Holding an Olympic Games means evoking history,” said Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern games as we know them today. On a fateful evening in 1894, Coubertin proposed a revival of the ancient sporting event, which had been confined to the history books for nearly 1,500 years. Setting out his vision to unite the world through sport, Coubertin imagined a future where the world’s major cities would step forward to host the competition – and in 1896 his hopes became reality. The Olympic Games were reborn in Athens, and sporting history was made.
Since then, 23 cities have played host to the summer Olympic Games. The appeal is plain – hosting the Olympics is a surefire way for cities to announce themselves on the global stage. For a few short weeks every four years, the eyes of the world are focused on one specially selected location, giving nations a prime opportunity to showcase their culture, traditions and perspectives to the world. In 1988, the Seoul Olympics helped to accelerate South Korea’s transition to democracy, while the 1992 Olympics completely revitalised the city of Barcelona, creating two miles of beachfront and a five-kilometre seafront promenade which have come to define the modern Catalan capital.
Staging the Olympics can have a truly transformative impact on cities. When managed well, hosting the games can increase tourism, boost local economies, and create a sense of community cohesion and wellbeing. Poorly managed events, meanwhile, can push host cities into fiscal black holes. Over the past few decades, escalating costs have somewhat dampened interest in hosting the games, with some cities dropping their bids after closer inspection of the anticipated balance sheet. There is no doubt that hosting the games comes with a hefty price tag, and cost overruns have become par for the course. The Olympics is in real danger of losing its appeal to potential host cities – and it is clear that something needs to change. That is where Paris 2024 promises to be different.
Breaking the bank
A century has passed since Paris last hosted the Olympic Games, and the city of love is once again gearing up to welcome another summer of sport. As final preparations are put in place, the French capital appears to have pulled off the impossible – it hasn’t blown its budget.
The growth of the competition has put increasing strain on host cities
By minimising new construction and maximising the use of existing infrastructure, the city is on track to deliver the cheapest Olympic Games in decades. Most of the games’ events will be held in existing stadiums, all of which are well served by public transport, reducing the need to undertake costly and time-consuming construction projects.
Elsewhere, historic sites will be temporarily repurposed into sporting venues, with Les Invalides set to provide a stunning backdrop to the event’s archery and para archery competitions, and Place de la Concorde to play host to BMX freestyle and skateboarding showdowns. A temporary outdoor arena will allow the Château de Versailles to host the games’ equestrian events, and beach volleyball will be played at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. In total, an impressive 95 percent of events will take place in existing or temporary structures, as the city looks to establish a new model for the Olympic Games.
This radical, low-carbon, low-build approach is a deliberate departure from previous events. For many, the Paris approach represents a much-needed reset for the games. Over the last 50 years, the cost of hosting the Olympic Games has skyrocketed. Spending has spiralled out of control, and host cities are too often left burdened with debts once the Olympic torch has moved on.
There are a number of factors behind these ballooning budgets. The first is quite simple – as the games themselves have grown, so have the costs. Over the past half a century, the number of teams and athletes attending the Olympics has almost doubled, and the number of events has steadily increased. At Tokyo 2020, 339 gold medals were up for grabs across 50 sporting disciplines – a far cry from the 43 gold medals and 10 sporting events at the first modern Olympics back in 1896. More competitors ultimately means more people to house and more mouths to feed, with athlete villages coming to resemble small cities in their own right.
The addition of new sporting disciplines has made the Olympics a more inclusive place, opening up the door to athletes from less mainstream sports, and boosting female participation in the games. But these new sports – competition climbing and skateboarding among them – also require high-quality specialised venues, which most host cities will need to construct from scratch.
More athletes and more sports might make for an entertaining Olympics, but the growth of the competition has put increasing strain on host cities. Here, Paris is once again determined to be different. The city will be reducing the number of events held over the course of its 17-day games – marking the first reduction in Olympic events since 1960.
The security bill
For many, the Olympic Games symbolise peace and global unity. But the high-profile nature of the competition has sadly made it a target for terrorism. In 1972, tragedy unfolded at the Munich summer Olympics, when gunmen killed 11 members of the Israeli national team. The incident had a profound impact on the approach to security at the games, and made event organisers acutely aware of the threat of terrorism at large-scale sporting events. In 1996, the games were once more devastated by violence, when a pipe bomb exploded in a crowd at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, killing one person and injuring over 100 more.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 raised the threat of terrorism around the globe. Security at global mega-events suddenly became paramount, and spending on Olympics safety precautions quickly began to escalate in the post-September 11 era. In 2012, London’s security bill is thought to have ballooned to over £1bn, as event organisers initially underestimated the number of staff needed across its venues. More than 2,000 army reserves were called in to beef up security, with over 23,700 security staff ultimately needed to police the event. Since then, host cities have routinely racked up significant security bills, as threat levels remain high.
