Olympic Games

• 1. Introduction

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  The Olympic Games have been cancelled three times in their modern history, each cancellation a mark of world war. They have survived boycotts, bribery scandals, a pandemic postponement, and a doping crisis that never quite ends. And yet, more than 200 teams representing sovereign states and territories gather every four years - or now every two, since summer and winter editions alternate - to compete in front of audiences measured in billions. What drives a city to spend, on average, well over US$5 billion just on sports-related costs, knowing that budget overruns typically more than double that figure? What keeps athletes training for a prize that, officially, is nothing more than an olive wreath? To answer those questions, you have to go back to a sanctuary in Greece, where the Games began not as an athletic spectacle but as a religious festival, and then trace the long, complicated journey to the modern version that Baron Pierre de Coubertin launched in Athens in 1896.

• 2. Sacred Ground in Olympia

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  The ancient Games took place at the sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia, Greece, beginning in what most scholars now date to 776 BC. That date comes from inscriptions found at Olympia itself, listing winners of a footrace held every four years. For the first thirteen Olympics, that single footrace - a sprint called the stadion - was the only event. The winner's name was so revered that the following four-year period was named after him, so a champion might be remembered in the formula "the third year of the eighteenth Olympiad when Ladas of Argos won the stadion."

  The timing of the festival was determined by a formula tied to the stars and seasons: the midpoint of the celebration fell on the second full moon after the summer solstice, usually in late August or early September. The source notes this timing came after the annual harvest but before the picking of the olives. Heralds from Elis travelled across Greece to announce the dates, and tens of thousands made the difficult journey to attend, with some sources suggesting as many as 40,000 people assembled.

  Eligibility was strict at first. Only the legitimate sons of free-born Greek parents could compete. But when Macedonia and then Rome conquered Greece, the ten Olympic judges loosened that standard and permitted anyone who spoke Greek to take part. The Games came to feature running events, a pentathlon of jumping, discus, javelin, footrace, and wrestling, as well as boxing, the brutal full-contact sport of pankration, and equestrian events.

  The religious dimension was never incidental. Ritual sacrifices honouring Zeus and Pelops, the mythical king of Olympia, preceded the sporting events on the second day. The famous statue of Zeus by the sculptor Phidias stood in his temple at Olympia, and the winner received only a wreath of sacred olive from the precinct of Zeus. But the fame that came with that wreath translated into real economic wealth: subsidies from home cities and wealthy sponsors followed the victors back to their towns, where they were immortalised in poems and statues.

  The Games reached their peak in the sixth and fifth centuries BC and declined as Roman power grew. The most commonly cited end date is 393 AD, when the emperor Theodosius I decreed the elimination of all pagan cults. Another date sometimes given is 426 AD, when his successor Theodosius II ordered the destruction of Greek temples.

• 3. Reinvention Before Coubertin

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  The revival of Olympic competition did not begin with Baron Pierre de Coubertin. By the 17th century, the term "Olympic" was already being attached to athletic events in Europe. The first such event was the Cotswold Games, also known as the Cotswold Olimpick Games, organised by the lawyer Robert Dover near Chipping Campden, England, between 1612 and 1642. The British Olympic Association later mentioned these games when making the case for London's 2012 bid, calling them "the first stirrings of Britain's Olympic beginnings."

  In Revolutionary France, L'Olympiade de la République ran as an annual national festival from 1796 to 1798. The 1796 edition introduced the metric system into sport. Sweden hosted versions of the Olympic Games in 1834 and 1836 in Ramlösa, and then in Stockholm in 1843, drawing as many as 25,000 spectators.

  In 1850, a schoolmaster and physician named William Penny Brookes started an Olympian Class at Much Wenlock in Shropshire, England. By 1859, Brookes had renamed it the Wenlock Olympian Games, which continue to this day. On the 15th of November 1860, Brookes founded the Wenlock Olympian Society. Between 1862 and 1867, Liverpool hosted an annual Grand Olympic Festival, devised by John Hulley and Charles Pierre Melly. Those Liverpool games were the first to be wholly amateur and international in outlook, though only gentlemen amateurs could compete. In 1865, Hulley, Brookes, and E. G. Ravenstein founded the National Olympian Association in Liverpool, a direct forerunner of the British Olympic Association; its founding articles provided the framework for the International Olympic Charter.

  Meanwhile in Greece, the poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos had published a proposal for an Olympic revival as early as 1833, in a poem called "Dialogue of the Dead." The wealthy Greek-Romanian philanthropist Evangelos Zappas wrote to King Otto of Greece in 1856, offering to fund the revival. Zappas sponsored Games held in an Athens city square in 1859, with athletes from Greece and the Ottoman Empire participating. He also funded the restoration of the ancient Panathenaic Stadium, which hosted Olympics in 1870 and 1875. Thirty thousand spectators attended the 1870 Games.

