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Do you have sources for it being so profitable? For who? Everything I understand about events like the World Cup and Olympics is that they are massively wasteful, corrupt, publicly funded economic disasters. Is that just the Olympics?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_the_FIFA_World_Cup

It was one of the most profitable World Cups, take into account that it was in 1994.

The most comprehensive source (and most recent, and only source about the economics I can still find) to this page suggests that it was an economic catastrophe that "showed a cumulative loss of $5.6 billion to $9 billion."[1] It's the same argument politicians use to swindle taxpayers into publicly financing stadiums for billionaire sports owners.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/07/opinion/la-oe-coates...

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