Paul George introduces the panel on the development and business of the Olympic games. If the athletes are the 'sweats', the business managers of the Olympics are the 'suits'. In today's world, where the Olympics appear as often on the business pages as on the sports pages, the 'suits' have quite a lot of work cut out for them.
The modern Olympics began in the late 1800's. The International Olympic Committee was formed in 1894 and the first modern games took place in Athens in 1896. The first gold medal of the games was awarded to a Harvard track and field runner. The first winter games took place in France in 1924, with the requirement that all sports had to be on either ice or snow. After the financial debacle of the 1976 games, no city wanted to bid to host the 1984 games. Finally, Los Angeles stepped up and with an army of volunteers came out with a surplus of over $250 million dollars, which was split between the US-IOC and local amateur sports federations. The business model of the LA games served as the beginning of the Olympics as we known them now.
The Olympics games are incredibly complex on the business and money side of the affair. The process of bidding for the games alone takes almost twelve years. The summer games, which is limited at 10,500 athletes competing at over 300 events in 28 sports carries an operating budget of $3 billion dollars. That doesn't include any of the infrastructure costs, for example the construction of new stadiums undertaken in Athens before the games. The winter games, being much smaller, cost about half of that to run.
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