Stop Ignoring the Facts … LA Needs to Host the 2024 Olympics

GUEST WORDS—A word to Greg Nelson regarding his CityWatch column on the dollar danger of LA hosting the 2024 Olympics (‘Not So Fast. Let’s Consider the Real Costs of Hosting the Olympics before We Jump In’)     In the interest of transparency - there are two important facts you omitted. 

First, you might have mentioned that while most other cities have had deficits, the Los Angeles games in 1984 had an almost quarter billion dollar SURPLUS and the last Olympics - London 2012 - despite costing a staggering 14.6 billion dollars due to all the facilities and new security requirements - still had a net profit of 52 million dollars.

London's surplus was due to the dramatic increase in revenues from higher ticket prices, far higher international media rights and private sponsorships.

And the second omission is that even though some studies have shown that many high cost sports facility projects may not create economic development - you left out the only long term study that has been done on the Olympic Games which is in PricewaterhouseCoopers European Economic Outlook June 2004.

It showed the LA Games having a 2.3 billion dollar - using 1984 dollars - total economic impact and that it created 73,000 jobs – even without a major facility construction program. It also brought in 600,000 tourists.

But I think the biggest reason to have the Olympics here is to be able to promote Los Angeles as still being a major city and a major tourist attraction. This is critically necessary because Los Angeles is rapidly falling behind many other cities in the US – and dozens of cities throughout the world – in every single type of economic development – from tourism to entertainment – two of our major industries. 

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And in the latest survey of the top 83 financial cities in the world – Los Angeles didn’t even make the list. That is how far our city has fallen in the past 20 years – and the rate of our decline is now increasing.

In the past two to three years we have lost our last major bank, the headquarters of our last major oil companies and over a dozen other major headquarters at the same time exactly - zero - major companies have moved their headquarters to Los Angeles. 

We also are continuing to lose entertainment jobs to New York and tech company headquarters to San Francisco and the Silicon Valley and tech jobs to Texas and other lower cost states. And then – adding to all that - the expansion of the Panama Canal will soon have a devastating impact on both of our ports

So – yes – we do desperately need to brand our city as still being capable of hosting international events and we more than ever need to reinforce our appeal as a tourist destination. Because as more and more businesses leave LA – tourism may soon be our last major industry

 

(Brady Westwater is a writer and a longtime  contributor to CityWatch. He is president of Westwater Films and Media.)

-cw

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 65

Pub: Aug 11, 2015