Chicago would have been the perfect city for the games: from the lakefront to the nice neighborhoods, the city is designed to host the games.  But in not awarding the games to Chicago, the IOC gave us the gift of not spending money irresponsibly.  In times of recession, it is always a good idea to stimulate the economy, but we need projects now, not in three years.

The city might be disappointed in the short-run, but the money that could have been invested in the games could be directed more efficiently towards public projects: a modernization of the public transportation, increased police forces, repair of our bridges and buildings.  City hall will also benefit from not having to over-promise that taxes will not increase as now the bid is over.  Historically Olympic Games have been proven to be an expensive marketing tool for cities and countries to promote tourism.  When the final bill comes, after overspending, and taxpayers in the Olympic cities need to foot it, resentment happens.  Chicago will avoid that.

Olympic  games organization need a revamping, where the games are first self-sustainable with their own money, granted by sponsorship, and then the committee should chose a country where they would pay for the organization of the games and then pocket the benefits of sales tickets.  Even if the Olympic committee does not want to take on the organizational burden, they might want to divide the competition in different venues.  It makes economic sense to divide the economic burden between countries that could fight for events or packages of events:  this year for example, Chicago could have hosted the baseball , basketball, and marathon, whereas Rio could have gotten beach volley, soccer, and archery, and Tokyo could have organized volleyball, track and field and boxing.  The incentive for countries to divide up the Olympics is to be able to host events without having to pay for the entire Olympics.  An “a la carte” pricing if you will.   Everyone would benefit as countries would fight for events that are more representative of their people and perhaps make better bids.

Overall Chicago’s lost bid is Chicago’s win.  The time is not right to organize the games and the IOC might have wanted to reform its policies.