Olympics: Empty Seats and The Real Economic Cost – View from Room 101

I realise that it is unpatriotic to criticise the great circus but I once again find myself feeling both angry and vindicated by two facets of Olympic emptiness today, and I am not discussing Mark Cavendish’s medal haul here.

First up as I sat digesting a meal of heart and liver (grilled, small portion but I had a meat craving) I found myself watching the Olympics swimming. I have previously written that you would have had to pay me vast sums to go to watch these races and that view has not changed. While I marvel at the athleticism of the competitors, swimming is right up there with watching paint dry as a spectator sport. But when the TV cameras occasionally panned out to the wider crowd (an error for which they will not doubt be punished by Boris) there seemed to be a very large number of empty seats. Forgive my cynicism but were we not told several days ago that there would be no more empty seats?

Big Brother says everyone loves the games. Big Brother says there will be no empty seats. Okay, I get it. As it happens my room number is 101 and so, in Orwellian style, I am prepared to accept that there are no empty seats and there never were any empty seats, apart from when there were but that was all the fault of wicked capitalists controlled by Emmanuel Goldstein, and Big Brother sorted it all out. Everyone in Britain loves the games and the stadiums are all full. Got it now. I accept that there is no problem and just at the moment the camera swung to the crowd, 30% of the audience were on a loo break.

Secondly, not to my great surprise there seem to be widespread reports that outside Stratford London is rather empty. Apparently shops that normally heave in the summer, such as those on Oxford Street, now have fewer customers than a gay bar in downtown Tehran. Well there is a shock (to Boris, etc at least).
London has a limited number of hotels for tourists to stay in. With the Olympics coming room rates were jacked up in the knowledge that the sort of freak who cannot get enough Olympic swimming will pay whatever is needed to be in town. Tourists who have no interest in actually watching Olympic swimming in the flesh (99% of the world) thus had two reasons to stay away from London: lack of affordable accommodation plus a fear of the general travel hell that always happens in an Olympic City. So one tourist in and one out. Worse still for Oxford Street, after a few days in Stratford the swimming junkies will be emotionally (by the excitement) and financially (by having to pay £8 for a beer) drained. So there will be no trips up to the West End to keep the Mrs happy.

Meanwhile at least some Londoners also noted stories of travel chaos ahead and having no interest in watching paint dry, sorry Olympic swimming in the flesh, they decided to leave town for the duration of the games. From a non London base they could either watch the “fun” on TV from a sunny beach on the Med or avoid as much of the “fun” as possible by fleeing to somewhere like Albania.

So the net financial effect of the Olympics on London was always going to be that the taxpayer wrote a vast cheque. That tourist income would be shifted from one part of town to another. And that the London economy (and London businesses) took a direct hit from some folk fleeing town altogether. Those who told you that the circus was a great financial investment for the taxpayer were lying. And now that is becoming clearer by the day.

Okay, big brother, I am waiting in Room 101. I admit it. More thought crime. I know what is coming.