15. 2002 Winter Olympics – Salt Late City, United States
While Salt Lake City had been chosen back in 1995 to host the games, you can imagine they had a particularly patriotic feeling after the devastating 9/11 attacks.
The games were larger than any previous Olympics, adding an additional 10 events in comparison to the 1998 games in Nagano, Japan. It was also the most-watched Olympics of all time, bringing in over 2 billion viewers who registered over 13 billion hours watched.
As a result, while the games had a budget of $2 billion, they ended up costing only $1.2 billion ($600 million of which, was publicly funded). The games overall brought a surplus of $101 million. The University of Utah also had roughly $110 million spent on upgrading the campus, as it was to serve as accommodation for the athletes. These houses are currently used by students but were also re-used by the U.S. team during the 2010 Olympic games.
SLC also continues to make use of the improvements that it enacted on the city in helping get ready for the games. The most prominent example may be the TRAX rail, which is used by 37% of locals on a daily basis.
It’s great that the games were such a huge success, especially because in 1998 it was revealed that several IOC members had accepted bribes to give the games to Salt Lake City; who had beaten out Östersund in Sweden, Québec City and Sion in Switzerland.
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