Spiralling costs a major risk for Paris Olympics

Now that the way is clear for Paris to host the 2024 Olympics, one of the organisers' biggest challenges will be to keep within budget -- a task that has defeated many of its predecessors.

The French capital has set a relatively modest budget of 6.6 billion euros (US$7.9 billion), but London in 2012, Athens in 2004 and Sydney in 2000 all saw their budgets for hosting the Summer Olympics at least double from the time of their bids to the final bill.

The budget-busting reached its peak with the 2008 Beijing Games for which costs ballooned to a vertiginous 32 billion euros, more than ten times the original budget.

Vladimir Andreff, a sports economist at Paris' Sorbonne University, described Olympic budget inflation as "the curse of winning an auction".

"In theory, the winner of an auction is the most optimistic participant and the one prepared to outbid everyone else," said Andreff, one of three experts who contributed to a financial impact study commissioned by the Paris bid team.

"And when there are a lot of competing cities, the winner is trapped."

Source: AFP