Nacre

They did get the prestige of hosting the Olympics, and sporting venues which can be used to host other events. Quibbling about exactly how much money Tokyo lost misses my point, though. However much Tokyo lost, Sapporo losing yet more money (hopefully only one or two billion dollars) doesn't in any way make Japan's prior losses whole. It does the opposite of that. It's like someone who spent too much money on their wedding trying to fix things by spending lavishly on a banquet for their first engagement. If Sapporo wants to blow a few billion dollars on the pride and prestige of hosting the Olympics, then fine. But the argument that it would make up for the disaster of 2020/2021 is ridiculous.

My assumptions are: Japan would not have built the sporting venues for the 2020/2021 games without the Olympics. Olympic sporting venues provide less revenue than their ongoing maintenance and operational costs, so the funds they spent on the venues is effectively burned money and NOT an investment. The official budget is manipulated to make government officials and the IOC look good, and omits both the security costs and major capital costs that are directly related to the Olympics. So to get the real budget you have to add those figures on top of the official budget. Governments and private parties that take on debt have to pay interest on that debt. Land (and other resources) that is allocated to sporting venues could have been used for something else that would have provided actual ROI for Tokyo and Japan. If I am wrong about these assumptions then mea culpa. EDIT: For #4, consider that Montreal ended up paying $1.5 billion in interest on a stadium with a construction cost of $1.5 billion in 2006 dollars (when they finally ended up paying off the debt).

It's hard to calculate exactly how much Japan lost, as we can see with the argument over whether capital costs should be included. But if you think all the ancillary factors like capital costs, debt servicing and opportunity costs matter, then I think the answer is essentially yes. At any rate, I don't see any way that a Sapporo games would actually make money for Japan. Constructing no new venues is great, but they would still have to renovate older venues and spend at least $1 billion or more on security. If they break even on the operational costs, they should still lose $2 billion or more.

What city has "invested" $500 million on an aquatics center without the Olympics? There's no way that Japan would have spent that much money on a community recreation facility; the expensive palaces of sport are built because of the IOC's three week circus, not because of a long term investment in community swimming, horseback riding, archery, et al. The IOC may not count the capital or security costs as part of the games budget. But they absolutely are part of the cost of the Olympics.

Sadly it is a genuine competitive issue. The lanes adjacent to the sides of the pool are slower than the middle. To help reduce the advantage, the swimming federation wants to have two lanes at the side which are not used. So if 8 lanes used competition there need to be 10 total lanes in the pool.

I can't understand why Japan would want the games, or why people think that giving them the winter games would somehow "make up" for the disaster of Tokyo 2020. It's like an arsonist offering to compensate someone for burning down their house by burning down their shed as well. How would losing $2 billion hosting the winter games compensate Japan for $25-30 billion in losses on the summer games? Even as someone who thinks that Trump has the same view of ethics as Nietzche and Germany of the 1930's, I think that we should keep discussions of him out of this forum. There are plenty of other suitable forums for that discussion.

12 teams is ideal for running a tournament, as it provides three groups of four. If they cut the number of teams, it would probably be down to 8. That's a pretty bare tournament and it would be easy for some of the strongest teams in the world to fail to qualify. In example Germany is currently outside the top 8 in FIFA's mens national team rankings.

I think that lacrosse would have to be added as a demonstration event. Not only because of the issue of aboriginal groups competing separately, but also because there isn't enough global participation outside of Canada and the US. A four team demonstration tournament w/ Canada, the USA, the Iroquois and one play-in team would work. Baseball isn't a commonly played sport in most countries, but there are enough strong national teams to create a good tournament. The USA hasn't even medaled in half of the World Baseball Classic (essentially the world cup for baseball) tournaments, and Japan is probably the strongest country in the world in baseball rather than the US.

Perhaps it is useful to look at it from the other side. What are the actual needs of a track and field stadium in the US? USATF national championships and Olympic qualifiers (maximum 15,000 seats needed, usually less) NCAA championships (maximum 15,000 seats needed, usually less) collegiate conference championships (5,000 seats?) regular high school and collegiate meets (1,000 seats?) Ultimately I think that the ideal is something like Sydney's Olympic Park Athletic Centre: 5,000 permanent seats with 10,000 additional temporary seating in telescopic bleachers or grassy terrace(s). There will never be a need for anything bigger than that for anything other than a once-in-a-lifetime event like the Olympics or world championships. 15,000 seats would even be big enough for the Pan American Games.

