The price of the question: how much did the 5 most expensive Olympic Games in history cost?

Oxford researchers note that the Olympic Games are the most expensive sporting events in the world. This is increasingly evident in the increasing scale of the event. We wondered which of the competitions were in the top 5 of the ranking of the most expensive and how much the organizers cost for the whole pleasure. The results of the research turned out to be quite surprising.

5th place. Lillehammer, Norway (1994).

1923 athletes from 67 countries met at the competitions in Norway. Such a number of participants had not been seen at any previous Games. This change was due to political restructuring. Many countries participated as independent teams for the first time.

This could not but affect the cost of the event. Initially it was planned to spend $0.59 billion, but the estimate was adjusted and the price rose to $2.23 billion.

Interestingly, journalists calculated that if the athletes of the countries that were formerly part of the USSR had competed as a united team, the country would have earned 31 medals (14, 12, 5) and 247 points in the unofficial team standings.

4th place. Salt Lake City, USA (2002).

This competition has become one of the most scandalous in the history of the Games. After all, the goal of the event was to unite countries around the world, but, according to analysts, the event was held in an atmosphere of “blatant pushing North American athletes onto the podium and pushing everyone else off the podium”.

Be that as it may, the Americans invested a lot. The cost of the event amounted to 2.25 billion dollars.

3rd place. Vancouver, Canada (2010)

Additional costs were brought by the fact that by the beginning of the Olympics a number of venues lacked snow, which had to be brought there by truck. The weather improved only by the end of the Games.

However, despite the large expenses, most of them were compensated by advertising and sponsorship. It cost $2.54 billion to put everything together.

2nd place. Turin, Italy (2006)

The city authorities believe that the Olympics gave a huge boost to its development. It would seem that in this case it is obvious where such figures came from. The city built a subway from scratch! 1.7 billion € were allocated for the construction. Nevertheless, the ranking does not take indirect costs into account. Researchers calculated that the cost of carrying out was 4.36 billion $.

1st place. Sochi, Russia (2014)

The Oxford study shows that Sochi hosted the most expensive Olympics ever. The originally planned budget of $12 billion had to be increased to (mind you!) $22 billion! A colossal difference from second place.

The high cost was due to the need to provide snow since the event was held in a subtropical climate. In addition, an expressway had to be built. A considerable amount of money went into security. However, many believe that some of the money was spent inefficiently.