For those who have enjoyed the Olympics, Yahoo! has posted a fascinating report of the investments Britain made in each sport, and the return on those investments.
As a result we can see a pattern of funding for each medal won.
In the build up to the Olympics, over £190 million of funding was pumped into Team GB sports, which averages out to be around £10 million per Gold Medal and just under £4 million per medal, based upon the fact that we won 19 Golds and 47 medals in total.
Of these, the cheapest medals are for Cycling at just over £2 million per Gold and the most expensive is Athletics at £20 million per Gold Medal.
Generally, the cheapest sport for a medal is Cycling again, at £1.25 million each, versus the £7 million invested to get a Bronze in Gymnastics.
Meanwhile, £7 million in Badminton and over £8.5 million into Hockey returned a zero sum gain.
Intriguing.
Mind you, it's not a patch on the £10 billion ($18 billion) London is
budgeting for the Games in 2012, about half-price compared to China's £20
billion ($36 billion), but more than Athens in 2004 (£7 billion, $13.5 billion).
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
