The Olympics may be coming back to Australia as Brisbane vies to host the 2032 Games – but it won’t come cheap.

On Thursday the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that Brisbane’s bid is currently the only one to have progressed to ‘preferred status’, placing it at this point as the frontrunner.

While typically countries compete fiercely to host the Games however, the astronomic public costs involved with holding the world’s attention for four weeks often make bids a controversial affair.

Attempting to head off those concerns early, Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) president John Coates told media the 2032 bid would “break even”.

“The IOC is putting in $2.5 billion,” Coates said.”Then there’s $1 billion in national sponsorship and $1 billion from ticketing. That’s got a large contingency in there, enough to pay for the Paralympic and Olympic Games without any call on the federal and local governments.”

The estimate is based on working produced by a Queensland government taskforce, which believes the Games can happen at a cost of $4.5 billion, with “no cost to the State”. It goes on to suggest that more than $7 billion will pour into Queensland as a result.

“This is transformational infrastructure for our city and our region and it would bring huge economic benefit and jobs as part of our economic recovery as we come out of COVID,” Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said

Considering the Games haven’t even been awarded to Brisbane, not to mention the fact they’re still 11 years away, all the arithmetic really is wishful thinking at best.

Forecasting is mired by inaccuracies and assumptions that rarely if ever flesh out. The Sydney Opera House alone, for example, went 14 times over its budget.

But for a clearer idea of what Australian taxpayers might be up for, let’s take a look at our most recent Games.

Sydney 2000

The year was 2000 and Sydney had just hosted what then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch called “the best Olympic Games ever”.

The eventual cost was around $6.5 billion, a figure which doesn’t include the infrastructure and transport built to cater for the hundreds of thousands who pour into venues to watch the world’s best compete.

Those include Olympic stadium, the Olympic Park Aquatic Centre, the Tennis Centre, and the International Regatta Centre to name but a few. While each has been used over the years for a range of post-Olympic events, it’s difficult to ascertain whether or not each have been worth every cent.

Even including Sydney’s claims of money generated from it, the dollar loss is still thought to exceed $1 billion.

In fact, while the building of train lines and arenas create jobs and help give the local economy a boost, it’s often the case that the act of erecting them for a single event can lead to planning miscalculations.

Brisbane’s bid should at least sidestep some of that discussion. Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner told media that by repurposing existing spaces, only “a few more [venues would] need to be built” but that transport would be a much larger focus.

“They don’t want countries or states to go and invest in monumental stadiums that are not going to be used in the future,” Palaszczuk said.

Schrinner estimates that 85-90% of venues required either exist already or could be temporary.

But again, temporary venues still cost money to build and more again to deconstruct. Nor will expenses necessarily be minimised when hosting elite athletes.

Those that are being considered would include a 50,000 person Olympic stadium the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics events. Also proposed is an indoor sports centre and aquatic arena, both with 15,000-person capacity, for basketball, and swimming and water polo respectively.

Olympic-sized blowout

Compared to other Olympics however, Brisbane so far is effectively being pitched as a no-frills, budget option.

Putting aside whether or not the city can deliver on that promise, it seems like a steal.

Tokyo’s initial budget of $7.5 billion has already blown out to $25 billion ($US20 billion), with the Olympics still not guaranteed to even run. Before that, Brazil put on the 2016 Games for $US13.2 billion, and London did it before that for a smidge more, at $US14.8 billion.

Meanwhile, analysis by Oxford University found that the average cost of recent summer and winter Olympics have come in at $11.4 billion, or more than double Brisbane’s initial forecast.

It’s all a lot cheaper than the 2008 Beijing Games, which reportedly cost anywhere between $35 billion to $50 billion, depending on who is doing the reporting.

In fact, the last city thought to have actually come out ahead was Los Angeles ’84 Games. At a cost of a little more than $US500 million, it has been reported to have left with $US250 million in profit.

Brisbane so far is modest enough to simply want to break even.

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