The Risks of Hosting a Successful Olympics

After London’s triumphant Olympic Games and Paralympics, I’m sure that most of the foreign government officials who descended on London went away fervently believing that if only they too can win the chance to host a major event, and pull it off successfully, this will catapult their nation into the realms of international celebrity. But research suggests otherwise.

The Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index is a major annual study which since 2005 has polled a sample equivalent to 60 percent of the world’s population on its perceptions of other countries. It shows that South Africa’s 2010 World Cup, although it was a resounding success, damaged the country’s standing quite severely. In some countries its steadily improving image was set back by more than two years.

Why? Because international television coverage of the event, which devotes almost as much airtime to local scene-setting as to the matches themselves, broadcast images of poverty and inequality which were in stark contrast to the country’s glossy tourism and foreign investment campaigns. South Africa’s international image, in consequence, suffered a sharp downward correction.

London, of course, had little to fear on this count: there aren’t many places in the UK that global TV audiences haven’t seen dozens of times before, and it looks generally tidy, prosperous and picturesque compared to most countries in the world. Britain was just doing what prominent countries need to do: paying the rent on its excellent international image, and reminding the world from time to time that this is a country that deserves attention and, perhaps, admiration too.

It’s a crucial exercise in an age where the majority of future consumers, tourists, investors and politicians won’t have studied European history at school, and know very little about Britain’s historic and contemporary importance.

The consequences of Rio de Janeiro’s 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics are much more likely to resemble South Africa’s experience than London’s. Brazil, just like South Africa, has been over-promising for decades, branding itself as stable, prosperous, safe, modern, orderly, democratic and gorgeous. Gorgeous it certainly is, but most of the other attributes are still on the “to-do” list. And just like South Africa, Brazil displays highly visible signs of extreme poverty and extreme inequality to all but the most superficial observer.

What can Brazil do? Can it sweep the mess under the carpet before the visitors arrive, Beijing-style, or keep the foreign media in the ‘right’ places? No, because such short-cuts are not available to democracies. Can it become equal, fair, prosperous and well-organized in two years?

Probably not, but at least it can produce a constant stream of dramatic evidence that it is really trying. There is no rule that says countries are only judged by their past achievements: they can be partly judged by their intentions and aspirations, as long as public sentiment is broadly on their side (luckily, Brazil has this critical advantage), and as long as they can prove beyond a shadow of doubt that they are tackling their problems in an honest, open, effective and imaginative way.

Over to you, Dilma.