Unfortunately there isn't enough physical space at Franklin Field. The current track is a non-regulation size because of this.

Yeah, that's the sort of project that I think is possible: a college with public funding for a new or upgraded stadium being conditional for keeping the track. But that still leaves the problem of funding events like a Diamond League meet. And as Quaker notes, it's unlikely that a community college will have the rich alumni pool and corporate backers needed.

MLS teams don't want a track in their stadiums either, though. The only way to get any of the major league teams or a university to accept a multipurpose stadium would be through coercion. And we have seen that even when a team is demanding hundreds of millions of public dollars for their stadium, the city does not have the power to get a multipurpose stadium. As for size, I don't think 15,000-30,000 seats is any kind of panacea. Let's say that a university has a 60,000 seat stadium for football. Are they going to want to have to maintain a second stadium with 15,000 seats for track and field alone? Oregon is probably the only school in the country that will say "yes" to that, and even for Oregon the answer is only yes because they have Nike's running shoe industry pumping money into their program. So the only realistic option would be for a city like New York to offer a couple hundred million for Columbia to upgrade their stadium which already has a track in it. If they made the seating bowl retractable (over the track) then it might also be acceptable to NYCFC. But it probably wouldn't be very palatable to New York taxpayers, Columbia or MLS.

I think that there are a few problems. 1) The only logical permanent tenant is a university, and most of America's big universities are not located in our biggest cities. (IE University of Oregon in Eugene instead of Portland.) 2) There's very little ability for the USOC or civic governments to pressure the NFL and the universities to do what's in the interest of the city for hosting events like these. old husky stadium - Bing images Seattle isn't big enough for the Olympics but it's large enough for individual world championships, and could have hosted the athletics championships when Husky Stadium still had a track. For the amount of public money put into two new football stadiums (for the NFL and college football) Seattle could have built a stadium like Stade de France w/ retractable seating in the lower bowl. But the Seahawks and Huskies not only wanted a permanent football-only stadium, they didn't accept having to share a dedicated football stadium with each other. 3) There isn't enough funding for the legacy events. If New York City couldn't muster enough sponsorship to keep their Diamond League meet running in the black, it doesn't bode well for a city like Seattle or Minneapolis trying to break even on athletics events.

The idea is that domestic advertising and sponsorship money within the USA would end up being split between the two games. I have no idea if that is really true, but that's the theory.

Utilitarianism is one form of consequentialism. Peter Singer is a utilitarian, for example. Yes. Murdering one person for the sake of giving a cookie to 1,000 people isn't worth it as the harm to that one person far outweighs the benefits to the thousand who would get a cookie. My opinion on this topic: I think the thing that non-trans people need to remember is that this really isn't just about sport for the trans community. It's about denying their very identity or existence. That's why the stakes seem so high to them, and why they don't care if they destroy womens sport. For them sporting exclusion is just another form of the many other forms of exclusion they have to deal with. Thus, this is a fight for their very right to exist as trans people and if a few female athletes miss out on gold medals then tough. To a neutral party, though, sporting exclusion is NOT the same as the other forms of social exclusion because of the real harm on another class of people: biologically female athletes. Allowing trans women into the workplace or the bathrooms of their choice doesn't really hurt anyone else. But allowing trans women to compete against biological women does. So it's not the same as the broader campaign to accept trans people. EDIT: To clarify I am not a trans-person and don't claim to speak for them. Saying that they "don't care if they destroy womens sport" may not be accurate or fair.

I would say not "hard" but rather "insoluble". There is no fair solution to this conundrum, and whatever sporting authorities decide to do will be unfair, unjust and inhumane to somebody. Because I am a consequentialist I think the decision should be made on the basis of the greatest good and the least harm. Deontologists will insist on strict rules or rights. Virtue ethicists will choose a cause (or a side in a social war). And all of us will be wrong and nobody will be right.

