Olympic Games Pros And Cons

Olympic games ' history has forever been surrounded by controversies. Most of these controversies resulted from the selection of different venues chosen to hold these games every four year. The idea of Olympics being held at different locations every time has remained to be a highly debatable topic amongst critics. Some have argued a permanent site should be chosen to host these games. However, this ongoing debate has involved many stakeholders both with different motives and ideas how a permanent site could be chosen. This lack of consensus makes it difficult to make this idea a reality. There remains to be both advantages and disadvantages of having a permanent hosting site.
Pro Arguments
The Olympics involve both economic and social costs

Furthermore, the economic impact of the games is also felt by the local population directly as many of the residents around the Olympic Village are relocated, and are not usually offered a fair compensation. Jules Boykoff who is an American academic, author, and former athlete mentions in one of his articles, "Organizers of the Beijing Olympics adopted the slogan, 'One World, One Dream, ' but the dreams of more than one million people who were displaced to make way for Olympic venues and infrastructure were hardly realized." Similar observances were made in the Rio Olympics when poor residents of the favelas were evicted from their residences. This highlights the disruption caused by the games in the daily lives of the local residents. The economic cost faced by the locals do not stop here; during the Olympics inflation rates are observed to become high in host cities making it difficult for locals to afford most goods and services. On the overall, the host country does not necessarily benefit from tourist influx due to Olympics as the other tourists planning to visit these locations are turned away due to the crowding of the host city. "According to The Economist, Beijing and London both attracted fewer visitors during their summer Olympics in 2008 and 2012 respectively than they had in the same period a year earlier" (McArdle). Therefore, it can be observed that the host eventually loses economically making it non-viable to have different Olympic site every

Another issue that impact Olympics is the political costs of selecting different locations. "Governments have used the Olympics to score points against other governments, most prominently by boycotts" (Martin). Charles Banks-Altekruse is a former Olympic rower and runs a consulting company points out, "boycotts prevented thousands of athletes from competing in the Montreal, Moscow and Los Angeles Games … protesters opposed to the awarding of the 2008 Summer Games to China disrupted the Olympic torch relay around the world" (Banks-altekruse). All these events were against the spirit of sportsmanship and resulted in the loss of competitors who were forced to give up their participation dreams. However, it is also important to consider that Olympics have been used as a source of political propaganda with the 1936 Olympics hosted by Nazi Germany being the most famous example. It is important that sports should not be made hostage to political ideologies and neither should provide rogue nations opportunity to legitimize their wrong actions under the cover of Olympics. It is on record that the during the 1936 Berlin Games the concentration camp Sachsenhausen was opened, and 'in the lead-up to the 2008 Games, the Chinese government clamped down increasingly on dissidents and restricted travel to Tibet ' (Banks-altekruse). These activities highlight that changing Olympic venues provide an opportunity to regimes involved in human rights abuse to portray their actions as