Despite the entire 2016 Rio Olympic Games budget now sitting at an astounding 38.67 billion reais (11 billion USD), Rio organizers announced this week that the Opening and Closing Ceremonies will most likely be ten times smaller than the London 2012 Opening Ceremony.
Amidst political and economic upheaval in the country of Brazil, including an inflation rate approaching 10%, Fernando Meirelles, one of the Rio Olympics ceremonies director estimates that only 10% of the 2012 London Olympic Games ceremonies’ expenditure will be spent in 2016.
Says Meirelles, “Brazil is in a kind of financial crisis, everybody knows. We will have a low budget but I’m happy to work with this low budget. I would be ashamed to waste what London spent in a country where we need sanitation; where education needs money.” Further citing the calamities across the nation, Meirelles said, “It does not make sense to be extravagant in this moment that the country is facing. It will not be a high-tech ceremony, it will be high-concept.”
London is reported to have spent about 80 million pounds ($104 million at 2012 exchange rates) on all Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies, while China’s expenditure was in the neighborhood of $100 million. According to Leonardo Caetano, another Director of the ceremonies in Rio deflected the budget concerns, stating “We will not have luxury, but we will have originality,” he said. “We will spend less, but we compensate with creativity, rhythm and emotion.”
According to Rio organizers, approximately 12,000 volunteers are expected to be cast in the Olympic and Paralympic Games opening and closing ceremonies with more than 15,000 people having already applied to participate.