The true cost of staging the 2012 Olympics is five times the figure given when London won the bid in 2005.
When Britain bid for the Games seven years ago the predicted cost of staging the Olympics and Paralympics was put at £2.37 billion ($3.71 billion).
A Sky News investigation revealed the final cost for the Games will be more than £12 billion. However, with associated costs the overall bill could be as high as £24 billion -- a staggering 10 times the original estimate.
The original public sector funding package, which is primarily cash to build the venues and provide security and policing, was increased in 2007 to about £9.3 billion following a review.
However, an extra £2.4 billion was added to meet new costs, including money related to the Olympic torch relay programs, the funding of legacy schemes, paying London Underground workers not to strike, financing more anti-doping control officers and covering legal bills over the Olympic Stadium tenancy decision.
The figure also takes into account the cost of buying the land for the venues at £766 million, a value still being negotiated over with the area losing value in the recession.
But it does not include the £1.1 billion extra counter-terrorism funding being allocated to the police during the Games, nor the £4.4 billion budgets of the security and intelligence services.
It also does not take into account the opportunity cost of having the majority of the UK police force working on the Games -- rising to 12,000 on peak days -- instead of fighting crime elsewhere.
In addition, the revised £12 billion total misses out the £6.5 billion spent on transport upgrades which have been brought forward due to the Olympics and could have been canceled as part of UK government spending cuts were it not for the event.
If these figures had been counted, the Olympic spend would have totaled well over £24 billion, more than double the current budget and 10 times the original calculation.
The figures also do not consider the £2.1 billion cost of actually staging the Games, which is paid for by the London Organising Committee (LOCOG), a private company which raises revenue primarily through sponsorship, merchandising and ticket sales.
A spokesman for the UK government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport said, "The public sector funding package for the Games is £9.3 billion and includes all additional security, defense and public transport provision for the Games. It is simply not right to start adding on top of that budgets that would have been in existence regardless of 2012 and claim that as being an Olympic cost."
