after-use of venues and some of the largest infrastructure projects.
The annual burden Müller quantifies includes operation, maintenance, and foregone interest and tax revenue. And the two non-economic effects usually invoked do not appear either: the event also did not manage to improve the image of Russia in the world, and among the domestic population support dropped over the seven years of its implementation, most notably among the local population.
That last observation deserves underlining. Support fell most among those living where the Games were held. The supposed civic pride, which is the argument of last resort when the economic ones fail, behaved the other way round.
What the literature says as a whole
Two reviews allow everything above to be placed. The most cited is by Robert Baade and Victor Matheson in Journal of Economic Perspectives in 2016, and it sorts costs and benefits into three categories each. The costs: general infrastructure such as transportation and housing, specific sports infrastructure required for competition venues, and operational costs including general administration as well as the opening and closing ceremony and security. The benefits: the short-run benefits of tourist spending during the Games, the long-run «Olympic legacy» — infrastructure improvements and increased trade, foreign investment or subsequent tourism — and intangible benefits such as the «feel-good effect» or civic pride.
Their conclusion is the most-quoted sentence in the field: the overwhelming conclusion is that in most cases the Olympics are a money-losing proposition for host cities; they result in positive net benefits only under very specific and unusual circumstances. And they add a relevant asymmetry: the cost-benefit proposition is worse for cities in developing countries than for those in the industrialised world.
The 2018 study by Pasquale Scandizzo and Maria Rita Pierleoni, published in Journal of Economic Surveys, broadens the perspective on the Games by viewing them as cultural assets and catalysts for endogenous growth, while also reviewing various methodologies, concepts, and approaches. According to the authors, their broad conclusions are controversial, with some hints of positive overall effects, but also with a well-documented tendency to exaggerate the benefits and underestimate the costs in the ex ante versus the ex post studies.
And one observation that opens a door: ex post cross-country econometric studies tend to catch sizeable differential and persistent benefits ignored by individual studies. That is to say, the method of measurement partly determines the result, just as it did with the cost overrun.
Sorted by category of inquiry, the existing body of work proves significantly less contradictory than it initially appears.
| Question | Soundest answer | Degree of agreement |
|---|---|---|
| Do budgets overrun? | Yes, always; the magnitude is what is disputed | Total on the sign |
| Is there a boost in the event year? | Yes: +3 to +4 points in summer | High |
| Is there a long-run economic legacy? | No, against runner-up cities | High, with one recent exception |
| Is there a tourism legacy? | Little evidence in the short run | Medium: depends on the variable |
| Is summer the same as winter? | No: winter shows no positive effect | High |
| Is it the same in rich and poor countries? | No: worse in the latter | High |
What that table shows is that the real disagreement concentrates in a single cell — the magnitude of the cost overrun — and in the exception of the 2025 measurement. On everything else, twenty years of work using different methods point to the same curve: a peak in the event year and little or nothing afterwards.
Why cities keep bidding
If the definitive verdict points toward a financial failure, the natural inquiry is why municipalities vie for the opportunity. Baade and Matheson raise this exact point at the conclusion of their analysis: they examine why what appears to be an increasingly unwise investment choice by urban centers continues to attract intense competitive bidding, and whether reforms to the International Olympic Committee bidding procedure will yield better results for prospective host cities.
Schmidt points the same way in noting that politicians and interest groups justify the overrunning costs with promises of future benefits. And Müller supplies the fact that changes the politics of this question: in Sochi, public support fell over the seven years of implementation, and more sharply among local residents. Preuss, in his 2018 article in the same journal, had proposed a legacy measurement framework precisely because, in his terms, while the sport organisations gain large revenues, cities lose, and the referendums held in the preceding years returned negative results consistently.
Put differently: the economic literature and the electorate of candidate cities have been in agreement for a decade, and bids are decided somewhere else.
One point of fairness is owed to the bid documents, because the literature does not say the Games do nothing. It says the Games produce a large, short, concentrated burst of activity and then return the host to the trajectory it was already on. For a city with a specific piece of infrastructure it wanted anyway — a metro line, a cleaned-up waterfront, a transport interchange — an Olympic deadline is a way of getting it built in seven years instead of twenty, and that is a real benefit that none of these studies measures, because it is not an Olympic effect but an acceleration effect.
The candid formulation of the bid, therefore, is not «the Games will pay for themselves». It is «we are buying a deadline, and here is what the deadline will deliver», with the budget overrun factored in at whatever end of the 13-to-178 per cent spectrum the municipality can absorb. Such an argument is justifiable. It is likewise far more difficult to present to a public vote, a factor that perhaps explains why the referendums consistently collapsed.
How to handle this, practically speaking
- Always ask which line items are in the cost. The difference between a 170-750% overrun and a 13-178% one is largely an accounting decision about what gets attributed to the event.
• Demand comparison against the finalist cities. It is the only honest counterfactual, and with it the long-run effect disappears in population, GDP per capita and trade openness.
