Olympic Host Cities Had a Financial Problem. Did Paris Fix It?
The Eiffel Tower with the Olympic Rings. Photo by Bo Zhang on Unsplash.
In its bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, Paris promised to supply a resplendent backdrop to the world’s symposium of sport. The City of Light did not disappoint.
A stunning 9.5 million tickets were sold for the two-week event in Paris, breaking attendance records in basketball, beach volleyball, handball, and rugby sevens. Olympic audiences were similarly captivated at home; three years after the Tokyo Summer Games drew record-low viewership in the U.S., over 30 million Americans per day tuned into NBC’s Olympics coverage. On the field, the Games saw the first medal for the Refugee Olympic Team (a bronze in middleweight boxing) and became the first Olympics to achieve gender parity among its athletes. Ultimately, Paris will be remembered for crowning Léon Marchand and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, immortalizing Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky, and introducing to the world Stephen “Pommel Horse Guy” Nederosik, Yusuf “Turkish Shooter” Dikec, and breakdancing sensation “Raygun.”
Amid the triumphs of the 2024 Games, one glaring figure remains consequential for Parisian taxpayers: the Olympics’ financial cost. For now, the economic outlook is surprisingly promising. Paris initially set aside $8 billion (in USD) for the Olympics, a figure that has since increased to around $10 billion. As recently as May, organizers expected a small profit, a shocking change from the severe losses incurred by recent hosts.
Total costs have not yet been reported in some sectors. Terrorism was a major concern for Paris, with over 70,000 armed guards converting Paris to “an open-air fortress,” as described by The Wall Street Journal. French officials even requested international policing aid, with thirty-five countries reportedly sending various resources and personnel; estimated security costs were over $375 million, but overall expenditures are still unclear.
Other projects in the city could also face growing fees, most notably the Seine River clean-up effort. Burdened by its centuries-old sewage system, Paris spent $1.5 billion on an underground reservoir to prevent wastewater from flowing into the Seine — a commitment to clean the E.coli-ridden river not only for the Olympics but also to ensure the water is swimmable for future generations of Parisians. One French official claimed the city was “building two cathedrals,” with resources divided between the Seine and Notre Dame. Triathlon and marathon swimming events eventually took place in Paris’ famed river, although the men’s triathlon was delayed one day due to high bacteria levels. However, after reports of several athletes feeling sick after competing in the Seine, officials may be forced to spend even more on the clean-up effort — or concede defeat.
Eiffel Tower Stadium, the temporary stadium at the base of the Eiffel Tower constructed for beach volleyball at the 2024 Olympics. Photo by Qi Li on Unsplash
Despite these challenges, the Paris Olympics was the most cost-effective Games in decades. Infrastructure spending was reduced substantially by using existing venues; only the Olympic Village ($1.6 billion), the Aquatics Center ($190 million), and the gymnastics and badminton arena ($150 million) were constructed after the Games were awarded in 2017. Other stadiums, such as beach volleyball’s spectacular Eiffel Tower Stadium, were built temporarily to lower costs. Where Paris lacked capacity, the Olympics moved around France and beyond. Preliminary rounds of team sports were held in other large cities (Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, etc.), shooting took place in Châteauroux, equestrian medals were awarded at Versailles, and surfers competed 10,000 miles away in Tahiti.
In utilizing its logistical advantages, Paris successfully challenged the notoriously expensive history of hosting major international sporting events. The first ruinous failure happened in Montreal, whose 1976 Olympics provided an ominous warning for future host cities. Quebecois officials stockpiled $124 million for the Games, but corruption, construction delays, and heightened security costs in the wake of the 1972 Munich massacre drastically increased spending. Montreal’s Olympic Stadium was still under construction when the opening ceremonies commenced, and neither the Montreal Tower nor the stadium’s retractable roof — promised by the city’s Olympic officials — were completed within a decade of the Games. Montreal ultimately accumulated a $1.6 billion bill, only paying off its debt in 2006.
Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, renamed by locals from “The Big O” to “The Big Owe,” has sat tenantless since 2004, when MLB’s Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals. Even today, the city’s misfortune has lingering effects; Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour reportedly skipped over the city due to the stadium's state of disrepair. While fixing the stadium’s damaged retractable roof would cost over $600 million to complete, Montreal has seemingly no alternative — according to Bloomberg, tearing down The Big O would cost $2 billion.