  It was at the Wenlock Olympian Society's games in 1890 that Coubertin encountered Brookes's model and became convinced he could create something worldwide. Coubertin built on the work of Brookes and Zappas with the aim of establishing internationally rotating Games every four years.

• 4. Athens 1896 and the IOC's Birth

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  The meeting that launched the modern Olympic movement ran from the 16th to the 23rd of June 1894 at the University of Paris. On the last day, the delegates decided that the first Games under the auspices of the new International Olympic Committee would take place in Athens in 1896. The Greek writer Demetrius Vikelas was elected as the IOC's first president.

  Funding for the Athens Games came from multiple sources. Zappas had left the Greek government a trust specifically to fund future Olympic Games, and his cousin Konstantinos Zappas administered it. A citizen named George Averoff contributed generously for the refurbishment of the Panathenaic Stadium. The Greek government provided additional funding, expecting to recoup the investment through ticket sales and the sale of the first Olympic commemorative stamp set.

  The 1896 Games brought together 241 athletes from 14 nations, competing in 43 events. Greek officials and the public were enthusiastic enough that many athletes themselves called for Athens to be named the permanent host city. The IOC's intention was always rotation, and the second Olympics moved to Paris.

  The Games then entered a troubled period. The Olympics held alongside the Paris Exposition of 1900 and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904 failed to attract meaningful participation or public interest. The 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens - so called because they were the second Olympics to take place within the third Olympiad - revived interest by attracting a broad international field and generating public enthusiasm. The IOC recognised those 1906 Games at the time, though it no longer does, and no Intercalated Games have been held since.

• 5. Winter Games, Paralympics, and Youth Olympics

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  Figure skating appeared at the Summer Olympics in 1908 and again in 1920, and ice hockey joined the Summer programme in 1920 as well. The IOC wanted to expand winter sports further, and at the 1921 Olympic Congress in Lausanne, the decision was made to hold a separate winter version. A winter sports week - actually eleven days - took place in Chamonix, France, in 1924, and that event was retroactively recognised as the first Winter Olympic Games.

  For decades, the Winter and Summer Games were held in the same calendar year. That tradition held until the 1992 Games in Albertville, France. Beginning with the 1994 Games, the Winter Olympics shifted to a separate schedule, falling two years after each Summer Olympics. This allowed the IOC to spread the financial and logistical demands across a two-year cycle rather than concentrating them every four years.

  The Paralympics trace their origin to 1948, when Sir Ludwig Guttmann organised a multi-sport event between hospitals to coincide with the London Olympics. Guttmann's goal was to promote rehabilitation for soldiers after World War II. His event, originally called the Stoke Mandeville Games, grew into an annual festival. In 1960, Guttmann brought 400 athletes to Rome for what was called the "Parallel Olympics" - the first Paralympics. Beginning with the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, the host city for the Olympics also hosted the Paralympics. An agreement signed between the IOC and the International Paralympic Committee in 2001 formalised this arrangement, and it came into effect at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing and the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.

  The Youth Olympic Games were conceived by IOC president Jacques Rogge in 2001 and approved at the 119th IOC Congress. The first Summer Youth Games were held in Singapore from the 14th to the 26th of August 2010. The inaugural Winter Youth Games followed in Innsbruck, Austria. Athletes must be between 14 and 18 years old. The IOC allows up to 3,500 athletes and 875 officials at the Summer Youth Games, and 970 athletes and 580 officials at the Winter version. In March 2025, Kirsty Coventry became the first woman and the first African elected as President of the IOC.

• 6. The Cost of Hosting

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  The Oxford Olympics Study of 2016 found that since 1960, sports-related costs for the Summer Games have averaged US$5.2 billion and for the Winter Games US$3.1 billion. Those figures exclude wider infrastructure like roads, rail, and airports, which often cost as much again. Average cost overrun since 1960 has run at 156 percent in real terms, meaning actual costs have been roughly 2.56 times the original budget estimate.

  Montreal's 1976 Summer Games hold the record for the highest cost overrun of any Games, at 720 percent. Lake Placid's 1980 Winter Games ran 324 percent over. The 2014 Winter Games in Sochi cost in excess of US$50 billion, making them the most expensive in history; London 2012 overran by 76 percent, and Sochi 2014 by 289 percent.

  The 1984 Los Angeles Games charted a different course. The organising committee, led by Peter Ueberroth, used existing facilities and only two new ones, both paid for by corporate sponsors. The result was a surplus of US$225 million, unprecedented at that time. Ueberroth's committee used some of those profits to endow the LA84 Foundation to promote youth sports in Southern California and support coach education and a sports library.

  The final cost for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics - held in 2021 because of COVID-19 - was reported at JPY 1,423.8 billion, equivalent to about US$13 billion. Revenue included an IOC contribution of JPY 86.8 billion, local sponsorship of JPY 376.1 billion, and an insurance payout of JPY 50 billion for the postponement. Total costs came in at JPY 220.2 billion below the budget announced in December 2020.

