Olympic Proportions: Cost and Cost Overrun at the Olympics 1960-2012

Flyvbjerg, Bent; Stewart, Allison

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2238053

Cited by 112 publications

(121 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The Olympic Games always overrun their initial budget. The average cost overrun for the Olympic Games since 1960, including operating and direct capital costs, is 179%: much more than the 27% average overrun for transport mega-projects (Flyvbjerg & Stewart, 2012).…”

Section: Symptom 2: Underestimation Of Costsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Cost overruns, schedule slips, oversized infrastructure, and social polarization dash the high expectations for positive urban development resulting from such events (e.g., Boykoff, 2014;Cottle, 2011;Gaffney, 2010;Hayes & Horne, 2011;Horne, 2007;Shin & Li, 2013). Thus, since 1960, without exception, the Olympic Games have gone over budget, on average by 179% (Flyvbjerg & Stewart, 2012). After the 1994 World Cup in the United States, host cities experienced a net economic loss rather than the predicted gain (Baade & Matheson, 2004).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Mega-Event Syndrome: Why So Much Goes Wrong in Mega-Event Planning and What to Do About It

Müller

2015

Journal of the American Planning Association

196

144

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Section: Symptom 2: Underestimation Of Costsmentioning

confidence: 96%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Mega-Event Syndrome: Why So Much Goes Wrong in Mega-Event Planning and What to Do About It

Müller

2015

Journal of the American Planning Association

196

144

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“…The infrastructural dimension of event seizure refers to the creation of privileged infrastructure for the event. Projects for long-term urban and regional development are often shelved as "nice to haves", as the priorities of the event redirect funding towards sports venues and event-related transportation, often to cover the exorbitant cost overruns (Flyvbjerg & Stewart, 2012). The closer the opening ceremony draws, the more likely it is that the necessities of the event appropriate funding that was meant for other projects, for example, new transport connections, hospitals, schools, housing or social inclusion (de Paula, 2014;Minnaert, 2012).…”

Section: Event Seizure: Three Dimensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Financial seizure is encapsulated in the excessive cost overruns of mega-events. On average, mega-events overrun their initial budget by 179%, dwarfing the 27% average overrun for large-scale transport projects (Flyvbjerg & Stewart, 2012). With the bulk of the funding coming from the state, the public also bears the risks for this cost overrun.…”

Section: Event Seizure: Three Dimensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How mega-events capture their hosts: event seizure and the World Cup 2018 in Russia

Müller

2015

Urban Geography

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This paper develops the notion of "event seizure" to better understand how mega-events, and the elites associated with them, take possession of host cities and societies-of development plans, funds and legislation-and impose their priorities on cities and citizens. It illustrates how event seizure plays out in the preparations for the Football World Cup 2018 in Russia, which is on course to become the most expensive World Cup ever with a total cost of about USD 20 billion. Drawing on government and FIFA documents, public statements from authorities and officials, and media coverage, the paper examines three different dimensions of event seizure. First, infrastructural seizure, where event-related infrastructure, particularly sports venues, crowd out infrastructure that serves wider urban needs. Second, financial seizure, where a close circle of political and business elites benefits from state funding, while the public underwrites cost overruns. Third and last, legal seizure, where the event introduces exceptional legislation, infringing citizen rights and compromising due oversight of event preparations.

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“…Construction projects usually exhibit a difference between forecasted and actual construction costs (Flyvbjerg, 2007a, b;Flyvbjerg and Stewart, 2012). These differences can have various origins, e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Costs of sea dikes – regressions and uncertainty estimates

Lenk

Rybski

Heidrich

et al. 2017

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Failure to consider the costs of adaptation strategies can be seen by decision makers as a barrier to implementing coastal protection measures. In order to validate adaptation strategies to sea-level rise in the form of coastal protection, a consistent and repeatable assessment of the costs is necessary. This paper significantly extends current knowledge on cost estimates by developing -and implementing using real coastal dike data -probabilistic functions of dike costs. Data from Canada and the Netherlands are analysed and related to published studies from the US, UK, and Vietnam in order to provide a reproducible estimate of typical sea dike costs and their uncertainty. We plot the costs divided by dike length as a function of height and test four different regression models. Our analysis shows that a linear function without intercept is sufficient to model the costs, i.e. fixed costs and higher-order contributions such as that due to the volume of core fill material are less significant. We also characterise the spread around the regression models which represents an uncertainty stemming from factors beyond dike length and height. Drawing an analogy with project cost overruns, we employ log-normal distributions and calculate that the range between 3x and x/3 contains 95 % of the data, where x represents the corresponding regression value. We compare our estimates with previously published unit costs for other countries. We note that the unit costs depend not only on the country and land use (urban/non-urban) of the sites where the dikes are being constructed but also on characteristics included in the costs, e.g. property acquisition, utility relocation, and project management. This paper gives decision makers an order of magnitude on the protection costs, which can help to remove potential barriers to developing adaptation strategies. Although the focus of this research is sea dikes, our approach is applicable and transferable to other adaptation measures.

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Olympic Proportions: Cost and Cost Overrun at the Olympics 1960-2012

Cited by 112 publications

References 14 publications

The Mega-Event Syndrome: Why So Much Goes Wrong in Mega-Event Planning and What to Do About It

The Mega-Event Syndrome: Why So Much Goes Wrong in Mega-Event Planning and What to Do About It

How mega-events capture their hosts: event seizure and the World Cup 2018 in Russia

Costs of sea dikes – regressions and uncertainty estimates

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