PWC prediction on Olympics

With the world getting ready to see the spectacular opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing, the spirit of sports, hopefully should take over. For India, Olympics is not like cricket. Because we rarely win in the Olympics and our performance is always amongst the bottom of the pile, despite having a population of over one billion, people are not exactly agog about it.

Actually people have no expectations at all. Because expectations always lead to disappointment. Pricewaterhouse Cooper (PwC) which is a reputed financial firm, has made predictions about the Olympics too. Treating the whole thing like how they probably read a balance sheet, by comparing past track record and going by what is on offer this time, PwC has predicted that India can win about 6 medals. It has also stated that China will beat US this time with a higher medal tally. It predicts China to top the tally with a total of 88 medals, 25 more than the Athens Olympics and one more than the USA’s predicted total for this edition of the games.

What is very interesting is that it has presented a report titled “Economic Briefing Paper: Modelling Olympics Performance” and in that, it states, the a countries’ performance at the biggest sporting stage is linked to, among other factors, the average income level (measured by GDP per capita at purchasing power parity exchange rates) and population. Its logic is that the number of medals won by countries increases with its population and wealth, but less proportionately. Makes any sense?