The 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea were certainly dramatic, especially because of the diplomatic headway through the games on the Korean Peninsula.
The 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea were certainly dramatic, especially because of the diplomatic headway through the games on the Korean Peninsula.
However, from a financial perspective, the games likely didn’t meet the expectations of the South Korean hosts. In particular, Chinese attendance was much lower than was initially hoped. Originally, the South Korean government expected some 200,000 Chinese tourists to attend the game, but one estimate puts the actual attendance of Chinese visitors at only 20,000.
It’s important to note that even if the expected number of Chinese tourists had come, the games were still not guaranteed to be profitable. For most of the history of the games in the 20th century, the games often resulted in a net loss for hosts. The Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games were the first Olympic Games since 1948 to turn a profit. The period in between was marked by successive host governments shouldering heavy losses.
The 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics netted record profits, but winter games tend to have lower profits. There are, of course, a lot of financial considerations to contend with besides attendance, including cost of infrastructure, value of broadcast agreements, and operating costs.
