The Sochi Olympic Winter Games is set to be the most expensive games in history at an estimated cost of $50 billion, reported the Economist:
Allison Stewart, of the SAID Business School at Oxford, says that Olympics tend to have cost overruns of about 180 percent on average. For Sochi the overrun is now 500 percent. But Russia made clear that money was not an issue, says Ms. Stewart. She also notes that relations between the government and construction companies appear closer in Sochi than in other games. Large construction projects often have a side-effect of corruption. But in Russia corruption is not a side-effect: it is a product almost as important as the sporting event itself.
Sochi is located to the north Caucasus, a Muslim part of Russia that has been in sustained violent conflict for the last twenty years.
"Imagine holding the games in Kabul," one American official says.
The games proximity to the region has drawn numerous terrorist threats from Chechen extremist groups almost a full year in advance of the games.
