The first hint that something is not quite up to snuff appears a few lines further down.  Under the operating expenses, the cost labeled as “Broadcast and Media operation” is pegged at $72 million. In other words, it would have cost $16 million more to handle all the media requirements than would have been brought in by the broadcasting rights.

While this discrepancy is astounding in and of itself, it is the first number that squarely points to one of the great weaknesses of the bid, namely that the Commonwealth Games are a relatively minor sporting event and likely not worth the expense.

This becomes obvious when one compares them to other international competitions held recently. Thus, the 2006 FIFA World Cup held in Germany this past summer generated an estimated 1.86 billion dollars in world wide television revenue while the Turin Winter Olympics received almost a billion dollars from selling its broadcast rights.  (For the upcoming Beijing Olympics, television revenue is estimated at almost 2 billion dollars at this stage).

Even the Cricket World Cup, which has just started in the Caribbean, boasts superior numbers to those provided by Halifax’s Bid Committee. Combined, its revenue from broadcast rights, sponsors and ticketing is estimated at $292.2 million compared to the $211.9 million that our Committee for the 2014 Games had anticipated to garner from the same revenue channels.

Since revenue for broadcast rights provide a pretty accurate picture of the general popularity of a sporting event, the numbers seem to indicate that in terms of world-wide interest, the Commonwealth Games lag far behind other major competitions. This should not come as a great surprise, since by its very nature, the event excludes some of the biggest television markets in the world, namely continental Europe, the United States as well as some of the bigger players in Asia, such as S. Korea and Japan.

Ironically, it is this very group that Nova Scotia has traditionally relied upon to shore up its tourism industry.  Planners for any future large scale sporting event in our province should acknowledge that, given our location, we could draw from two of the largest sports-tourism markets in the world. A yearly Nascar race, for example, would lure American tourists, while holding a professionals cycling race would cater to the European market. In the end, the amount that television networks would be willing to pay for broadcast rights could serve as a litmus test to determine whether holding a particular sporting event will be feasible in the short term and beneficial to overall tourism numbers in the long run.