  The financial pressure has made hosting less attractive. At least four cities withdrew their bids for the 2022 Winter Olympics, citing costs or lack of local support, leaving only a two-city race between Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Beijing. Bidding for the 2024 Summer Olympics similarly narrowed to a two-city race between Paris and Los Angeles, prompting the IOC to simultaneously award Paris the 2024 Games and Los Angeles the 2028 Games. Research has also shown that hosting displaces people: the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions reported the Olympics displaced more than two million people over two decades, often disproportionately affecting disadvantaged communities.

• 7. Television, Sponsorship, and the Olympic Brand

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  Coca-Cola first sponsored the Summer Olympics in 1928 and has remained a sponsor ever since. Kodak paid for advertising at the inaugural 1896 Games in Athens. But for the first half of the 20th century, the IOC itself ran on a small budget. From 1952 to 1972, IOC president Avery Brundage rejected all attempts to link the Olympics with commercial interest. When he retired, the IOC held US$2 million in assets. Eight years later, under a different approach, that figure had risen to US$45 million.

  The 1936 Berlin Games were the first to be broadcast on television, though only to local audiences. The 1956 Winter Olympics in Italy were the first Games to be internationally televised, and the broadcast rights for the following Winter Games in California were sold for the first time to specialised television networks - CBS paid US$394,000 for the American rights. By 1998, CBS was paying US$375 million for Nagano rights. NBC spent US$3.5 billion for the American rights to every Games from 2000 to 2012, then agreed to a US$4.38 billion contract extension on the 7th of May 2014 covering rights up to and including the 2032 Games. On the 13th of March 2025, it was announced that Comcast would pay the IOC US$3 billion to air the Olympics through 2036.

  The global audience for the 1968 Mexico City Games was estimated at 600 million. By the 1984 Los Angeles Games, that number had grown to 900 million. At the 1992 Barcelona Games, the estimated audience reached 3.5 billion. Satellites for live worldwide broadcasting began in 1964, and colour television arrived in 1968, both driving that exponential rise.

  Juan Antonio Samaranch, elected IOC president in 1980, wanted the IOC financially independent. To that end, he helped establish The Olympic Programme - known as TOP - in 1985, creating an exclusive tier of global sponsors. Membership cost US$50 million for a four-year period. TOP members received exclusive global advertising rights for their product category and use of the five interlocking rings in their publications and advertising. More than half of the Olympic Committee's global sponsors are American companies. Broadcasting and sponsorship rights together represent more than 60 percent of Olympic revenues.

• 8. Boycotts, Politics, and Protest

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  Australia, France, Greece, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom are the only countries to have been represented at every Olympic Games since 1896. Other nations have used the Games as a stage for political pressure. The Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland refused to attend the 1956 Melbourne Olympics because of the Soviet Union's repression of the Hungarian Revolution, though they sent an equestrian delegation to Stockholm. At the same Games, Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon boycotted over the Suez Crisis, and the People's Republic of China boycotted because Taiwan was competing.

  In 1980, the United States and 65 other countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The number of participating nations fell to 80, the lowest since 1956. The Soviet Union and 15 other nations responded by boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, though 140 National Olympic Committees did take part - a record at the time. Romania, a Warsaw Pact country, defied Soviet demands and competed, receiving a standing ovation from the largely American crowd during the opening ceremonies. The boycotting Eastern Bloc nations held their own alternative competition, the Friendship Games, in July and August of that year.

  Individual athletes have also used the Olympic platform. At the 1968 Mexico City Games, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who finished first and third in the 200 metres, performed the Black Power salute from the victory stand. Peter Norman of Australia, who finished second, wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge in solidarity. IOC president Avery Brundage ordered Smith and Carlos suspended from the US team and banned from the Olympic Village; when the US Olympic Committee refused, Brundage threatened to ban the entire US track team, which led to the two athletes' expulsion.

  Czechoslovak gymnast Vera Caslavska staged a quieter protest at the same Games. After the balance beam event final, in which Natalia Kuchinskaya of the Soviet Union had controversially won the gold, Caslavska turned her head down and away during the playing of the Soviet national anthem in silent protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. She repeated the gesture during her floor exercise medal ceremony. Her government banned her from sporting events and international travel for years and made her a social outcast until the fall of communism.

  In 1998, it emerged that several IOC members had accepted gifts from members of the Salt Lake City bid committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Four separate investigations followed, conducted by the IOC, the United States Olympic Committee, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and the United States Department of Justice. Ten IOC members were expelled and another ten sanctioned. New term and age limits were imposed on IOC membership, and fifteen former Olympic athletes were added to the committee. The 2002 Games themselves proved commercially strong: over two billion viewers watched more than 13 billion viewer-hours, and the organising committee ended with a surplus of US$40 million, which was used to create the Utah Athletic Foundation to maintain surviving Olympic venues.