I do a lot of ROIs for a living (return-on-investment) for tech projects, quantifying investments and efforts versus payoff and risk of failure, etc. This entails eliminating intangibles, using probabilities, etc.
My question is: what is the ROI of us funding elite sports - Olympic and others - through taxpayers money. We know roughly how much we pay, but what is the hard return?
Had an interesting conversation at lunch on this. Got a lot of "raise the awareness", a few "makes us proud", "might help kids take up sports and be healthier" (yeah, right) and "discourage people getting fat" (really??????). But nothing concrete really. My donation is well defined, but not my return as a taxpayer.
So for once I would not know where to start justifying my and your tax money for this.
Asked differently: how much would I be willing to pay out of my taxes to maintain so many medals for elite sports? Is it 10$ a year? 100$? 500$? What am I getting out of my 'investment' in Australia getting medals? What am I losing out on if Australia was #30 rather than #7?
Really, am at a loss. Am asking - no answer here...
What percentage of our GDP is spent on funding sports ?
About as much as the carbon dioxide tax will reduce the carbon dioxide output 0.00000000000000000000000000 farkall%. 
Why use taxpayers money as such
Team GB (3rd in medal table currently) is funded mostly from our National Lottery contrary to most of the worlds beliefs. Our government basically didn't want to pay for sport or charities so the lottery has been used for funding instead. The upshot of GBs success in Beijing has been a discernable increase in cycling - this Olympics has seen a big boost for membership of British Cycling. So for us, I can pay for it or not, my choice whether I buy a lottery ticket and it has had an impact (though I can see one massive dip on the horizon for Rio).
Cheers Col
The lottery sounds like a better idea than governments spending directly on sports.
According to an analysis by the Sydney Morning Herald each medal for the 2012 Olympics cost about $10,000,000
On ROI. The ROI for sports elite sports administrators and coaches is quite high. They have very highly paid jobs with little accountability, ie if the sport they work in fails to perform they can just say the other countries put more money into it. Give me the $$$.
Also for the athletes the ROI is pretty good too if they perform, especially if they are in a popular sport like swimming. If they fail to perform then at least they have lived a few years at the taxpayers expense and they don't have a big debt owing to the government for it. Hopefully they've saved up a bit for the now rainy days. There is always sports coaching and administration to look forward to as well.
The IOC and their various sub committees do quite well too. Those involved in the construction of the big stadiums and venues do well. As for everyone else, get out your wallet coz someone has to pay for all this even if you don't care about it.
Who said it was an investment? Why do you need a return?
It would be a very boring world if everything needed to be justified for ROI.
Five hundred bucks a year.
That's what I'd pay
Just so once every four years I can get stoned with my buddies in front of the tele and watch the 50km mens walking final with the sound turned down.
And do the voice over commentary...
"oh, I gotta poo, I gotta poo, quick I gotta poo... Whaddya mean the toilets 50km away.. I gotta poo, I gotta poo..."
Multiplied by every other places our money go.
This is OUR money the gov't is thusly 'investing', not theirs.
Would you write blank checks to someone and say "Go invest where you want, I won't follow up on you" ?
All the sports generate jobs throught he people who administer them
Some sports can result in export $ for Australia, for example the mens 470 team used brand XYZ sails from local Joe sailmaker in Sydney, now every 470 sailor in the world will want them so they can start the race with equal gear.
The higher Australias profile in a sport the more likely we will be selected to host and international event for that sport, which equals incoming tourism $
Not one athlete at the games would have had a free ride, all would have laid out some big bucks at some stage in their career to get themselves to the standard required to even get some funding.
At the end of the day sports are a far better investment and are more accessable to the Aussie population than some other things the government funds
