Olympics "£476m under budget"

[HangTime]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18421211

Sounds like a lot of spin to me, maybe I've misinterpreted but from what I can tell even if you ignore the talk about quadrupling the original budget, the fact that there was £2bn contigency included in the updated budget effectively means that it will cost over £1.5bn more than the revised estimate excluding contingency?

Using up >75% of contingency isn't something to crow about in my book, yes technically it has been 'budgeted for' but effectively what it means is that a lot more money was spent than what had been estimated.

 

[HangTime]

but with all hte sold tickets and rights will it make a profit?

I suspect not all the revenue from that will go to the same people, the IOC or whatever it is called will no doubt be taking their cut.

Difficult to quantify the benefits, there should in theory be significant boosts to UK industry as a result (especially tourism and the like) leading to a net gain for the country as a whole, but again how the cash is divided up is another matter.