The Rio Olympics will be cheap compared with London and Sochi

Cork Gaines/Business Insider

Because much of the cost of hosting an Olympics is infrastructure that is expected to be used beyond the games, calculating the total cost of hosting an Olympics can be a matter of perspective.

But if we look at just the sports-related costs, we can see that hosting the Rio Olympics will be much cheaper than London 2012 or Sochi 2014.

A study by Bent Flyvbjerg, Allison Stewart, and Alexander Budzier for the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford looked at the sports-related cost and cost overrun for most Olympic games since 1968.

From 1968 through 2010, the games had an average sports-related cost of $3.6 billion, adjusted for inflation. Then, all of a sudden, things took off. The last two Olympics had an average cost of $19 billion.

The sports-related cost of the Rio Olympics will be more in line with previous Olympics, at $4.5 billion. The overall cost is expected to reach $12 billion, according to The New York Times.

To make matters worse, not a single Olympic Games hit its budget, with an average cost overrun of 167% through the Sochi Olympics. Only two Olympics had cost overruns of less than 29%: Beijing 2008 (4%) and Vancouver 2010 (17%). The cost overrun of the Rio Olympics is expected to reach 51% when all is said and done.

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