Hosting the Olympics can be a huge honor for the city that lands the event.

Cities from around the world have competed for this privilege.

However, some cities which have hosted the Olympics have come to regret their decision.

In fact, they paid for the privilege of hosting the event decades after the fact.

Learn more about Olympic Boondoggles and the very complicated economics behind hosting the Olympic Games

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. The modern Olympics have changed and evolved radically since its inception.

The first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896 only had 241 athletes from 14 countries.

There were 43 events in nine sports.

It was about the size of a high school track meet with a few more events.

By comparison, the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo had 11,556 athletes from 2006 countries and there were

339 events in 33 sports.

As the Olympics have grown everything surrounding the games has

changed including the process for how a host city is selected, and reasons for why a city might want to host it.

The first Olympics was basically given to Athens by default, because the goal of the modern Olympics was to revive the ancient games, which were always held in Greece, Athens was the The

goal of the modern Olympics was to revive the ancient games which were always held in Greece.

Athens was the natural and only choice.

The 1900 Olympics were held in Paris.

Again, there really wasn't much competition for the location.

The Olympics still weren't really that big of a deal and the head of the International Olympic Committee

Pierre de Cobertin was French and most importantly Paris was hosting the 1900

World's Fair. By hosting the Olympics alongside the

World's Fair there really wasn't that much additional expense for the city. At the

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