Nobody Wants To Host The Olympics

Much like US elections, the race to host the Olympics starts early. Cities across the world are in the first stages of the bid process to host the 2024 Summer games, and four American cities are vying for the chance: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Boston. Like in election primaries, it can be difficult to tell what separates the various candidates in the early stages. Their personalities are only just taking form. But while there's no front runner for the US bid, Boston is clearly leading the pack in a different category: Of the four cities, Boston's bid has the most organized, vocal opposition movement.

No Boston Olympics "started as a group of people in their early 30s who want to raise families in Boston and want to be involved in Boston civic life and really don't think the Olympics are a good idea," Chris Dempsey, one of the group's co-chairmen, said by phone. "I think there are huge downsides and negatives. We felt like that side of the story wasn't being told."

Rather, the story being told in Boston is the same one the International Olympic Committee always tells: that the Olympics are an opportunity for cities to raise their global profile and embrace the Olympic Spirit while reaping simultaneous economic rewards. Those rewards are both short-term, from the three-week tourism spike and corresponding city beautification, and long-term, from the leftover Olympic stadiums and transportation infrastructure.

No Boston Olympics' campaign is focused on educating Bostonians on three main points:

• That the economic benefits touted by the IOC and Olympic boosters are grossly overstated.
• That the event is too expensive. Boston's bid estimates the cost at $4.5 billion. No Boston Olympics argues it will likely cost between $10 and $20 billion.
• That hosting the Olympics comes with a serious opportunity cost for the state and local governments: elected officials will shift their most talented staffers onto heavily publicized Olympic issues-like making sure the stadia are ready-rather than important civic issues. "That means that by definition, [a future mayor or governor's] best people are not working on health care, they're not working on education, they're not improving open spaces or fixing transportation infrastructure."

No Boston Olympics is small-as of this writing, just 194 Facebook likes and a handful of Twitter followers, though Dempsey said the group's Boston volunteer network is "in the hundreds," and growing rapidly-but there is precedent for such a grassroots campaign successfully blocking an Olympic bid. A similar group in Germany, Nolympia, was instrumental in bringing about the public referendum that ultimately derailed Munich's bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. There's a similar campaign underway in Berlin, which is also bidding for the 2024 games.

Assuming Boston is selected for the US bid, No Boston Olympics' end game is probably also some kind of public referendum. In the 1970s, a Denver Olympic bid was derailed by a public vote. In June, the Olympic committees of Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Sweden jointly published a document expressing concerns over the lack of public support for Olympics bids. "The striking element welding all four committees together is the fact that all above mentioned bids were not lost in the official bid process, but due to a lack in national or at least regional public or political support," it reads in part. "In Switzerland and Germany, citizens rejected potential bids in public referenda with 53%, in Sweden national politics decided not to support a bid and in Austria public opposition even received 72% in a referendum." Krakow also voted not to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, and politicians in Norway killed a bid for a 2022 Oslo games.

"[The IOC] needs to understand that people are really dissatisfied with the Olympic experience, what it does to cities and the cost benefits," explained Dempsey. "If they really believe in the Olympic spirit and they really want to see games that are sustainable and truly have benefits for the host cities, they need to do some really hard and deep thinking about what that means."

Rather than take the Olympics on an endless, costly global tour, the IOC should have a shortlist of cities that are already equipped to handle the Olympic Games or could do so at a low cost. The Olympics are about celebrating humanity. But that celebration shouldn't come at such a price. The most humane solution is for the IOC to focus on putting on the best games possible for the most practical cost-value for price-instead of making cities crucify themselves with decades of spending in order to please a few executives and draw a short-lived spotlight.

Until the IOC makes serious changes, dissatisfaction will remain, and organizations like No Boston Olympics will try to harness that dissatisfaction. For Dempsey, educating people is the first step. It's a difficult task. As any parent of a teenager knows, it's hard to be the voice of reason when some people out there are trying to throw a great, big party. No Boston Olympics is hoping the citizens of Boston, and Massachusetts on a whole, will opt not to party, that the people will chose to stay home instead. This party isn't worth the hangover.