In addition to terrorism and potential violent disruptions, event organisers are now facing a new security risk: cyber attacks. During Tokyo 2020, security staff thwarted more than 450 million attempted cyber attacks, while a successful incident at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics came close to shutting down the opening ceremony. Large-scale sporting events have become prime targets for cyber threats, due to both their global profile and their increasing reliance on digital infrastructure. Venue Wi-Fi networks, app-based ticketing systems and credential scanners are all vulnerable to attack, and if compromised, could bring an event grinding to a halt. Such an attack – as narrowly avoided at Pyeongchang – would prove as costly as it would disruptive.
Paris is on high security alert ahead of the Olympics. The French capital has experienced some of the most deadly terrorist attacks in modern European history, and the 2015 Bataclan musical hall massacre looms large in the national consciousness. April’s IS-claimed concert hall attack in Moscow has further added to security concerns, while recent threats made on a pro-IS media channel have caused growing unease. Amid these mounting anxieties over safety, the President of Paris 2024 has sought to reassure attendees that security is the games’ top priority. In an interview with BBC Sport, Tony Estanguet stressed that the event will be taking place under an “unprecedented” security protocol, with over 2,000 private security agents joining 40,000 police and gendarmes to provide enhanced protection across the games.
While Estanguet insists that the budget remains balanced, this additional security comes at a cost. Paris 2024 will be spending £320m on private security – but delivering a safe and secure summer event may ultimately prove priceless.
The good, the bad, and the costly
For better or for worse, each Olympics host city leaves its own lasting legacy. Some go down in history for all of the right reasons, while others live on in infamy due to mismanagement, corruption and controversies. Sydney’s Olympic legacy continues to live on, almost 25 years after it pulled off one of the best ever games. Montreal, meanwhile, is routinely held up as a cautionary tale for prospective hosts, after the 1976 games left the Canadian city $1.6bn in debt.
When Montreal’s winning bid was announced, confidence was high. With the initial budget coming in at a modest £65m, the city looked forward to an economic windfall during the games. Montreal mayor Jean Drapeu even claimed that “the Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.” This early optimism was profoundly misplaced. Construction costs quickly ballooned, and poor project management resulted in lengthy delays to the erection of the Olympic Park. Union strikes and cost inflation further slowed delivery, and the opening ceremony was forced to take place in an incomplete stadium. When construction finally completed, Montreal’s Olympic budget was 13 times more than originally predicted. The city was saddled with $1.6bn in debt, which took until December 2006 to fully pay off. In the years that followed, a number of fraud and corruption charges were brought against top officials and contractors, and an official inquiry was launched into the disastrous costs of the games.
To this day, Montreal continues to feel the effects of the summer 1976 games. Public services suffered for decades as the city grappled with the Olympics debt burden, with city hall pushed to the brink of financial ruin. The ‘Big O’ Olympic stadium has become an undeniable feature of the Montreal cityscape, but costs C$32m each year to operate and maintain. Earlier this year, the Quebec government announced that it would spend a further C$870m to repair the stadium’s dilapidated roof – a mammoth renovation that will take four years to complete.
Montreal may be the most infamous example of Olympics mismanagement, but it certainly isn’t the only host city to struggle to balance the books once the games have moved on. The final bill for Athens 2004 is thought to be an eye-watering $11bn, and helped push Greece towards bankruptcy in the wake of the global financial crisis. Rio de Janeiro’s 2016 summer games left Brazil with a $32m debt pile – which has risen to an astonishing $113m in the years since.
We want to demonstrate that Paris and France can deliver a games in a different way
According to research carried out by Oxford University, the average Olympic Games experiences a cost overrun of 172 percent, with inadequate cost estimates, poor contingency planning and mission creep all contributing to skyrocketing final bills.
For many cities, the financial burden of hosting the games simply outweighs any short-term benefits it might bring. Interest in holding the prestigious competition has waned in recent years, and public spending has grown ever more constrained in a post-Covid world. Rome, Hamburg and Budapest all withdrew their bids to host the summer 2024 games, leaving Paris and Los Angeles as the only remaining candidates. As bids and enthusiasm dwindle, the Olympics desperately needs to find a path to profitability – and the solution may not be as complex as commonly supposed.
Going for glory
After the financial debacle of the Montreal 1976 Olympics, hosting the games became an unpopular gig. Los Angeles was the only city to bid for the 1984 event, and despite the doubters and naysayers, the city achieved the seemingly impossible – it pulled off the first profitable Olympics since 1932. The city’s strategy was simple: low build, low spend and hefty private sector investment. Most events took place in existing venues and facilities, with the famous Pasadena Rose Bowl and majestic LA Memorial Coliseum both reused after featuring in the 1932 LA Olympics.
