preuss the economics of staging the olympic games review

8/3/2019 Preuss the Economics of Staging the Olympic Games Review

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Book Reviews 357(footnotes are used throughout) and the rather superficiaJ description required toaddress such a broad subject in so (relatively) few pages.In overall terms, then, this text is useful to a number of constituencies, althoughfew practitioners are likely to venture beyond the methods section (except for theirown indulgence) and few students will find in it the depth of material to do morethan gain a superficial understanding of the issues affecting the value attribution ofpublic spaces. And herein lies the problem: in neither case is this really sufficientand in both cases a reaJ opportunity has been missed. TIl reducing the proximateprinciple to a multiplier approach, the book runs the risk of all similar approaches- especially in tourism studies - of creating a hegemonic 'truth' founded on littlemore than the aggregate of a number of previous studies, instead of focussing OIlthe theory of value attribution and how this can be applied to property. The missedopportunity, of course, is that there now exists a suit of techniques that have thepotential to offer approaches to identifying the proximate impact of parks and openspaces. Neural network engineering is one example that is being applied topredicting the market price of residential property, while the use of software suchas Frontier Analyst has offered new insights into value attribution within theservice and hospitality sectors.What this book does, however, is to situate, with eloquence, the empirical rela-tionship between city administrations and the services that they provide. AsCrompton rightly argues, the conventional idea that parks and open spaces are'public goods' that detract from economic growth is the result of an erroneousassumption that their benefits are purely public. By arguing with copious examplesthat such services also generate private benefits that in some cases can be'captured' by the administration through property taxes, Crompton demonstratesthat both city officials and private developers still have much to learn from thehistory of parks provision, and that attention to such history might lead to muchmore creative design solutions to urban planning than currently tends to be thecase. In this, as in many other areas of academic endeavour, John Crompton is tobe congratulated for writing the type of book that addresses the questions that somany (often practitioners) ask with respect to the value of publicly providedrecreation resources.

Neil RavenscroftUniversity of Brighton

The Economics of Staging the Olympic Games: A Comparison of the Games1 9 7 2 - 2 0 0 8Holger PreussCheltenham, Edward Elgar, 20M, 352 pp., ISBN J 8 4376 893 3 (hardhack),65.00Holger Preuss became a world expert with his PhD and his subsequent textEconomics of the Olympic Games, J 972-2000 ,, published in 200(>. Since then hehas published numerous articles on various aspects of bidding for, hosting, andanalyzing the legacies of the Olympics. This text is an update of his 2000 book,


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Book Reviews 359tourist business with Games-related tourism (i.e. displacement of potentiallylonger term, repeat visitors with probably shorter term one-off visitors). This effectwas not so important for destinations without a previous strong tourism presence,such as Barcelona and Seoul. However, it becomes a major issue for destinationswith a strong track record for tourism, such as Athens and London. Athens suffereda fall in 'normal' tourism business not only during the year of the Games, but alsoin the year following - the latter possibly because norma! visitors have broken thehabit and discovered other attractive and arguably, cheaper destinations.Chapter 7 specifies the broad investment effects on urban communities of host-ing the Games. It includes one of the most underrated positive impacts of manygames - the environmental improvement brought about by the construction workfor the sports and other facilities, very often positioned OIl previously contaminatedor decayed industrial sites or wasteland. It also touches on one of the most seriouspotential problems with Games infrastructure, the underutilization of the sportsfacilities after the Games. However, Preuss concentrates on potential post-Gamesutilization options, rather than attempting to report the albeit limited evidence onactual utilization performance, which is often very disappointing. A year after theAthens Games, for example, a number of the new sporting facilities are closed toany use. Nor does he consider the sporting participation legacy - do Olympicsinspire increases in participation and the longer term consequent benefits on, forexample, health, the behaviour of young people and sporting excellence?Chapters 8 and 9 focus on the rather narrow economic issue of the finances ofthe Organising Committee of the Olympic Games. They are very long and detailedchapters, their 145 pages comprising nearly half the book. This is disproportionate,and reflects an exhaustive and indiscriminate investigation of all aspects. Perhapsit is driven by often voiced media concerns about International OlympicCommittee (lOC) financial dealings, but these concerns are more about politicsthan economics. It is not until the final chapter that the power relationships areanalysed, with clear evidence of the growing influence of the lOC over the mainsources of income. For anyone interested in details of income from televisionrights, sponsorship, licensing of merchandise, coins and stamps, and ticket sales onthe one hand, and expenditures on ceremonies, cultural events, technology, secu-rity, administration, public relations, broadcasting and looking after 'the Olympicfamily' on the other hand, the answers are mostly all here. Despite a conclusionlater in the book that the sources of revenue have been proportionately stable sincel 9 84 , in fact it is shown in Chapter 8 that there is considerable shifting in the shareof total income provided by ticket sales since 1972, from a low of 3% in Seoul1988 to a high of 25 % in Atlanta 1996, with considerable fluctuations in thepercentage contributions from sponsoring and television too. Not surprisingly, theclearest general trend is the growing percentage contributions of sponsorship andtelevision income.The impact of the Games on employment, a 'bottom line' for economic impactassessment, is detailed in Chapter 10 , although it is a pity that the jobs estimatesstill end with Atlanta 1996. There is a rather strange, technical distinction madebetween Games-related jobs and other longer term jobs impacts, such as tourism -surely if they result from the catalyst of the Games, they are a legacy which isGames-related?


