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Toronto 2024 Olympic Bid (Dead)

TOperson said:
This UK NAO 2007 Olympics budget shows that the private sector contribution anticipated at the time of the bid was 738M pounds but by 2007 was reduced to 165M. Also, the total cost increased.

http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/0607/olympics_2012_budget.aspx
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A quick read of that link shows that the reduction to 165 million pounds did not include 675 million that the government itself expects to receive from the sale of land/property. So is that 738 now 840 million?

•A decrease in anticipated private sector funding from 738 million to 165 million. This excludes, however, the significant increase in the estimated private sector contribution to the Olympic Village which is outside of the budget. It also excludes any receipts from future sales of land and property after the Games, out of which the Government has since estimated, in June 2007, that 675 million would be available for repayment to the National Lottery.
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So, 840M/9.325B = 0.090 x 100 = 9.0%

Since this article states that NBC paid £751.3 million for the US only rights to broadcast the games....I am guessing that TV rights fees were also not included in the private sector funding either.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19253273

So, without bothering to find what the rights payments for the rest of the world were, if we add £750 million

1590M/9.325B = 0.170 x 100 = 17%

Consider your "90% taxpayer funding" debunked and our conversation over.
 
TOPerson, I feel like all of your argument is based on the Olympics not generating a profit for the cities that host them. The thing is, the Olympics are kind of like hosting a party or kegger at your house. The purpose isn't to make a profit, the purpose is basically a big 2 week fun time (and of course a sporting competition, like hosting a tournament in your home arena).

PS. I meant to write more on this topic but I am pressed for time so I have to cut it off here.
 
TOperson said:
Taking your ball and going home are you? Finally ran out of steam with your inabililty to read carefully, gather and assess evidence, and marshal your argument?
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I didn't realize we were playing a game. Sorry, I don't respond to trolling or ad hominem attacks.
 
Tewder said:
I didn't realize we were playing a game. Sorry, I don't respond to trolling or ad hominem attacks.
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No, you just make them.

Where's your debunking evidence? You seem very certain that my points are all wrong, so you must be basing your conclusions on something. Share!
 
Downsview Park is a big piece of empty land, so I guess a bunch stuff could go there. And aren't they planning to revitalize Lawrence Heights? So maybe that could be where the athletes village etc could go?
 
TOareaFan said:
A quick read of that link shows that the reduction to 165 million pounds did not include 675 million that the government itself expects to receive from the sale of land/property. So is that 738 now 840 million?




So, 840M/9.325B = 0.090 x 100 = 9.0%

Since this article states that NBC paid £751.3 million for the US only rights to broadcast the games....I am guessing that TV rights fees were also not included in the private sector funding either.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19253273

So, without bothering to find what the rights payments for the rest of the world were, if we add £750 million

1590M/9.325B = 0.170 x 100 = 17%

Consider your "90% taxpayer funding" debunked and our conversation over.
Click to expand...

First of all, I never said that those links proved the 90% figure - a figure that I already retracted several posts ago. Seriously, mate, debunk all you want but read my posts first.

The new links come from additional research that shows it's actually higher, to the extent that anyone can figure it out. But hey, it's only public money, so why bother counting it at all?

To debunk your "debunking":

The TV (and sponsorship) rights don't go to the government, they are split between LOCOG and the IOC. That is a longstanding practice. Look it up. So it doesn't offset the public expenditure by one penny. Do you really think that the DCMS and UK NAO just left those out by mistake?

I find it hilarious that you figure you know the London Olympic expenditures better than the UK government.

The listed costs also don't include certain land purchases and construction costs and the cost of other departments, councils, etc. That's all noted in my links.

Also, the government expecting to sell properties for 675M? To the private sector? Um, yeah, they also thought they would get 738M at one point too. We'll see. With the Olympic white elephants scattered around the world, I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

Nice try though. Got any undergraduate essays to refute me with? LOL
 
This thread is awesome. I notice that no one challenges these points anymore:

1) the Olympics always go over budget
2) hundreds and sometimes thousands of low-income or poor people are routinely displaced to make way for the Olympics in host cities
3) the host city contract is an extra-legal agreement that obliges the city to do the IOC's bidding
4) the usual outcome for Olympic sites is for them to be underused or sit empty for a while, if not rot away, and then finally get sold off for pennies on the dollar

Now we're just down to arguing whether the public costs of the London Olympics were 89.9% or greater of the total costs. Because that is the deciding factor in whether Toronto should host the games.
 
