I rejoice that Boston didn’t get the 2024 Olympics
The 2024 summer olympics are scheduled to open in paris in July. A lot of parisians dread what’s coming. in French public opinion polls, more than half of respondents say the city of light will not be ready to host the event. exactly how many residents plan to get out of town to avoid the chaos isn’t known, but the number appears not to be negligible: According to the French market research firm odoxa, 52 percent of survey respondents in greater paris said they planned to leave during the olympics. even if some of that is merely venting, it implies a high level of dismay. in the same survey, 44 percent said they consider the Games a “bad thing” for their city.
the French news service AFp reported last month that vast swaths of paris will be under camera and Ai surveillance. some 45,000 security personnel will be mobilized, a no-fly zone will clear the skies of air travel, and beginning a week before the opening ceremonies, much of the city will be heavily restricted, even to many residents and workers.
As with all olympics, the paris Games come with a hefty price tag. the city has so far laid out more than $9.7 billion to cover the cost of construction, policing, transportation, and other expenses. What will it get for that investment, apart from the privilege of hosting the Games? According to international olympic committee calculations, paris stands to reap economic benefits worth as much as $12.2 billion — or as little as $6 billion. A net gain of $2.5 billion, in other words, or a net loss of $3.7 billion.
if past olympics are any indication, losses are more likely. Again and again, studies commissioned by governments or local boosters forecast confidently that “hosting the [olympics] will provide a major economic lift by creating jobs, drawing tourists, and boosting overall economic output,” as researchers wrote in a 2021 paper for the council on Foreign relations. “However, research carried out after the games shows that these purported benefits are dubious.” olympic host cities routinely find that they badly underestimated their costs — since 1976, cost overruns for each summer olympics have averaged more than 250 percent — and badly overestimated the financial rewards. indeed, in the modern era only one olympics host city, los Angeles in 1984, managed to realize a profit. that was primarily because nearly all the stadiums and other required facilities already existed.
All of which makes me appreciate more than ever that Boston’s bid for the 2024 summer Games did not succeed. it also makes me realize i was remiss in never expressing thanks to the private activists who launched the campaign to derail the bid.
in June 2014, when Boston made the Us olympic committee’s short list of candidates to host the 2024 summer Games, then-mayor Marty Walsh promised to “engage Boston residents, businesses, and community and neighborhood groups” as the city competed for the nod. seven months later, the Usoc selected Boston as the city it would recommend to the international olympic committee (ioc) and Walsh pledged to supervise “the most open, inclusive, and transparent process in olympic history.”
in truth, nothing about the bid process had been transparent. only after winning the Usoc designation did the Boston 2024 commission finally release its bid documents — and those were redacted to conceal awkward information such as the likelihood of a half-billiondollar operating loss. Boston’s olympic boosters also had hidden their plans to use eminent domain to force private owners to sell land on which olympic venues were to be built. the bid documents falsely claimed that 66 percent of Massachusetts residents supported the olympic bid (the actual figure was around 50 percent). And it indicated a willingness to change any Massachusetts laws that olympics officials objected to.
those revelations dramatically confirmed what opponents of the Boston olympics process — including chris dempsey, Kelley Gossett, and liam Kerr, three young professionals who organized a grassroots effort to keep the Games out of Boston — had been saying all along: the Games would be too expensive, they would displace too many people, the city’s rosy pitch was unrealistic, and much of the process had been underhanded. As political liberals, they opposed routing billions of dollars away from pressing public needs in order to build athletic venues for an event that would last just three weeks. the more the public learned about what bringing the Games to Boston would entail, the more the opposition grew. For example, as sports journalist Bill littlefield later recounted, officials of the ioc insisted on royal treatment for themselves during the Games, “including traffic lanes reserved for their exclusive use.” the Boston common was proposed as a venue for beach volleyball — an arrangement that would have involved cutting down “a few dozen trees” and blocking public access to America’s oldest public park.
it seems clear in retrospect that the political and business big shots who were determined to land the 2024 summer Games were blinded by their own sense of importance and dealmaking savvy. in littlefield’s words, “they dismissed the opposition as a few clowns sending tweets to each other.” Walsh memorably articulated that attitude when he sneered that the no Boston olympics campaign amounted to only “about 10 people on twitter.” For a supposedly savvy union negotiator — Walsh had headed the Boston Building trades council before becoming mayor — it was a remarkably clueless blunder.
in the end, those “10 people on twitter” — and the many thousands of Greater Boston residents they spoke for — carried the day. Walsh was forced to call a press conference and announce that contrary to what the Usoc was demanding, the city would not agree to cover any cost overrun if olympic organizers ran out of money. in response, the Usoc pulled the plug on Boston’s bid to host the Games. Wherever the 2024 summer olympics might be held, it wouldn’t be Boston.
Boston wasn’t the only city to withdraw. so did Hamburg, rome, and Budapest. in the end, only los Angeles and paris pressed ahead with their bids, and paris got this year’s Games. (los Angeles will host in 2028.)
to parisians who shudder at the prospect of the havoc headed their way, i offer my sincere sympathy. i wouldn’t blame you if you’re looking to get away from the massive crowds, the jacked-up prices, and the security restrictions. Why not come to Boston?