Olympics

What it is

The Olympic Games are the quadrennial international multi-sport competition organized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), a non-governmental body headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. The IOC recognizes 206 National Olympic Committees and oversees two main Games cycles: the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics, each held every four years and staggered two years apart. A Summer Games now typically fields roughly 10,000 to 15,000 athletes across more than 300 events. The IOC earns revenue primarily through broadcasting rights (around 61% of total income) and The Olympic Partner (TOP) Programme, its global corporate sponsorship tier. In the 2021-2024 quadrennium the IOC collected more than US$12 billion, distributing approximately 90% back to organizing committees, National Olympic Committees, International Federations, and athletes, amounting to roughly US$4.2 million per day to the broader movement.

History

Pierre de Coubertin, a French educator, proposed reviving the ancient Greek Games in the late 19th century. The IOC was constituted on 23 June 1894 in Paris, and the first modern Games were held in Athens, Greece, in April 1896, with 14 nations and 241 athletes competing. The Games were suspended in 1940 and 1944 because of World War II. Television rights began transforming IOC finances in the 1960s; the 1984 Los Angeles Games returned a profit under a privately funded model that became a template. The 1992 Barcelona Games marked the formal entry of professional athletes in most sports. Doping scandals at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games and the 1998 Salt Lake City bid corruption case prompted governance reforms. The IOC introduced Olympic Agenda 2020 in 2014 and its extension (Agenda 2020+5) in 2021 to rein in host-city costs, strengthen anti-doping, and broaden youth appeal. The 2024 Paris Summer Games, held July through August 2024, drew an estimated 10,700 athletes from 206 delegations.

Current state

As of mid-2026 the IOC is led by President Kirsty Coventry, elected in 2025 and the first African and first woman to hold the role. In June 2026 the IOC approved amendments to the Olympic Charter strengthening political neutrality and introducing a discipline-by-discipline evaluation framework for sport inclusion in the 2032 Brisbane programme. The TOP Programme reported US$560 million in 2025 revenues, the lowest figure since 2020, after five major sponsors (Toyota, Panasonic, Bridgestone, Intel, and Atos) departed at end-2024, shrinking the programme to 11 partners. The IOC holds US$4.9 billion in reserves and has confirmed US$18.4 billion in revenues for 2025-2036. The next Summer Games are Los Angeles 2028 (LA28), July 14-30, 2028, the third time Los Angeles hosts. Brisbane 2032 follows from July 23 to August 8, 2032.

Relationships

The IOC sits at the centre of a wider mega-event economy in which host nations and cities bid partly on geopolitical grounds, often with governments underwriting cost overruns. The sports finance landscape includes state-backed vehicles such as Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (see Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (sport)) that use elite competitions to project soft power, a dynamic that affects the IOC's decisions on host bids and sponsor relationships. The FIFA World Cup is the Olympics' closest rival by global viewership, though the two calendars do not clash. The IOC's control over athlete eligibility, doping adjudication, and allocation of broadcast revenues gives it structural leverage over every International Federation and National Olympic Committee. The athlete labor rights debate has intensified as IOC revenues grow while individual competitors in many federations remain formally non-professional.

What to watch

Whether the IOC can rebuild the TOP Programme to pre-2025 levels after losing five anchor sponsors, and whether Coventry's leadership shifts revenue distribution further toward athletes. LA28's cost model, built on repurposed existing venues with no Olympic-specific construction, will be tested against the historical pattern of overruns that has deterred cities from bidding. Brisbane 2032's new discipline-by-discipline inclusion process will determine which emerging sports enter the programme, after breakdancing was added for Paris 2024 and then removed. The IOC's handling of geopolitical eligibility questions, particularly the status of Russian and Belarusian athletes since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, will continue to test its claim of political neutrality. Russia's exclusion from team events and the conditions under which individual athletes from those countries compete remain contested heading into LA28.