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I don't know why I bother....(but I will ask to you stop being rude then trying to wash it away with a "mate"...there is one thing being smarter than the rest of us but to be so clearly smarmy and condescending with it is a pain).

TOperson said:
First of all, I never said that those links proved the 90% figure - a figure that I already retracted several posts ago. Seriously, mate, debunk all you want but read my posts first.
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No you didn't say they did but we started talking about it when you disputed the outside revenue streams.......and when you retracted your "90%" statement you said it was even a higher amount (98% I think).


TOperson said:
To debunk your "debunking":

The TV (and sponsorship) rights don't go to the government, they are split between LOCOG and the IOC. That is a longstanding practice. Look it up.
Click to expand...

Yes there is a split but the largest chunk of it goes to the local organizing committee (in the this case London) and my point was that there is "non government monies" not included in the figures quoted. so, yes, back out some of the NBC money....but while your at, if you need exact accounting, include the local share of the rights for broadcast rights to the parts of the world outside of USA.



TOperson said:
So it doesn't offset the public expenditure by one penny.
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I have to ask you for some help here because my feeble mind does not, obviously, understand this. If the total cost of the games put on by the LOCOG is £9.325B......and LOCOG gets money from broadcasting....how does that not reduce taxpayer contribution by one penny? Does LOCOG do something different with the broadcast money? Any thoughts?

TOperson said:
Do you really think that the DCMS and UK NAO just left those out by mistake?
Click to expand...


TOperson said:
I find it hilarious that you figure you know the London Olympic expenditures better than the UK government.

Also, the government expecting to sell properties for 675M? To the private sector? Um, yeah, they also thought they would get 738M at one point too. We'll see.
Click to expand...

So the government is a trusted source for some information but not others? On the one hand if they leave out broadcast revenue they must be right....but on the other hand when they expect to generate 675 million pounds from property sales they must be wrong?




TOperson said:
Got any undergraduate essays to refute me with? LOL
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You would get a lot more respect from me (and I am guessing other posters) if you weren't such an annoying child. How many times do i have to tell you that that undergrad essay was linked because it was the first thing I found with the table showing the non-goverment/taxpayer revenues....in the very first posting of the link I told you the original source of the table/graph was the guardian! But you are happy to bombard others with your childish little "read my posts" refrain......

.......in the short time I have been posting on UT, you are the first person to make me wish for a "ignore" button.
 
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OK I will stop calling you "mate".

"No you didn't say they did but we started talking about it when you disputed the outside revenue streams.......and when you retracted your "90%" statement you said it was even a higher amount (98% I think)."

The first thing I said was that I didn't have a link because I heard it on the news. Then I said I would try to find one. In looking for one, I found the 2% private sector thing, plus the other stuff that said it's really difficult to ever really know what it costs. I acknowledged that the Cato Institute was biased as hell and even expressed hope that they were wrong. Then I dug deeper to find out exactly where that 2% figure was really coming from, which led to the subsequent links.

I try very hard to back up my claims with the best evidence I can find, because I know there is a lot of resistance to hearing anything negative about the Olympics. I believed (wrongly, as it turns out) that people would be persuaded to at least re-consider their Olympic boosterism in light of the experiences of past host cities. If the bid goes ahead we all - the whole city - will have many debates about all of these issues. And since we'll have to pay for it, we should all think about it very carefully.

"Yes there is a split but the largest chunk of it goes to the local organizing committee (in the this case London) and my point was that there is "non government monies" not included in the figures quoted. so, yes, back out some of the NBC money....but while your at, if you need exact accounting, include the local share of the rights for broadcast rights to the parts of the world outside of USA."

"I have to ask you for some help here because my feeble mind does not, obviously, understand this. If the total cost of the games put on by the LOCOG is £9.325B......and LOCOG gets money from broadcasting....how does that not reduce taxpayer contribution by one penny? Does LOCOG do something different with the broadcast money? Any thoughts?

The thing is, LOCOG is not the government. It's a separate body. They have their own budget that the UK govt contributes to (and I think the UK govt is on the hook if LOCOG takes a loss, but I'm not positive). So that money never comes back to the public coffers. As for the local TV rights, you mean the British TV rights? As far as I know ALL the TV money goes to LOCOG and the IOC. The 9.325B is the "Public Sector Funding Package", i.e. the UK govt costs.

It IS confusing, which I personally think is a red flag and it explains why the Oxford researchers said it's so difficult to truly account for all Olympic costs. So we're all kind of flying in the dark with this.

