The Impacts International Sports Have on the Economy and Its People Part 2

This week's episode is part 2 of our exploration about International Sports and how the Olympics and FIFA may be bad for economies. So many young and healthy migrant laborers are dying in Qatar to build (8) FIFA colosseums this year. This episode will make sense on its own, but we encourage you to check out part one from last week.

Joe: Do you remember when Salt Lake hosted the Olympics back in 2002?

Todd: I do remember that.

Joe: Did you feel like it would elevate Salt Lake and make them a huge tourist destination?

Todd: It seems like it because the eyes of the world are on you, and you make all these improvements to your city.

Joe: Salt Lake and Sochi were supposed to get a huge economic boom. The idea is it's going to make the local economy go nuts. They are calculating having tourists show up.

So, how much do the Olympics actually affect a local economy? We went looking for many articles and we will link off to a couple of them. But basically, it was to see if the Olympics was good for the economy or bad. Starting with the Olympics themselves, they stated that they generated 45,000 jobs, years of employment and contributed 20% of Utah's job growth between 1998-2002 when the Olympics happened. A mild economic recession in 2002 mitigated the immediate post games effects of the spending power, and employment growth did not continue in the years following the Olympic games. More people left than came.

The Olympics themselves say that Salt Lake didn't have a growth afterward. Basically, they blame it on the tourism industry, not them. However, they probably would have taken credit if it would have boomed instead. In short, the Olympics did nothing for the economy. They had a short boom, but it went away just 5 years later.  In fact, the Olympics say that they might have cushioned Utah from the worst or some of the worst effects of the recession, but I kind of doubt that. There is no proof either way.

A series of studies from journalists' resources put together articles that talked about what happened in Utah afterward. They said that the Olympics brought full-time and part-time jobs because that was one of Utah's big talking points. But Qatar and all the migrants who were dying there have jobs, which was the ultimate argument in this study. They say that it was entirely transitory. There's no economic residue that can be identified once the games left town. Anecdotally, I was reading another study that was talking about how most of the jobs they brought weren't necessarily hiring locals, and a lot of those locals were already employed.

Next up comes Atlanta. So, when Atlanta hosted the Olympics, they looked at their rent prices before and after the 1996 Summer Olympics. Salt Lake saw an increase in rental prices near Central City, but Atlanta’s rent prices went up and then basically rippled out and stayed up. In summary, the games certainly did affect their economy. From the same source, they talk about jobs and they say at the state level, we find strong evidence in increased leisure-related industries in the short run. However, the results indicated no long-term impact on trade or total employment. So again, every source we came across says the Olympics show up and boom jobs but does not make for sustainable jobs or a long-lasting ripple of jobs. Basically, as soon as they fold up their tent, the jobs go away.

We talked at the beginning of part 1 about how Qatar overbid for FIFA. How can you really estimate what everything is going to cost and the problems that you're going to see? Because you've never done this before. When Sochi did the Olympics, they estimated $12.3B and then at the end, it was $55B. They had to apologize to their own economy for the Olympic stadium. Knowing this, can we talk about the benefits of hosting the Olympics? I found a couple of examples of where it actually helped. They talked about temporary jobs and hopefully after job infrastructure is built, still continued. For example, when Rio hosted the Olympics, they built 15,000 new hotel rooms to accommodate tourists.

Of course, Sochi invested $42B in non-sports infrastructure. So, we're talking roads, airports, rails, etc.  Qatar is currently building a new airport. With the Olympics, if the country survives hosting the Olympics or FIFA, their infrastructure is really what should stay and what the main benefit can be. As we mentioned with Salt Lake, they added about 7,000 jobs and did not build as much infrastructure that they might have gained long-term benefits from. They were way more focused on jobs themselves. It's almost like taking a system and then testing its maximum as if the Olympics showed up. You are really seeing what your infrastructure can handle, and you're building for anything that you can't. The bottom line from what I can see, hosting the Olympics seems to result in deficiencies for the cities and cause displacement but can lead to better infrastructure to create a more sustainable economy.

Joe: How did the deaths at Qatar get labeled as natural? 6,500 natural deaths?

Todd: I think it's important to talk first about the death toll. The number 6,500 is a lot, but it’s actually a very conservative number. They cut the death toll counting off two months before this project was done and those two months were when they were rushing, equating to a lot more deaths. But the worst part is two of the major countries that sent the most immigrant migrant workers were Kenya and the Philippines. Those two countries don't even report the deaths. So, this is number is way over 6,500. Now the injuries were crazy. There's a lot of blunt injuries, things being dropped, people falling, and people hanging themselves. The one that I can't get my head around was death due to decomposition.

Joe: Okay, so their bodies would be found later and it was already in the state of decay?

Todd: Yeah, they were in some kind of tucked away corner or being worked over and just not being cleaned up.

Joe: The Guardian talked about that happening, where someone collapsed in his bunk and wasn't found until later.

Todd: now, the number one cause of death was extreme heat. These people are working long hours in 100-120-degree weather. Respiratory failure was very common too. They were literally working themselves to death.

