In 2013, basking in the afterglow of a successful games, the city was eager to view its project though rose-tinted glasses. A governmental survey estimated that the Olympics will end up will bringing Great Britain tens of billions of pounds by 2020. However, this figure has raised some eyebrows. “It’s almost like a bit of creative accounting. There’s no way of testing whether what they’re saying is really true,” said sports economist Stefan Szymanski to the BBC at the time.