NBC's cameras will capture astounding beach views and triumphant competitors, and memories of the months of panic leading up to the games will melt away. But avoiding catastrophe isn't the same as achieving success: Contrary to the bold claims about economic development that accompany any mega-event, hosting the Olympics is almost always a financial disaster for cities in the long term, and Rio won't be the exception.

Indeed, economists are uncommonly unanimous that hosting the Olympics is a bad bet. "The math just doesn't make sense," says Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College whose book Circus Maximus argued that even bidding on the Olympics makes cities a victim of a scandal-plagued International Olympics Committee. "They cost between $10 billion and $20 billion and generate in the range of $4 billion to $5 billion," he says. But there's a clear solution to this financial trap, one that would plant the games squarely in the age of streaming television and instantaneous global communication: We should split the whole thing up.