Could India’s multi-billion-dollar dream to host the 2036 Olympic Games become a nightmare?

NEW DELHI – Both 1982 and 2010 were seminal years in India’s sporting history, marked by the hosting of the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games respectively, with each leaving an enduring legacy.

Now, as India formally begins its bid to host the 2036 Olympic Games, some are questioning what kind of turning point this could be for a country where cricket still dominates attention and resources, while other sports are chronically underfunded.

India has submitted a Letter of Intent to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to host the 2036 Olympic and Paralympic Games, former Indian athlete and Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president P.T. Usha announced on Nov 5 on X.

The move is only the first step in a long and competitive bidding process that will pit India against others in the race such as Indonesia, Chile and Turkey. A final decision is expected after 2025.

According to a Nov 8 report in The Indian Express, India’s letter to the IOC portrays the Games as a “critical catalyst for India’s continued rise on the global stage”.

The letter notes that India is the “only major economy yet to host the Games”, describing it as “a stark reflection of our region’s need for the types of sport and social benefits that only the Olympic Games can provide”.

No city has yet been identified as the host, but many expect Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar – two cities near each other in the western state of Gujarat – to be the front runners. Gujarat is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state.

One of the world’s largest stadiums – the Narendra Modi Stadium can accommodate more than 130,000 people – is situated in Ahmedabad. In anticipation of the 2036 Summer Olympic Games, the Gujarat government has already earmarked a 60 billion rupee (S$958 million) budget to build six sports complexes in the Ahmedabad-Gandinagar area.

Mr Modi, too, has thrown his political weight behind the Olympic bid, calling it “the dream of 1.4 billion Indians”. He assured the IOC in October 2023 that India “will leave no stone unturned in the preparation for the successful organisation of the Olympics in 2036”.

This promise, which was also mentioned in his Bharatiya Janata Party’s election manifesto for the 2024 general election, is seen as an attempt by Mr Modi to cement his legacy.

India’s attempt to host the Olympics has drawn polarised reactions. Supporters have dubbed a potential win as “phenomenal”, saying it could help transform Indian sports, Critics, however, see the bid as Mr Modi’s “vanity project”, warning of the post-Games economic woes of host nations and urging India to instead invest the money in training athletes so they can win more Olympic medals.

India’s best performance was at the 2020 Tokyo Games, where it won seven medals, including one gold and two silvers. Since 1896, when the modern version of the event began, India has won just 10 gold medals at the Summer Olympic Games; eight of them came from hockey alone.

One of the country’s only two individual gold winners was Abhinav Bindra, who won the 10m air rifle event in Beijing 2008. He told The Straits Times he would love to see the Olympics come to India in 2036, but that the Games had to “really act as a catalyst for change and a catalyst for development”.

“Why do we want to host the Olympics?” asked the former world shooting champion. “I think that’s a fundamental question that needs to be answered.”

For Mr Bindra, the reasons for India to pursue hosting the Games are clear – to use the opportunity to democratise sport and make it accessible to all sections of society, harness sport to transform India into a healthier nation and leverage it to drive India’s large youth population in positive ways.

“We have to create a legacy during the Games, but we need to also create a legacy that transcends the Games and goes much beyond,” he said. “The Olympics cannot be viewed just as a two-week sporting extravaganza. Because if you just look at it that way, then I think it will be a massive, massive missed opportunity.”

No one knows how much it is going to cost India to host the Olympics in 2036, but it is certain the costs will far outstrip the budget for recent games, including Tokyo 2020 that cost around US$13 billion (S$17.5 billion).

Even the Commonwealth Games in 2010, one of the most expensive ever, cost India US$4.1 billion, instead of the US$270 million that was first estimated. Revenue from the Games, on the other hand, was only US$38 million. Construction delays, budget overruns and corruption allegations also soured the experience.

The Olympics, too, have been dogged by controversies. A 2024 University of Oxford study estimated the average cost of hosting the Games since 1960 has been triple the bid price. The excitement over the recent editions has fizzled out, saddling the host cities with debt and a legacy of “white elephants” and leading many to label the Olympics a “multi-billion-dollar” risk.

Several grand venues, including those in Athens and Rio de Janeiro, which were built with significant investment but with poor planning and foresight, fell into disrepair and were dismantled or needed billions to be fixed. Fewer nations want to host the Games today because of the risk of such financial strain; Rome and Boston even withdrew their bids for the 2024 Games.

