And to get into the hall of fame, you do an Olympics.

Interestingly, it seems that big sporting events that seems to make any money are those where you don't have to be "voted" to host the event. Think Wimbledon, Marathons, FA Cup finals etc.

Sporting events like the F1 Grand Prix, FIFA world cups and Olympics etc seems to be full of loss making money stories for the hosts, but its organisation company seems to do quite well out of it.

This is just a casual observation, and I could be totally wrong.

We went for smaller stakes by doing Euro 2012. I live in one of the hosting cities and it's easy to tell a lot of construction work was half-arsed and never finished (mainly roads). There is also not enough traffic to make the big stadium close to profitable but hey, that's another opportunity for the town to transfer some money to local football club (a lot of our politicians are connected to football structures).

It would be funny if it wasn't sad. No wonder people avoid paying taxes when they see the money being wasted all around and citizens not ever asked about new crazy idea to build with it. We already have an expensive aquapark, huge stadium and two airports though. I wonder what's next for a town with a population of 600k in one of the poorest EU countries.