I don't understand how they have five cities in the "Western Region". Surely they need 6 for two groups, right? Are they using two stadiums in Los Angeles? Logistically I just don't get this. In example think it would have been much easier on everyone to put all of the Mexican cities in one group rather than requiring everyone to pass through USA-Mexican customs multiple times during the group stages.

London 2012: £2 billion original budget, £9 billion final budget Sochi 2014: $12 billion original budget, $51 billion + Crimea final budget Rio 2016: $2.7 billion original budget, $13+ billion final budget Pyeongchang 2018: $8 billion original budget, $13 billion final budget Tokyo 2020*: $7 billion original budget, $30 billion final budget The $2.6 billion will likely turn into $10-$11 billion. (Also, London 2012 looks surprisingly reasonable in hindsight. Rio was a little cheaper after currency conversion and inflation, but London got more for their money.)

The effect is the same, whatever the semantics. If the minimum capacity of a venue used to be X seats and the IOC allows X-5,000 seats, then there are 5,000 fewer seats available. So 5,000 fewer people will be able to attend that would have normally attended. What I am asking is who those 5,000 people will be. Will the IOC cut the seating allocated to sponsors, or athletes, of the media, or volunteers, or fans? There are ways to make this work. They can get the media to cover the games remotely. They can simply cut the perks for athletes, sponsors and volunteers. And they can sell less tickets to fans. But if the IOC is going to accept smaller venues, then they ARE going to have to make cuts.

For me the concern is that they've reduced the requirements before figuring out how to manage the reductions. This is like planning a budget with reduced rent expense before you've actually found a cheaper apartment. It's not bad; I very much want it to happen and think it is a change for the better. But how exactly will it work? If the games have reduced seating capacity, who will lose out on those seats? Will fans no longer be allowed to attend in person? Will the IOC stop providing sponsors, media, etc with seats? Will volunteers and athletes no longer get to attend events? This same issue arises with reduced numbers of hotels.

There's no reason why they can't make it as easy as possible, though. They can make groups out of nearby cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore and DC, or Dallas, Houston and Atlanta. Seattle is just too isolated from other American bid cities. Paris to Berlin is only half the distance of Denver to Seattle, for example. It's a shame, though, because I think it's a pretty ideal host city for events like this. You can easily walk to the stadium from a hotel downtown, there's lots of public transit options to the stadium for an American city (tram lines, commuter rail and regional rail), and partying in Pioneer Square before or after a game is pretty great. Minneapolis would be another great host city and it's a pity it won't make the list.

Only about 50% of the tickets are supposed to be allocated to local fans (although for this world cup it will be more like 60%), with the other half going to international supporters. Visiting fans are supposed to be able to follow their team during the group stages. So "evenly spreading out" teams like Germany means visiting German fans would have to travel something insane like New York-Los Angeles-Philadelphia-Santa Clara/SF. I understand that many Americans don't care whether visiting fans are miserable, of course. But I think if we are trying to be good hosts then we ought to care about the visiting fans.

It should be the opposite. In a sane world they would choose group stage cities that are easy to transit between. Without Vancouver, there's no other host city within 500 miles of Seattle. So they would be better off with another city in Texas, California or New York.

This is all extremely worrisome, at least to me. People celebrated at the start of WW1 and the American Civil War, and current jingoism and anti-Russian sentiment (IE demanding that all Russians living in the west denounce Putin or lose their jobs) seems very similar. We are staring at the possibility of 10+ years of insurgency in Ukraine and possible nuclear war, with the potential for over a million deaths even if there are no nukes launched. Half a million Ukrainians are already refugees and it is only the first week of the war. Russia, a country where the average citizen already lives in poverty and spends the majority of their paycheck on food, is going to face economic ruin worse than their economic disasters of the early 1990's. Russia has to be sanctioned to drain their ability to sustain a military campaign and the Ukrainians resupplied with weapons, but the west absolutely has to give Putin a face-saving way out of this.

I think the only way to get rid of him is for a cabal in the kremlin to decide it's in Russia's interest for him to have a sudden heart attack. Megalomaniacs don't let go of power willingly, and sanctions have never led to regime change. Not in Cuba, or North Korea, or Iran, or Venezuela. The common people of Russia are going to go hungry, but the man ruling them will stay on his throne enjoying caviar and Russian champagne.