Editor’s note: The upcoming Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro is placing international attention on Brazil. In this last of three reports, Best Countries examines the impact hosting the Games has had on previous host cities.
ATHENS — In the middle-class suburb of Galatsi, located three miles northeast of Athens’ city center, the setting sun bathes the Olympic complex in its warm red light. The former home of table tennis and rhythmic gymnastics during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games is empty and surrounded by overgrown shrubs. The only sounds occasionally interrupting the silence are those of passing cars and flocking birds.
Twelve years ago it was buzzing with life.
Volunteers once welcomed bustling crowds into the 6,500-seat arena. The Chinese table tennis team dominated the event, going home with three of the four gold medals, and Russia’s group of female gymnasts defended their 2000 Sydney Olympic title and won the gold.
Local and international volunteers returned to the Galatsi Olympic Hall last October. The stadium reopened to host 25,000 migrants and refugees for 56 days. Most of the migrants transferred there by Greek authorities were Afghan families, who had been camping around Victoria Square in downtown Athens. Some of them stayed in the facility up to 20 days before resuming their journey toward northern Europe.
“I feel blessed to have met these people. (…) It was like a gift from God that the venue reopened,” says George Markopoulos, mayor of Galatsi, who immediately saw an opportunity to push for the reuse of the lavish venue.
[READ: Greeks open their homes to migrants]
As Brazil prepares to welcome athletes and spectators to the Rio Games, attention is on more than just the competition on the field. Focus also is turning to the economic impact the Olympics have had on host cities. In the past few years, a number of reports have examined indicators such as employment, tourism and the use of Olympic facilities to evaluate the profits and costs of staging the event. While countries experience economic boosts from hosting the Olympics, a plan for venues after the Games end is critical to long-term benefits, according to analysts.
In Athens, say people involved with the 2004 Games, there was no post-Olympics plan for the facilities.
The post-Olympic use of huge venues in medium-size cities is always problematic, says Ferran Brunet, professor of economics at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. “Impressive Olympic stadiums are built just to look good on television.”
Venues offer potential boost to country’s economy
The 2004 Olympics in Athens did provide a boost to the Greek economy, says Nikos Vettas, director general of the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE), an Athens-based non-profit research organization. The sporting event benefited the country’s exports and tourism industry, increased productivity and created jobs.
According to an IOBE report, however, Greece could have experienced greater benefit during and after the Games. Revenues from the Athens Games exceeded operating costs by more than 6 percent, but the IOBE study argues that the benefits would have been higher if they had attracted more spectators to the Games.
For example, ticket revenues for the 2000 Sydney Games in Australia amounted to 22 percent of total revenues. For the 2012 London Games in the United Kingdom, ticket sales accounted for 31 percent of revenue. In Athens, however, ticket sales reached 194 million euros ($215.5 million), or just slightly more than 9 percent of the total revenues, the same study says. The biggest revenue stream remained broadcast rights, which provided 22 percent of the Athens Games’ revenues.
Additionally, regular use of the facilities after the Games would increase Greece’s gross domestic product by 0.2 percent, the IOBE says.
In Athens, 32 facilities hosted 17,600 athletes and team members during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. In 2005, the Greek parliament approved a law allowing private companies to use the venues for commercial purposes. Only a few, however, have been put to that use.
Last fall, residents and city staff helped Greek authorities mildly renovate Galatsi Olympic Hall. In early July, Markopoulos says he was granted permission to use part of the stadium for the municipality’s cultural and sport events for six months. In the next two years he would also like to use it as a convention center.
In Kallithea, the Olympic Beach Volleyball Center attracted thousands of spectators, but has since sat forlorn and empty. In May, the government proposed to convert it into courtrooms, but the idea was abandoned after protests by the local authorities.
“A [property] management system that would allow the municipality to have a greater role could bring better results,” says Dimitris Karnavos, mayor of Kallithea, Athens’ fourth-largest suburb. Karnavos says the stadium was bigger than what was needed for the Games, but still “it could be turned into an excellent outdoor stage.”
For the 2004 Athens Games, “There was no proper planning,” says Kostas Bakouris, who was the managing director of the Organizing Committee for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games from 1998 to 2000. “We did not invest in temporary facilities,” referring to the 2012 London Games, where facilities were dismantled or adapted to the post-Olympic needs.
Unlike Athens, Barcelona managed to turn its Olympic legacy into profit, says Brunet, the economics professor. Spain’s second-largest city used the athletic venues to transform itself and attract tourism. By 2001, the city was ranked as the Europe’s sixth-most attractive and drew 20.7 million tourists, who spent twice as many nights in the city as they did before 1992. The lack of a political consensus in Greece was an additional reason behind unused venues, Brunet says.
Back in Kalithea, Mayor Karnavos says he is optimistic that recent private investments along Athens’ coast will give a second life chance to the Olympic Beach Volleyball Center. “We should act now,” he says. “Otherwise the momentum will be lost.”
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