After the Carnival: Key Factors to Enhance Olympic Legacy and Prevent Olympic Sites from Becoming White Elephants

In recent years, the total spending on hosting the Olympic Games has snowballed. The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games spent $40 billion on infrastructure development, and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics reached $50 billion. Even when the glorious but costly Olympic Games come to an end, significant maintenance and operating costs for publicly owned large Olympic venues, which were constructed or renovated for the Games, continue to burden host cities and states for a long time afterward. Unless Olympic venues are used effectively after the Games, and can earn enough revenue to cover large ongoing costs, their owners—local governments and taxpayers—must pay off the deficits. Summer Olympics stadiums, normally built to seat over 70,000 people, are particularly at risk of becoming white elephants. This fieldwork based research and analysis revealed eight key factors to prevent Olympic sites from becoming white elephants from the viewpoints of venue sustainability and Olympic legacy: removal of specific equipment like a track after the Olympic Games; reducing capacity after the Olympic Games; continuous selective meaningful reinvestment after the Olympic Games; access to mass transit; the existence of no nearby competing venues with a large capacity; no financial burden of past debt or its accompanying psychological burden; the positive legacy from a venue's unique design and its global recognition; and an Olympics’ legacy from successful redevelopment of the surrounding area. Further, we have created a chart that we think can be used to evaluate the risk level of Olympic sites becoming white elephants soon after their Games end.