Pros And Cons Of Giving Development Countries The Rights to Host The Olympics

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The Olympics Games is not just a sporting event, the Games carry with them cultural, economic, spatial, and political import. Since their inception, the games have been associated closely with a perception of technical and social progress. Of significance is the fact that these international games have been utilized as a tool of expressing national goals as well as political agendas (Hassan & Mitra, 2016). Moreover, the economic value of the games has dramatically increased over time, mostly due to the revolution in telecommunication as well as the increased fees charged for rights acquisition of national and international broadcast.

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This paper seeks to examine whether developing countries should be given the opportunity to host the Olympic Games.

It is important that the International Olympics Committee consider the economic, political and cultural factors since hosting the Olympics carries its own risk and after all the exorbitant spending for a short-timed event, there is worry that the possible economic and cultural showcase most of the time does not guarantee return on investment.

Therefore, the committee must make their choice taking into consideration the economic and political stability of the host nation to avoid any potential disruption of the games. Playing host to the Olympics carries with it an enormous price tag for security, infrastructure, external pressure and much more and there is no guarantee that the Games will lead to profit (Celestin, 2016).

Globalization has a major impact on the Olympic Movement and the selection of Olympic Games host cities. Thus, since globalization promotion has the intention of sharing social and economic benefits among countries together with their populations, the sports and Olympic movement by acting in this manner-as globalization promoters-have achieved incredible outcomes such as technicities, expansion of spread of sport forms with the assistance of media, commercialization as well as other universal technical advances.

The Winter Olympics of 2014 where was held in Sochi, Russia. Before the games started, there was a lot of hullabaloo and wacky stories ranging from booked hotel rooms that were yet to be completed to an extremely costly road for grass would have been used to pave it. All the games went on as planned, nevertheless, developing countries are not the best choices for key international sporting events. This is so not just because the foreign press and athletes should endure inferior conditions, but since it is not in the best interests of the developing countries citizens to host these games. Generally, the summer Olympics rakes in from 5-6 billion dollars although the winter Olympics rake in less (Hassan & Mitra, 2016).

Going by the available data, rich nations played hosts to the Olympics in '94, '96, '00, '02, '06, '10, and '12 whereas developing nations were hosts in '04, '08 as well as '14. Of the four most costly Olympics, three were hosted in developing countries. Thus, rich nations are more efficient at playing host to international sporting events but immediately developing nations get into the action, the costs start to skyrocket and Brazil's 2016 Olympics smashed records (Hassan & Mitra, 2016).

By pumping in lots of money at these games, developing nations not only escalate the prospects and costs for future host nations, but also create major problems to their respective economies. Moreover, developing nations are incapable of expending huge amounts of scare resources on luxurious sporting events compared to developed nations, yet they are the ones that splurge the most. Their incapability stems from the fact that developing nations by nature have less finances and the degree of social problems is much more and the scarce resources are desperately needed elsewhere (Studebaker, 2016).

Olympic games may also be a source of corruption and mismanagement of public funds. This for instance was the case with Brazil whereby protesters took to the streets to denounce the Olympics because of the corruption it has brought and the diversion of funds from development and anti-poverty expenditure. The allure of hosting the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio was overshadowed by social, political, and economic turmoil. Thus, there was enormous expenditure on stadiums at a time when the Brazilian government could hardly afford wages for teachers and doctors, a big security presence offering protection for rich visitors at the expense of poor locals, miserable crowds that indicated majority of the locals were not interested in the games, and a gaping inequality between the 700 pound a day wages to IOC executives and the Olympic cleaners' 10 dollars a day. Worse still, there is fear that Brazil will not fill or maintain the stadiums after the games are gone (Celestin, 2016).

From the above discussion, it is quite clear that developing countries are not the best bet to hold the Olympics especially since they have huge numbers of extremely poor people that they should take care of. Thus, the international Olympics Committee would do them lots of good to remind them of this hard truth, and kindly refuse their bids to host, no matter the amount of money they are willing to redirect from welfare spending.