The World Competes

While I’m sure that there will be a 2016 Olympics, I found this article about Rio de Janiero’s finances interesting.

It takes a lot of work (and money) to pull off a successful Olympics. Rio de Janiero (evidently) gets a lot of their money from oil revenues. Brazil has recently passed a law that would reduce the amount of revenue that goes to Rio, which could leave the state with less money, making it difficult to fund the games.

The Brazilian president says that he will veto the bill if provisions aren’t made to allow funding for the games to be available. So the Olympics will probably be okay.

There have been situations in the past where the Olympics were relocated because the original host city wasn’t able to host the games. This was the case with the London games of 1908. The games were originally assigned to Rome, but then Mount Vesuvius erupted prior to the Olympics. Italy decided that their money was better off going to rebuild Naples, so the Olympics were switched to London.

While there isn’t a reason to believe that the 2016 Olympics will have to be moved, if Brazil is unable to come up with the funding, it could be.