Just two new venues were constructed specifically for the 1984 games, and were made possible by generous corporate sponsorships from 7-Eleven and McDonalds. The private sector picked up the tab for the state-of-the-art communications infrastructure required for the summer’s events, and broadcast deals brought in a healthy stream of income for the city. The organising committee sold the television broadcast rights to ABC for $225m, marking one of the most expensive deals in the history of televised entertainment.
While critics at the time bemoaned the over-commercialisation of the Olympic Games, the private sector support at Los Angeles 1984 saw the city turn a tidy profit of $223m. The Olympics windfall allowed the organising committee to establish the LA84 Foundation, a non-profit that promotes youth sports opportunities across Southern California, ensuring a lasting legacy for the event.
The Paris approach represents a much-needed reset for the games
But the impact of Los Angeles 1984 extends much further than the city itself. The event showed the world that a profitable Olympic Games is possible – it just requires a different approach. The Los Angeles model for success embraces private sector sponsorship, but also rejects excess in favour of using existing venues and infrastructure. It shows that spending big is no guarantee of success, and that hasty, expensive construction projects are often more trouble than they are worth.
In the years that followed, however, the world turned its back on the Los Angeles Olympics blueprint. Overspending once again became the norm, with cities falling back into the trap of white elephant vanity venues and poor legacy planning. That is, until Paris. The French capital is looking to reverse the trend of cost overruns and blown budgets, and is wholeheartedly embracing private sector funding. In total, private funding will cover an impressive 96 percent of the cost of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, with public authorities left to cover just four percent of the bill. With the French state well cushioned against costs, this could be the first Olympics to officially break even since the year 2000.
A new era
In 1896, a millennia-old tradition was revived and reinvented for a new age. In 2024, the Olympic Games are undergoing another profound transformation. The days of pure spectacle and excess are over, replaced by a new focus on financial, social and environmental sustainability.
“We want the legacy to be different,” Olympics Chief Tony Estanguet explained in an interview with Time. “Not a legacy of having fantastic venues, but how this project can help a population.”
Just two new purpose-built venues have been constructed for the Paris Games, and both are specifically located in lower-income areas of the city. The Porte de la Chapelle Arena, known as the Adidas Arena after its corporate sponsor, has been built in one of Paris’ most deprived neighbourhoods. Far from the bustling tourist hotspots of central Paris, the Porte de la Chapelle sits to the far north of the city centre, and has long been associated with drug dealing and crime.
The new stadium is a key part of the Olympic Committee’s urban regeneration strategy, and looks to kick-start a programme of further renewal and redevelopment in the disadvantaged neighbourhood. New apartments are set to be built in the area, with 35–50 percent of units earmarked for social housing. Once the games have moved on, local schools and clubs will be able to make use of two onsite gymnasiums at the Adidas Arena, in an effort to boost sports participation in the area.
Over the past few decades, escalating costs have somewhat dampened interest in hosting the games
A few miles north, on the other side of the Paris périphérique ring road, a state-of-the-art aquatics centre has been built in the low-income neighbourhood of Saint-Denis. One of the poorest départements in the Greater Paris area, over a quarter of Saint-Denis residents live below the poverty line. The regeneration of this much-maligned area was at the very heart of Paris’ winning bid to host the Olympics, and many have high hopes that the games will help to fast-track further investment into the neighbourhood.
Along with the new, eco-friendly aquatics centre, Saint-Denis will also be home to the Olympics Village, welcoming 14,000 athletes over the course of the games. And once the Olympic torch has moved on, the village will be transformed into housing for up to 6,000 people – with a quarter of those homes reserved for public housing.
This programme of regeneration and investment may not be a silver bullet for Paris’s poorer neighbourhoods. But it does demonstrate a clear ambition to leave a lasting legacy of inclusive growth – and the games could prove to be a much-needed catalyst for change. Aside from its commitment to urban renewal, the Paris Olympics Committee is also dedicated to delivering the ‘greenest-ever’ games. Organisers have promised to halve the carbon footprint of previous games, and have vowed to double the amount of vegetarian food on offer at venues, in a sustainable approach to feeding athletes and spectators. The games’ limited construction has primarily used natural, bio-based building materials, and the Olympics Village will be powered by geothermal and solar energy.
“We want to demonstrate that Paris and France can deliver a Games in a different way than in the past,” Estanguet said in an interview with BBC Sport. Paris is setting the stage for a new wave of cost-effective, low-carbon and low-build Olympic bids. Its slimmed-down approach has, so far at least, proved better for the budget and better for the planet, and its legacy planning seeks to kick-start positive change for the city’s most disadvantaged citizens. As tourists flock to the French capital in their millions, Paris could take in up to $12.2bn over the course of the event, according to predictions by the International Olympic Committee. If it is able to pull this off, the city may just turn the Olympics from financial burden to economic boon.
The stage is set for a truly momentous event. And away from the excitement and spectacle of the medal ceremonies, the city of Paris may just emerge as the greatest winner of all.