In 2021, Brisbane, host of the 2032 Summer Games, became the first city to win an Olympic bid unopposed since Los Angeles in 1984.

Not surprisingly, some in India are asking if hosting the 2036 Olympics will justify the enormous expenditure required to develop infrastructure for the temporary influx of athletes and tourists – an investment that may not fully pay off in the long run.

Mr Jonathan Selvaraj, a senior Indian sports journalist, argues that India’s Olympic bid is a “misplaced priority”, one that focuses more on the public spectacle of hosting the high-profile quadrennial event, rather than actually developing India’s sports ecosystem.

If the latter is what India wants to achieve, the focus, he said, should be on reforming sports governance at the top – where unqualified politicians still hold power and corruption is endemic – as well as developing grassroots sports infrastructure.

For instance, the IOA is currently caught up in an internal fight over the appointment of its chief executive officer, and the National Games of India – a domestic Olympic-style multi-sport event – have been delayed on several occasions because host states failed to put up the necessary infrastructure.

Even in Delhi, top athletes from neighbouring states struggle to find space to train with the Delhi government restricting the use of its stadiums only to local residents.

“It’s always been the case that the Olympics takes place in a sort of a mature sports ecosystem,” Mr Selvaraj told ST. “I cannot honestly say that the Indian sports ecosystem is what we consider to be a mature sports ecosystem.”

India is far, far away from being a sporting power like China, which has won 303 Olympic gold medals across a range of sports, or even Brazil, which has won 40 golds in athletics, sailing, volleyball, judo and other sports.

Yet, many would argue that, despite initial hurdles and its limited sporting prowess, India managed to pull off the 2010 Commonwealth Games, with the infrastructure such as stadiums still being used by athletes and for sporting events.

But the question, one that Mr Selvaraj also asks, is whether India made the best use of the money. “When you spend a billion dollars on a Games, it’s not going to have no impact. Surely, there’s going to be some impact, but the question is whether the return on investment is justified.”

It is a pertinent question for a country that allocated only 34.42 billion rupees for sports in its 2025 financial year budget. The bill for hosting the 2036 Olympic Games will be many times that amount, and the financial feasibility of its bid will be crucial as it aims to woo the IOC.

Sustainability has become a key focus for the committee, which has been trying to reduce the number of new venues built for the Olympics and asking host countries to present a “robust legacy plan” for any new development.

No city in India currently has the infrastructure necessary to host the Games, which means significant funds will have to be spent on developing both sporting and non-sporting facilities. Nearly half of the Commonwealth Games budget was dedicated to boosting Delhi’s infrastructure, with only a quarter allocated to development of sports infrastructure.

Instead of hosting the Games in just one city that would require infrastructure to be built from scratch, Ms Deepthi Bopaiah, CEO of GoSports Foundation, which supports some of India’s emerging and elite athletes, said the country could look at spreading the Games across multiple cities with good sporting facilities that could benefit from refurbishment.

This approach would reduce costs, she said.

“This way it also becomes the legacy of India… and I would love to see the Olympics of India, not just the Olympics in one place in India,” she told ST.

Limiting all the Olympic sports infrastructure to the Gandhinagar-Ahmedabad cluster also raises the risk of future under-utilisation in a state that does not have a widespread public sporting culture such as that of Haryana, a small north Indian state with around 25 million people but whose athletes have won 12 of India’s 21 medals at the Summer Olympics since 2012.

But it is not only infrastructure that India has to prioritise. Young talent has to be identified and groomed right away if India hopes to surpass its best ever Olympic haul of seven medals in 2036.

“This involves the coming together of many things – infrastructure, people, talent, coaches, sports, science,” Ms Bopaiah said. “And we should have started planning yesterday, not today or tomorrow; 12 years is going to rush by us.”

The IOA did not respond to questions from ST. However, it told the IOC that “there are over 600 million Indians under the age of 25” and “in India’s current stage of economic development, the Games would serve as a powerful force for job creation and business opportunities, particularly in sectors connected to sports infrastructure, services and tourism”.

Mr Beant Singh, a 26-year-old athletics coach in Delhi, hopes that prediction turns out to be true and that India will use the Olympics bid to develop sports at the grassroots. This includes providing scholarships for state-level athletes who currently lack financial support to progress to the national level.

“Winning medals at the Olympics is more important than hosting it,” he said. “So focusing on winning medals while preparing to host the Games would be great.”