That long with poor pay is going to drive a lot of healthy people to suicide because they're ashamed about going back home with nothing. In The Guardian article, they talked about every one of these people coming over as a migrant worker through a recruiter that gets paid. They arrived with debt and are dying of heatstroke with the pay not being what it was said to be. No, what can we learn from Qatar? What can be the long-term political benefits of international sports and its tragedies?

In the last political campaign, I heard the term bread and circuses come up a lot. Bread and circuses refer to any time that in politics or gamesmanship where the idea is you give people entertainment and back an old Rome. They would throw bread out the back of a cart while people were being entertained in the coliseums. The poet Juvenile first talked about how citizens were failing to be Democratic in the Roman Republic because the Roman Empire was just handing them entertainment and food. They swayed their votes or got them to stop voting by throwing some bread while killing a couple of people in front of them. With that, we're going to start with the Olympics again and their benefits of bread and circuses. According to the Olympics themselves, the Olympic Legacy is first about human social and cultural long-term benefits, as this event will remain in the people's minds for decades. There are people who really follow the Olympics, but I don't think the Olympics is giving themselves too much credit for what they do for a nation.

Their newest mission statement talked about how sustainability is one of the core pillars of the Olympic agenda. They're going to be considering whether or not a nation or a country has the ability to host a game, starting from the evaluation of the opportunities and risks of each candidature. So basically, sustainability refers to the strategies and processes applied in decision-making to maximize positive impacts and minimize negative impacts in the social-economic and environmental spheres. It is a lot of political crap, but hopefully, what that all means is they are going to stop awarding the Olympics to people who have to move millions of refugees and immigrants to make it work. All in all, the Olympics knows this is an issue, and we hope that FIFA will start to pay attention as well. Maybe they won’t ask a country that's never built a single Coliseum to build 8 in a couple of years for soccer fans.

Do you want to talk a little bit about the smaller political messages? What happens when the players themselves bring a negative message to the Olympics? So, there are a few pictures of Jesse Owens in 1936. One of them is as a runner blitzing down the field miles ahead of everybody else. There is another one with him on the blocks giving the American Army salute, with a German player giving the Nazi salute right behind him. That is kind of the start of the huge political movement in the Olympics. In that picture, the genetically Superior Germans could not beat Jesse Owens, a black American at running. So, what you see in that picture is actually him doing the Nazi salute behind him as he had just been proven wrong - Germany and Hitler had been proven wrong about genetic superiority.

To be a repeating theme, a lot of these protests are about International Sports being hosted and what countries don't like that. The Olympics likes to think they're not political, but it sure seems like a lot of where they host is political. In their rule book, they say no kind of demonstration, political, religious, or racial propaganda is permitted on any Olympic venues or other areas. So, the Olympics will try to sneak into it. If you host their games, they are allowed to come in and take down signs. If I put an anti-Olympic sign while they're in town, they can have the local police force you to take it down. They will also try to keep you from doing any kind of political protest in and of itself.

So, do you think that the Olympics are going to change their strategy after FIFA's gotten all this heat from using a migrant workforce that is dying? First off, the Olympics is not FIFA. It's the International Olympic Committee, and they are awarded to non-deserving countries or the highest bidding ones. However, the biggest concern is the one in China, and there have been over 180 human rights groups who have called for a boycott to China for the way that Muslims in that country have been treated. They think that there might be concentration camps there holding over a million people. With that, there may be a huge amount of people forced to work at these next Olympics. So, when we say that FIFA and the International Olympic Committee are different, we mean only in their title and how much they pay their players.

Final Thoughts

Whatever our background, most of us can remember cheering for someone wearing our national colors. Perhaps it was watching Michael Phelps on his way to 28 Olympic medals for America or Lionel Messi dominating the field for Barcelona. It stands to reason that a game capable of bringing the country together would be a net positive, right? But in the case of Qatar, we have to ask - is a short boost of testosterone and dopamine for half a billion people worth 6,500 lives?

It's important to remember that 6,500 lives are an unnecessary cost in the first place.

We can have all the benefits without the consequences if we demand sustainable games hosted by countries that already have the infrastructure and the colosseums. If you're wondering, what you can do against such a large organization if you want to join the game but not support Qatar, the answer is simple: Don't buy anything with a logo on it.

FIFA makes 95% of its money through licensing rights, which means every time you buy an official FIFA video game, jersey, or hat, you're sending prophets directly to FIFA while the host country pays the real price. The same could be said for the Olympics, who can and will find stores that infringe on their logos and phrases.

So, please enjoy the sport for the sport. If you want to support your favorite athlete or your favorite underappreciated Olympian, send money directly to them. They probably have a crowdfunding site where you can help them pay for their ski poles or boxing gloves. We guarantee you'll feel ten times better knowing you bought the training equipment for your favorite athlete during their time of need rather than impulse buying yet another FIFA video game or some creepy Olympic mascot plushie that will end up at Goodwill.