The Olympics are touted as an economic regeneration event that brings a huge injection of revenue to the hosting city through employment, trade and tourism. However, University of Oxford researchers analysed the Olympics between 1960 and 2020 and found that every single Games ran over its initial budget, with an average overrun of 172 per cent.

The Tokyo Olympics were originally set to cost $7.3 billion, then soared to $28 billion and eventually the postponement increased the bill to around $30 billion. With most hosting cities losing money from hosting the event, fewer cities have been bidding to host the event.

For the 2022 Winter Olympics, initially multiple cities were interested, but then Lviv in Ukraine, Krakow in Poland and Stockholm all pulled out. Then Oslo pulled out after deciding against hosting the event. The demands that the International Olympic Committee was making on Oslo included meetings with the king, VIP traffic lanes and hotel minibars stocked with Coke products. These requests did not go down well with the Norwegians.

The reluctance of the western countries to host the Olympics is evident as the IOC will now be forced to return to Asia for a third time in a row and allowing Beijing to become the first city to host both summer and winter Games.