Australia To Host The Olympics For The Third Time In 2032 After Brisbane Wins Its Bid

Jaclyn Diaz

July 21, 2021 / 3:22 am

In summer 2032, the world's largest sporting event will head to Brisbane, Australia.

The International Olympic Committee announced Wednesday in Tokyo that Australia will host the Summer Olympic games for the third time.

Brisbane will also host the Paralympic Games.

Adrian Schrinner, the lord mayor of Brisbane, said the effort to make Brisbane a host city began six years ago under his predecessor.

"Our purpose was to seek an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our region and for our city," Schrinner said in a message shared on Twitter celebrating the announcement.

He said hosting the Olympics and Paralympics will provide an $8.1 billion boost for the Queensland region economy. According to The Guardian, the estimated cost to prepare Brisbane for the event is $5 billion.

Whether Olympic host cities actually gain economically from holding the event is unclear, according to some reports.

The Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank, said the Rio de Janeiro 2016 games left the city struggling with debt and high maintenance costs for abandoned facilities just one year after the event.

The organization also pointed to the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal that "came to symbolize the fiscal risks of hosting." The projected cost of readying the city for the games, $124 million, was billions below the actual cost. The city's taxpayers were left with some $1.5 billion in debt that took nearly three decades to pay off.

The IOC member nations had an easy choice to make Wednesday. Brisbane was the only option still in the running to be a host city.

The Associated Press reports the IOC essentially gave Brisbane exclusive negotiating rights in February, leaving officials from Qatar, Hungary and Germany, who also attempted a run at the 2032 hosting effort, out in the cold.

Australia previously hosted the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956 and Sydney in 2000.