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Kabbadi is one of 36 sports on the Incheon Games roster, compared to 28 sports at the Olympics. Photo: EPA
Opinion
Alvin Sallay
Alvin Sallay

Inside Incheon: Hosting the Games is a financial strain for most cities in Asia

Only a handful of countries in the region can afford to build facilities

It is not easy to put on a party these days, not if it involves almost 10,000 athletes, as many media and half that number of officials. This is what the Asian Games has bloated to. So it is not surprising that Incheon had the highest rate of debt among the six metropolitan cities in South Korea last year.

It is splurging US$2 billion to stage the 17th Asiad and while the South Korean government will pay part of the bill, 70 per cent will be borne by taxpayers of this port city.

No wonder the immigration official at Incheon airport was grumpy. My Sri Lankan passport is not worth the paper it is printed on - I can only travel to Singapore without a visa - but as this visit is sanctioned by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), my press accreditation is a ticket to ride.

The official grudgingly waves me through, and he must be cursing all these alien visitors landing in droves for the Games he might end up having to pay for the next 30 years.

Incheon will benefit from a new subway line but what about the 17 new venues including a main stadium that can seat 65,000 people

That's how long it took Montreal to pay off their Olympic debt, pun intended, for hosting the 1976 Summer Games. I was at the Athens Games in 2004 and the city was splendid. But with Greece only now returning to growth, it has been hard times for Athenians while those magnificent stadiums are now under-used.

But new Incheon mayor, Yoo Jeong-bok, is confident the massive cost - although a tenth of what China spent on the Guangzhou Games four years ago - can be offset by dividends from tourism.

But how many cities can afford to splurge like this? Incheon will benefit from a new subway line but what about the 17 new venues including a main stadium that can seat 65,000 people, a state-of-the-art aquatics centre, a new golf course and a cricket field.

Incheon main stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies. Photo: EPA

Koreans love baseball but cricket is as foreign as kimchi is to an eskimo. But because the OCA decreed that cricket should be a sport, the Incheon organising committee had no option but to build it.

Fears that most of these facilities will become white elephants are well founded. Only a 45-minute taxi ride away is Seoul, which built an Olympic stadium for the 1988 Games and city officials say they have lost US$20 million trying to maintain it over the past three years.

The OCA has to rein in these exorbitant and ultimately useless extravagances. The Olympics has only 28 sports, but here we have 36 with a multitude of disciplines in each making it cumbersome. It maybe OK for China, Japan or South Korea, economic powerhouses in Asia, but could the rest of Asia afford it? The oil-rich Gulf States can but by and large most countries and cities are not in the running.

Look at Hanoi, which won the right to host the 2019 Games but pulled out when the government suddenly woke up and realised it was holding a poisoned chalice.

Jakarta - not Surabaya which lost to Hanoi - has stepped bravely into the breach. But Jakarta wants the Games to be held in 2018 as there will be a general election in 2019. The OCA moved the event to 2019, so it would be held one year before the Olympics.

If the Asian Games were slimmed down, it would then become attractive for newer destinations like Hong Kong. Incheon plans to turn some of the facilities into office buildings and malls. Our property developers would love that.

This is the third time the Asian Games are in South Korea after Seoul (1986) and Busan (2002).

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Hosting the Games is a financial strain on Asian cities
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