The main reason is cost. If the IOC has the revenue / cost ratios set up like FIFA does with the World Cup than the IOC and the national Olympic Committee of the host nation get all of the television money and the ticket revenue. The host city gets the bills. The city, along with state and federal governments, get to build a bunch of arenas, facilities, etc., at the cost of billions that only get one use in many cases and these entities receive very little, if any, of the revenue from television and gate revenue, the real revenue producers. Brazil is discovering this little gem with the 2014 World Cup and they'll get another dose with the quickly following 2016 Summer Olympics. As an example, the Brazilians built a 42,000 + seat stadium in a city called Manaus, located in the middle of the Amazon Rain Forest 100's of miles from the next closest facility. The USA and it's group will play four games each there. The city has two teams, neither of which, need a stadium that big after the World Cup leaves. Small wonder that the Brazilians are having riots by the country's poor, some of whom are being forcibly evicted from the tiny homes / ghettos they now occupy so that a World Cup / Olympic facility can be built. All the while, social services / education / health care for the poor are being cut so that the world, at least the wealthy part, can come and have a blow out, two week, party in Rio. BTW, none of the poor are invited to that party surprisingly enough. Even if they were to be invited, except as temporary low wage workers, it is too expensive for them to come anyway. Other recent examples include South Africa which is drowning in unused / unpaid stadiums and the debt from building them and maintaining them from the 2010 World Cup. The 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens is another good example. The bonds they issued to build all the structures / facilities for those game are part of the reason Greece defaulted a few years ago. BTW, the way the financial markets want to portray it thusly, the Greeks were just too generous with their social programs and if they just cut back on all those programs, raise their taxes to pay their bonds off for that 2 week party they had 10 years ago and then all will be right in the world. They almost always fail to mention that a considerable portion of the bonds that caused the Greek default are tied the 2004 Olympic Games bonds. The URL's below show what happens to Olympic facilities after their use as Olympic venues ends. It really puzzles me why any city / country would want to host these events.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2013/06/21/194199546/what-happens-to-an-olympic-city-after-the-olympicshttp://bsr.london.edu/lbs-article/643/index.htmlThe USA got tired of being shot down and stopped bidding after they lost the 2016 Summer Olympics bid for Chicago to Rio de Janeiro. The reason given was to the US was tired of being used as a marketing tool by the IOC who weren't going to pick them anyway and that they wanted build support among other countries Olympic Committees for future bids and to show humility, I guess. The US Olympic Committee is also having an ongoing squabble with the IOC over the split of television money. The USA might begin bidding for the 2024 Summer Olympic games or the 2026 Winter Olympic Games if the television rights split is ironed out. See, this is easy, if you ever wonder why something is happening you can almost always just follow the money trail and the answer will become transparent.
I think that it has become too costly for most cities / countries to host such events that have only one real use. They should probably choose a permanent site for these events and reuse the same facilities instead of leaving them to rot after just one use. I wouldn't want an Olympic Games or a World Cup in my area for all the tea in China. Until the IOC / FIFA start paying for their games they can keep them. They are almost always a big white elephant. This by the way comes from ancient Southeast Asia where a white elephant is an idiom for a valuable but burdensome possession of which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) is out of proportion to its usefulness or worth. The term derives from the story that the kings of Siam (now Thailand) were accustomed to make a present of one of these animals to courtiers who had rendered themselves obnoxious, in order to ruin the recipient by the cost of its maintenance.
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