China and the Olympics: views of insiders and outsiders/ Louise A. Heslop/ John Nadeau/ Norm O’Reilly/ International Marketing Review Vol. 27 No. 4, 2010 pp. 404-433

Countries vie enthusiastically for the rights to hold the event for the tourism revenues and the enhancement of national and international prestige that are expected to flow from successfully hosting the event.
However, hosting the Games often creates controversy internally as neighbourhoods or natural sites are bulldozed for venue creation, resources are diverted from social programs, and massive debts are incurred by governments to fund the hosting tasks.
Since the Olympic Games are a mega-event, hosting it takes years of planning, huge expenditures of money, and vast numbers of both paid and unpaid workers
A mega-event, like the Olympic Games, provides the host country with many opportunities, some involving direct economic impacts
But other related directly to raising awareness of the host country and positively reinforcing or changing the attitudes held by the rest of the world about the country
Sporting mega-events, like the Olympics, “provide host nations with a universally legitimate way to present and promote their national identities and cultures on a global scale”
Hosting the Olympics Games is a highly desired mega-event “plum.” Countries spend millions of dollars and create huge marketing programs to convince the Olympics Committee that they are the one to pick

The impact of the Athens Olympic Games on the Athens Stock Exchange, Christos Floros, Journal of Economic Studies Vol. 37 No. 6, 2010 pp. 647-657.

However, academic literature suggests that sporting mega events have a positive contribution to the host area economy
The influence of the Olympic Games on Beijing consumers’ perceptions of their city tourism development/ Ilias Kapareliotis, Anastasios Panopoulos and George G. Panigyrakis/ Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics Vol. 22 No. 1, 2010 pp. 90-100

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