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360 Book ReviewsChapter 11 addresses another common charge against the Olympic Games - that

they Jead to price inflation - and concludes that whilst the Games might in the shortterm cause higher prices in key local markets, the IOC actually requires price stabi-lisation guarantees from host cities (as far as prices can be policed) and the Gamesdo not affect price changes at the national level. This chapter also reveals the shar-ing of any financial surplus for the Organising Committee of the Olympic Games(OCOG) - for Athens 2004 this was 209;) to the National Organising Committee,20% to the IOC, and 6 0 ( 7 0 for the general benefit of sport in the host country. It istoo selective to spotlight the 20% share going to the IOC. Furthermore, the sportinglegacy from the Games is not confined to the shares of the OCOG surplus. Themuch bigger legacy is the participation and events' returns from the major sportingcapital investments made for the Games.Finally, Chapter 12 offers some key reflections on the economics of the OlympicGames and some challenges for future hosts. One of the most noteworthy remind-ers is that the OCOG does not make a loss, it makes a surplus. Only when the publicinfrastructure investments are taken into consideration does a spurious ' loss'emerge which is wrong because the long term benefits from these assets are notaccounted for.

This corresponded to a complete depreciation of newly constructed facilities during the shortduration of the Olympics. Economically this cannot be justified. If only the operational costsand the depreciation or the rents of the newly constructed facilities were balanced with therevenues, all Olympics investigated here would have a positive balance. (p . 283)

An important challenge identified by Preuss is that 'The principle of "Olympicfunds are not allowed to be used for permanent construction of infrastructure"decreases the chances that the Games can successfully be staged in threshold ordeveloping countries' (p. 284). This is because the capital costs of any permanentsporting infrastructure has to be paid for by the applicant country. There is noincenti ve to build temporary facilities because their costs wilJ be part of the OCOGbudget and the OCOG are typically reluctant to take on such costs, except for rela-tiveJy minor facilities. As noted earlier in this review, this principle also leads to'white elephants' in many of the host countries - permanent Olympic facilitieswhich are severely underutilised after the Games.

Preuss reiterates the concern of Coubertin, in 1911, that small countries areprevented from bidding for the Games and he offers a fascinating prospect of alter-native style bids from threshold and developing countries, with mobile teams of'Olympic experts', temporary and mobile installations replacing the expensiveconstruction of permanent venues, and infrastructure investments integrated intoexisting urban development plans. The notion of temporary facilities is equallyrelevant to developed country bids, particularly where post-Games utilisation islikely to be a problem.

A second major challenge is for host cities to sustain the economic impact of theGames:It is of decisive importance whether a city manages to use the single impact to change its struc-ture in a way that will provide a basis for further impacts to trigger a self-sustaining process.This could be the case, for example, through permanent tourism, industrial settlements, regularfollow-up events or new trade relations. (p. 290)


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Book Reviews 36]Preuss summarises his counterargurnents to the main points of opposition to theOlympic Games clearly and succinctly in this chapter. These are that debts areinfrastructural, not Games-related; that since most of the income raised to cover theoperational costs of the Games would not otherwise have gone to the host city,there is no opportunity cost; that many of the benefits from structural changes tothe host city benefit all its inhabitants; that although many of the Games-relatedjobs are short term, there are long term employment effects; and that prices rise nocities than in other cities of the host

Peter TaylorProfessor of Leisure Management,University of Sheffield, UK

Sport, Culture and Advertising: Identities, Commodities and the Politics ofRepresentationSteven J. Jackson and David L. Andrews (Eds)London, Routledge, 2005, 274 pp., ISBN 0 415 33992 8 (paperback), 24.99This comprehensive book marks a welcome critique of the previously overlookedrelationship between sport, culture and advertising, with a particular focus on thepolitics of representation in sports advertising and the commodification of sport inthe advertising-media complex.

Editors Steven J. Jackson and David L.Andrews, better known for their analysisof sporting superstardorn (Andrews & Jackson, 2001), follow Goldman's (1992)advice on conceptualising advertising as a sphere of ideology. In doing so, theyhave compiled an informative anthology that should serve as a useful starting pointfor cultural studies scholars, including those working in the field of the sociologyof sport and leisure, as well as those working in the fields of textual and contextualanalysis.The 13 chapters are loosely divided into three sections. The first seven chapterscover the representational politics of sports advertisements and their role in the(re)production of the existing social order. Chapters 8-10 examine advertising andnational identity in an era of globalisation, while the final three chapters explorethe link between advertising, commodities and consumers and their role indefining contemporary lifestyles.The book begins with a look at the relationship between advertising and repre-sentations of gender and feminism in women's sports magazines. MaryG. McDonald explores how the ideal ofthe 'hard body' peddled by the now-defunctWomen Sport and Fitness magazine represents another form of oppression to whichwomen are expected to measure up. The romanticised notion of the emancipation

preuss the economics of staging the olympic games review

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