> the event's costs have expanded from an original estimate of $3.9 billion to $18 billion, according to Vanity Fair.
This was the most shocking item in that report. That blows away my usual "double the estimates" rule-of-thumb for govt related bids. Now we even have rule-of-thumb inflation.
Whilst that was an original estimate several years before the bid formally took place, Parliament agreed to a budget of £5.3B for the games, an extra £2.7B contingency, "security and policing costs of £600 million, VAT of £800 million and elite sport and Paralympic funding of nearly £400 million" [0]. £2B for actually staging the games is covered by sponsorship etc.
As the agreed cost before the bid was finalised, this is really rather close to the $18B figure the cited Parliamentary report comes up with.
I revised my rule-of-thumb after seeing the costs for the NHS IT systems [1]. The Olympics going so far over budget really didn't surprise me.
> Originally expected to cost £2.3 billion (bn) over three years, in June 2006 the total cost was estimated by the National Audit Office to be £12.4bn over 10 years ... Officials involved in the programme have been quoted in the media estimating the final cost to be as high as £20bn, indicating a cost overrun of 440% to 770%.
Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth games cost a whopping $1.5billion AUD (about £600 million GBP; about 3% of the current estimate for the 2012 Olympics).
Now the Delhi 2010 games did go vastly overbudget, possibly as high as 60,000 crore INR (about £7 billion; less than half the current estimate for the Olympics). But they also built a 4 lane highway, new metro tunnels, and expanded the airport in that price. About one-quarter of that gross estimate was budget spent on the sporting events and directly related infrastructure.
There are 302 events at the 2012 Olympics versus 272 at the 2010 Commonwealth games.
This was the most shocking item in that report. That blows away my usual "double the estimates" rule-of-thumb for govt related bids. Now we even have rule-of-thumb inflation.