system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: If the Olympics is known to leave a country/city at a loss financially most of the time, then why does anywhere host the Olympics?

I dont understand why anywhere would spend billiins on building the neccessary infrastructure for the Olympics when most of it will have little use after the event and leave then at a huge financial loss.
gpt
The infrastructure isn't always unused. Sydney has managed to make use of most of the stuff they built for the 2000 Olympics.

Beyond that, some cities use the Olympics as a chance to advertise themselves. This is the case in Sochi, which is typically considered a summer destination by Russians. China used the Beijing Olympics in a similar way, to promote themselves to the Western world.

There's also the fact that not everything always goes to plan. The Montreal Olympics famously lost the city a lot of money, they borrowed a lot to build stadiums they couldn't fill after the Olympics left, despite their initial predictions.

Beyond this, many cities are wary of hosting the Olympics due to the potential cost, especially the winter games, where things like the bobsleigh run are expensive to construct and have very little potential for use outside the games.