Imagine attending the last match in the Olympics. Now think: Are global sports events a curse in disguise? For hosting countries, the line between accommodating citizen’s needs and impressing the world has never been blurrier.
On the one hand, people against these events have compelling reasons. Countries often have to spend an immense amount of money to organise and prepare their stadiums and courts to host the large number of fans from different countries, meanwhile, there are economic hardships that are too obvious to overlook. For instance, high unemployment rate, inflation all prices of goods, government not paying benefit for people who needs it. As an illustration, when Brazil hosted the football World Cup in 2016, dwellers of inner cities went out in unrest protests. Nonetheless, fans travelling to the country may cause drastic effects on the availability of resources including electrictiy or food, which is usually thrown in bins even being edible. Tourists may also cause inflation in prices, despite the fact that they are paying in foreign currency, which may have have increased the GDP, supermarkets and farmers rise their prices to make the most profit, disabling the locals from buying their needs.
On the other hand, proponents of international events assert they bring a plethora of benefits to the country. Such stereotypical events often draw the world’s attention to the hosting country, thus it gives them the opportunity to be the center of focus , to deliver messages they want or to ask for their help. Moreover, there is a warm human aspect when seeing different supporters , from different cultures , from different educational levels, with different languages haromiounsly interacting together in reaction to their national’s team win or lose, with all having one shared goal , to make the best use of their time. Nevertheless, those events allow local brands to promote their high-quality products to the globe, hence increasing the exportation profits , which would follows higher demands, creating more job opportunities.
Indeed, it is a hard decision to take, especially when discussing such a hot political button because a backlash is inevitable. From my own perspective, totally banning those events would be a harsh decision, so striking a balance between expidenture and profits is the key to solve this dilemma.