It’s a question asked every four years: Are the Olympic games worth the enormous amount of money needed to stage them?

So far, the tally for the Rio de Janeiro games is $4.6-billion and counting. Some estimates put the costs between $12 and $20-billion as associated infrastructure costs are added.

But even the high end of the estimates will fall short of the nearly $22-billion spent by Russia for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

The budget-busting price tags have some considering alternatives such as permanent sites that get the games on a rotating basis and spreading out the games to many sites that would host one event.

While the Olympic torch lights up the skies over Rio de Janeiro, Brazilians hope they won’t get burned too much.