Making the Olympic Games Viable

The Olympic Games are an amazing event that capture the imagination of all sports-loving people around the world.

Tragically, the continuing longevity of the Games are threatened by two major issues: the horrendous costs associated with staging the games and the poor usage of the infrastructure after the completion of the games.

Sure, you can find some cities that get reasonable usage from their investment, but such cities are outweighed by those that see their investment crumble from lack of use.

It seems that if the world wishes the Games to continue, and be viable, then the structure of the games needs to change. I propose the following structure:

1. The Olympic Games are still help every 4 years.
2. In future (i.e. after the last city already allocated the games has completed its turn), the process and structure for holding the games changes.
3. All cities that wish to host the games go into a ballot.
4. Greece, as the founder of the modern Olympics, choose first which sport it wishes to conduct.
5. In turn, each city drawn in the ballot, selects one sport that will remain in that city for a period of 20 years (i.e. 5 Olympic seasons).
6. At the end of the ballot, all sports are allocated to a city. If there are more sports than cities, then a new ballot is used for the remaining sports until every sport is allocated to a location.
7. Each city proposes a date/s that their sport will be conducted within an Olympic year.
8. The Olympic Management will schedule sports so that as few sports as possible will clash with other sports over the entire duration of the Olympic year.
9. In that way, those people who wish to attend multiple events will have a greater chance of doing so.
10. The chosen city must be able to provide support for their elected sport/s continuously so that competitors from around the world can use those facilities year-round and not just during their Olympic event or just during the Olympic year. In that way, that city becomes known as the Global City for a particular sport.
11. With such a structure, each hosting city gets year-round value from the facilities, enjoys year-round international sports users and spectators; and justifies the expenditure on world’s best practice facilities for their chosen sports.
12. Olympic Management draws up the rules and operating procedures for such a system as well as organising broadcasting rights for each and all sports.

There is a probability that sports people from a country that has a hosting city will, all other things being equal, develop better sports people in that sport because of the focus on the sport there, and the quality of facilities available to them.