- Do not treat summer and winter as the same case. The Summer Games give +3 to +4 points in the event year; the Winter Games, no positive impact and possibly a temporary decline.
• Discount the tourism legacy. Air passenger data from nine host cities show little evidence supporting the short-run effect.
- Budget for subsequent maintenance, not just construction. Sochi carries around $1.2 billion a year in operation, maintenance and foregone revenue.
• Distrust pre-event studies. The 2018 review documents a tendency to exaggerate benefits and underestimate costs in ex ante studies relative to ex post ones.
Frequently asked questions
Are the Olympic Games profitable?
According to the most-cited review, no: in the majority of instances, they represent a financial drain for host municipalities, generating positive net gains exclusively under highly specific and exceptional conditions. Furthermore, this endeavor tends to yield even poorer outcomes within developing nations.
How far do budgets overrun?
It depends what is counted. The Oxford study puts the 1960-2012 average at 179% real and 324% nominal; a re-analysis with more governmental data could not replicate it for 2000-2016 and obtained 13% to 178% on direct investments.
Does it provide a genuine economic stimulus?
Yes, and a bounded one. Compared against finalist cities, the Summer Games raise regional GDP per capita by 3 to 4 percentage points above the national level in the event year and the one before. The long-run effect is positive but not statistically robust.
And twenty years later?
The study matching hosts with finalists between 1950 and 2005 finds no long-term impact on two measures of population, real GDP per capita or trade openness.
Are visitor numbers higher later on?
Monthly international air passenger arrival data for nine host cities show little evidence to support the short-run legacy effect. Other studies detect effects on travel receipts, which is not the same variable.
What happened in Sochi?
It cost $55 billion against the bid’s $12 billion, with 96.5% public money, left hotel overcapacity, defaults on state-backed loans and no coherent after-use plan, and carries around $1.2 billion a year in burden.
What about civic pride?
It serves as the ultimate recourse, and within the most thoroughly recorded instance, the dynamic unfolded inversely: support dropped over the seven years of implementation, most notably among the local population.
What remains unknown
• What the correct cost overrun is. The two estimates differ by an order of magnitude and the discrepancy is an accounting one: which general infrastructure items are attributed to the event.
• Why the more recent methods give more positive results. The 1991-2023 panel finds notable impacts on employment and GDP per capita where the finalist-based designs see none in the long run.
- Whether there is a city-size threshold below which it never pays. The asymmetry between developed and developing countries is documented; the threshold is not.
• What the intangible benefit is worth. Baade and Matheson include it as a category and nobody has quantified it comparably against the costs.
• Whether changes in the International Olympic Committee’s bidding process improve the outcome. That is the question closing the 2016 review and it remains empirically unanswered.
References
1. Baade, R. A. and Matheson, V. A. «Going for the Gold: The Economics of the Olympics». Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2016. 10.1257/jep.30.2.201
2. Scandizzo, P. L. and Pierleoni, M. R. «Assessing the Olympic Games: The Economic Impact and Beyond». Journal of Economic Surveys, 2018. 10.1111/joes.12213
3. Firgo, M. «The causal economic effects of Olympic Games on host regions». Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2021. 10.2139/ssrn.3500856
4. Billings, S. B. and Holladay, J. S. «Should Cities Go for the Gold? The Long-Term Impacts of Hosting the Olympics». Economic Inquiry, 2012. 10.1111/j.1465-7295.2011.00373.x
5. Preuss, H. «Re-analysis, measurement and misperceptions of cost overruns at Olympic Games». International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 2022. Commentary article. 10.1080/19406940.2022.2037685
6. Schmidt, S. L. «Hosting the Olympic Games». 2017. Book chapter. 10.1007/978-3-319-47458-8_51
7. Müller, M. «After Sochi 2014: costs and impacts of Russia’s Olympic Games». Eurasian Geography and Economics, 2014. 10.1080/15387216.2015.1040432
8. Boto-García, D. and Santana-Gallego, M. «Old questions, new methods: Revisiting the economic effects of hosting mega-sport events». Tourism Management, 2025. 10.1016/j.tourman.2025.105324
9. Moss, S. E., Gruben, K. H. and Moss, J. «An empirical test of the Olympic tourism legacy». Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 2019. 10.1080/19407963.2017.1418750
10. Kasimati, E. and Dawson, P. «Assessing the impact of the 2004 Olympic Games on the Greek economy: A small macroeconometric model». Economic Modelling, 2008. 10.1016/j.econmod.2008.06.006
11. Vierhaus, C. «The international tourism effect of hosting the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup». Tourism Economics, 2018. 10.1177/1354816618814329
12. Meurer, R. and Lins, H. N. «The effects of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games on Brazilian international travel receipts». Tourism Economics, 2018. 10.1177/1354816617746261
This article summarises peer-reviewed scientific literature on the economic impact of major sporting events, flagging in the text the book chapter and the commentary article included. The figures correspond to the editions and periods studied and are not extrapolable to any event. It is not public policy advice, nor an evaluation of any specific bid.