Montreal’s Olympic Stadium (“The Big Owe”), with its retractable roof held by the Montreal Tower. Via Wikimedia Commons
While the Canadian example is an extreme one, other cities have also found themselves mired in post-Olympics debt. Some high costs have been due to autocratic zealousness. Hosting global sporting events lends repressive regimes an otherwise unattainable air of prestige, evident in some states’ attempts to “sportswash” poor human rights records or authoritarian politics. Sochi, Russia’s Black Sea resort town, hosted the 2014 Winter Games despite a lack of (yes, really) natural snow. Costs, including snow machines and an $8.7 billion transit project, exceeded $50 billion — the most expensive Olympics in history. Silver and bronze go to China’s recent Olympic efforts; Beijing’s 2008 Summer Games cost $40 billion, while the city’s 2022 Winter Games reportedly totaled $38.5 billion.
Other countries were simply unable to keep up with high building costs. Part of the legacies of Rio 2016 and Athens 2004 were stadiums left empty once the Games concluded — with the latter causing Greeks to partly blame the IOC for their debt crisis three years later. For its 2020 Olympics, Tokyo spent $1.4 billion on an Olympic Stadium that hosted no fans during the Games due to the pandemic; it has since privatized the stadium to recoup only some of the original cost. By contrast, Paris’ Stade de France had successfully hosted twenty years of major sporting events before being used for the Olympics.
The IOC has tried to adjust regulations to reduce costs and promote sustainability, but it is yet to be seen if reforms will be successful beyond Paris. Its “Olympic Agenda 2020” aims to reduce the price of the bidding process and encourage the use of existing facilities. Brisbane, for example, reneged on building a new stadium for its 2032 Games, opting for existing venues. However, the IOC’s requirements have faced criticism because they mostly limit the Olympics to developed countries with pre-made infrastructure or authoritarian states with money to spend.
These concerns have somewhat been reflected in the bidding process for the 2036 Games, the next Summer Olympics to be awarded. In Africa, where no country has ever hosted an Olympics, one Egyptian official claimed only three locations would be considered: “Egypt, Morocco and South Africa. The rest have no chance.” Egypt’s potential 2036 bid faces competition from a number of would-be first-time hosts, including Istanbul, a five-time loser of the bidding process; Nusantara, Indonesia’s new, still half-built capital city; Doha, which controversially held most of the 2022 World Cup; Riyadh, host to not only the IOC’s first ever Olympic Esports Games in 2025, but also the 2027 men’s AFC Asian Cup, the 2029 Asian Winter Games, the 2034 Asian Games, and the 2034 FIFA World Cup; and India, rumored to be Ahmedabad, home to the largest stadium in the world, Narendra Modi Stadium.
The Winter Games pose a different challenge, not only due to global warming’s effect on winter sports but also due to the specialization of constructing apparatus like a ski jumping venue or a bobsled track. The 2026 Olympics in Milano-Cortina are reportedly “far behind schedule” on several projects with only two years left on their countdown clock. The Winter Olympics in 2030 (the French Alps) and 2034 (Salt Lake City) were awarded in July — time will tell if their respective Games can follow Paris’ lead.
For now, though, the focus is on the glitz and glamor of the City of Angels. Los Angeles promises to be the first-ever “no-build” Olympics with all events to be held in existing or temporary stadiums. Venues include the Chargers’ and Rams’ SoFi Stadium (swimming), the Clippers’ Intuit Dome (basketball), the Lakers’ Crypto.com arena (gymnastics), and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (track and field, for a historic third time). Following Paris’ lead, multiple events have been exiled from Southern California; the world’s best in softball and canoe slalom will instead be trekking to the far less glitzy and far less glamorous Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
In theory, L.A. should set a new standard surpassing Paris’ Olympic thrift. Yet organizers also claim that 2028 will be “car-free,” a frankly unfathomable assertion for anyone who has experienced the city’s famed traffic jams. With only four years to invest the millions (maybe billions) of dollars needed to transform its public transportation, Los Angeles could quickly find itself facing a skyrocketing tab. While Paris successfully lowered infrastructure-related costs for the Games themselves, it reallocated those tax dollars to expensive projects tangential to the Olympics. Los Angeles’ revamped metro system looks destined for the same, expensive fate as Paris’ Seine clean-up project; perhaps solving one financial burden at the Olympics has only created a new one.
The L.A. Coliseum, which will host the Opening Ceremony and Track and Field at the 2028 Olympics. Photo by Mike Jiroch on Wikimedia Commons