"So the government is a trusted source for some information but not others? On the one hand if they leave out broadcast revenue they must be right....but on the other hand when they expect to generate 675 million pounds from property sales they must be wrong?"

I'd say the govt is the least-worst source of information. They may not be wrong about the 675M but I think it's fair to say that predictions re: private-sector contributions have been overly optimistic so far, so that undermines confidence in them. And since the 675M is supposed to come from selling properties, with all the troubled history of past Olympic sites, it's just not something I would count on. Maybe if it was some other source of revenue.

Anyway, like I said a few posts ago, I'm not married to the 90% figure. I'm more worried that it's so hard to come up with ANY reliable figure. That is my #1 objection to a Toronto games - massive cost blowouts that we're all on the hook for and we may never know just how much it was.

"You would get a lot more respect from me (and I am guessing other posters) if you weren't such an annoying child."

I'd respect some of the posters more if they actually considered the evidence I present instead of just slagging me off personally. This thread isn't about my likability, it's about the Toronto 2024 bid. I'm presenting evidence and making a case against the bid.

"How many times do i have to tell you that that undergrad essay was linked because it was the first thing I found with the table showing the non-goverment/taxpayer revenues....in the very first posting of the link I told you the original source of the table/graph was the guardian!"

Going with the first thing you find is not a good way to select evidence. You've got to check the quality and age of the evidence, as well as the source. And you can't very well attack others' evidence and not expect your own to be attacked.

"But you are happy to bombard others with your childish little "read my posts" refrain......"

Bombard? I've said it like 2-3 times in this entire thread. I say it because with some posters it's obvious they don't actually read my posts, never mind click on the links. It often takes a few iterations of a point to finally get someone to actually look at the evidence I've presented. Then they finally back off, I expect because they don't have any evidence to refute it. E.g. the neighbourhood displacement issue. Or the Nazi torch relay thing.

".......in the short time I have been posting on UT, you are the first person to make me wish for a "ignore" button."

I don't mind if you ignore me. What I really want is for you to look at the evidence.
 
^ let's parse this.....cause maybe we are talking at cross purposes.

Is £9.325B the budget for LOCOG putting on the games? I think it is. The criticism some have of that budget is that it excludes certain things (SkySports point out that it excludes transit spending....others say that is ok because transit definitely lives on and represents public expenditure reprioritized by the games but not directly for the games........Some point out that the Olympic village is not in the £9.325B and it should be....others counter with the fact that the bulk of that cost came from the private sector so is separate.....ironically, if the village was included the total budget would go up but so would the % share funded by the private sector).

If the answer to the bolded question is yes (as I think it is). And LOCOG gets revenue from a variety of non-government/taxpayer sources (TV Rights, ticket sales, sponsorships, post games land sales)....how do those not reduced the burden on the taxpayer?

Let's leave it there and take this one issue/question at a time.
 
TOperson said:
The Olympic torch and flame thing really was invented by the Nazis.

http://www.theatlantic.com/internat...zi-origins-of-the-olympic-flame-relay/257002/

Also, I'm not the one doing the associating. The IOC has apparently decided to keep this bit of Nazi ritual. That's on them. Which means they are the ones doing the hyperbole. It's not hyperbole to point it out.

And I never said either way if I or other "Olympic haters" were "full of hyperbole". I was pointing out the contradiction in FNTS's accusations.

So, now that I've verified the Nazi connection and clarified that I never made a claim about whether I'm "full of hyperbole", there is no obstacle to your responding to my other points.
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Oh wow, I can't believe I'm reading this. The Nazis and their Fascist allies in Italy also built the first freeways. Am I participating in a Nazi ritual every time I drive on one?
 
Just reflecting here, I've been called a liar, a hypocrite, an a**hole, deranged, "Ford-like" (in a pejorative sense), linked to homophobia, and an "annoying child". I'm pretty sure I haven't dished out anything nearly as antagonistic in return.

I've slammed the Olympics pretty hard, but they are not off-limits for criticism. Anything that costs $10B in public money is fair game for a very critical analysis.

So I think there is another interesting question here: WHY do anti-Olympic comments get some people SO upset? It's not a religion, it's not a matter of life and death, people got by for thousands of years without it, most cities manage without ever getting it, so what is so challenging about someone saying they don't want it in their city, that there may be drawbacks to it? Why are some people so emotionally invested in the games, something they've probably only ever seen on TV? What's going on there?
 
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