The city that wins Friday's International Olympic Committee (IOC) vote will be guaranteed at least $1.2 billion from the sale of television rights and sponsorships for the world's most prestigious sporting event, according to IOC marketing director Michael Payne.
Olympic sources say Beijing is the favourite to hold off strong candidates Paris and Toronto in the vote of all IOC members and win the right to stage the Games for the first time.
Japan's Osaka and Istanbul, the other candidates in the five-city battle, are unlikely to figure highly in the vote.
Gone are the days when the huge cost of staging the Olympics provided an intimidating prospect. In the modern sports world of billion-dollar deals for television rights and sponsorship, winning the right to stage the Games has huge economic advantages as well as political and sporting prestige.
Many of the world's stock markets will be watching Friday's decision with special interest since a Beijing victory could have a major influence on China's economic development in the next seven years and on the international blue chip companies that are working hard to tap its attractive market.
As Olympic leaders prepared for Tuesday's second day of an IOC executive board meeting ahead of Friday's decision, IOC marketing commission chief Dick Pound said the financial advantages of the Games were attracting more cities to bid.
Cities around the world, including London and major U.S. cities, are already preparing possible bids for the 2012 Games, once the venue for 2008 is decided. The decision for 2012 will be taken in four years.
The 2008 race started with 10 bidding cities before the organisation reduced the number to five for the deciding vote.
"It is a huge net plus. If you can't organise the Games for a billion dollars, you are just not doing it right. In Atlanta (in 1996), they built the stadium, they built all those facilities out of the Olympic revenue,” said Pound.
"Twenty-five years ago in Montreal the worldwide television revenues were $35 million dollars. By Atlanta they were $935 million. For last year's Sydney Games they were $1.3 billion."
He added: "I think you can go to your taxpayer and say: 'look it is not going to cost us anything."
