Who Carries the Risk
Bid documents are produced by coalitions that want the bid to win, which is an environment that systematically favours optimistic numbers. Nobody in that process is rewarded for a conservative estimate, and the people who prepare the figures are usually not the ones who will be in office when the invoices arrive. Optimism bias is not fraud. It is the predictable output of asking an advocate to forecast.
The consequence that matters is where the shortfall lands. Commercial revenue from broadcasting and sponsorship is substantial but capped and largely spoken for, while construction and operating costs are open-ended. When the two diverge, the difference falls to the public side, because the host jurisdiction is the party that guarantees delivery. A private developer facing an unprofitable project can walk away. A city that has committed to staging the Games cannot. That asymmetry is the whole story of Olympic finance, and it is the part that voters, once they see it, tend to find decisive.
