As a guest speaker for Williston’s Political Awareness Club (PAC) on Thursday, February 26th, Andrew Zimbalist, Smith College professor and nationally acclaimed economist, spoke about the financial harm cities endure by hosting the Olympics.

From the venues that the cities need to build for the Games to transportation for athletes, fans, and officials to long-term effects of the international sporting event, Mr. Zimbalist provided indisputable statistics that backed his point that the Olympics are a tremendous financial burden on cities.

The United States Olympic Committee nominated Boston as the U.S. city that will bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics. Mr. Zimbalist plainly expressed that he is a staunch opponent of the Massachusetts capital hosting the international sporting event.

“The bidders for the 2024 Boston Olympics say that they recognize that historically hosting the Olympics has been economically problematic. They recognize that there have been many gross failures economically speaking. But they say that they will be different. That they’ve learned their lesson and they’re going to do it better and more frugally and differently than everybody else. ”

Zimbalist added, “But guess what, everybody says that and nobody accomplishes that. I think at the end of the day, this is an enormous risk that is suggested to be  put upon the citizens of Massachusetts. And there are, unfortunately, no real identifiable gains for the risk that would be taken.”

The Olympics provide a stage for sports that generally receive little attention otherwise. As a result, host cities build venues that will have little use when the seventeen days of international frenzy have passed.

“The Olympic Games are mostly catering to sports that don’t have high popularity and don’t have high revenues. So, if you build an aquatic center, it’s not like after the seventeen days of the Olympics, you can have some swimming meets there. [You could] if there was a professional swimming league and you charge fifty dollars per seat. In a situation like that where you’re constantly using the aquatics center, sure, it makes sense. Then you would have a relic from the Olympics that was actually usable. But instead you have these relics that we call ‘white elephants’ because they are not only not usable, but they cost millions of dollars every year to maintain.

Offering a startling piece of evidence, Mr. Zimbalist said that London, when it hosted the Summer Games in 2012, had five percent fewer tourists that summer than in the summer of 2011. An explanation for this is that potential tourists are wary of the crowded city, the increased prices for food and hotels, and the security risks involved in the Olympics.

Mr. Zimbalist, who has taught at nearby Smith since 1974, has published twenty-two books which address the links between economics, culture, and sports. He has also published dozens of articles for the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, among many others.

After speaking for approximately forty-five minutes in Williston’s Dodge Room, Mr. Zimbalist took a half-dozen questions from the audience of around fifty students, faculty, and other members of the Williston community.