There was a time when cities around the world would line up to host the Olympic Games. Times have changed; the 2024 Summer Games were awarded to Paris almost by default, as were the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Unless you already have most of the infrastructure in place, which these cities do, it seems the costs of hosting this massive spectacle no longer outweigh the benefits.
We’re all more aware of those costs than ever before. And on the surface, the benefits might not appear as plentiful as the International Olympic Committee would have you believe. But there are indeed several important benefits that come from hosting the Olympics. Let’s take a moment to appreciate them.
1 Public Health
Large-scale sporting events like the Olympics have been used for thousands of years to promote health and well-being through physical activity. If you’re an aspiring Olympic athlete, the Games give you a holy grail to chase: the most prestigious gold medals in all of sports. If you’re watching in person or at home, you’re more likely to get off your butt and engage in some healthy activity yourself.
There are specific social programs on the ground in Paris that are taking advantage of the Summer Games, like the Bouger Plus (“Move More”) program, which includes 30-minute daily activity sessions in primary schools across France. But even without these IOC-sponsored programs, the Games themselves get people up and moving around, like nature intended. It’s impossible to put a price tag on how important this is.
2 Culture and Diversity
Baron Pierre de Coubertin spearheaded the founding of the Modern Olympics in 1894 (the first Olympiad was held two years later in Athens) as a vehicle for promoting peace and international understanding through amateur competition. The IOC may have deleted the “amateur” part in recent decades, but the vehicle still drives.
Getting people from different cultures together to compete in sports is good for the soul. It proves that we can all get along if we’re on the same page, and that in the end, there isn’t really that much difference between us.
We’re not on the same page these days. But the Olympics always seem to give us their best when we need them the most, like Jesse Owens in 1936, and Tommie Smith and John Carlos in 1968. Paris is one of the most diverse cities in the world; France as a whole is struggling to follow, but for the next three weeks at least, they’ll be tuning in en masse.
3 Human Rights
While we’re busy fighting the culture wars that have divided our house, basic human rights that apply to all of us are getting rolled back. Those rights weren’t handed down to us from above; we fought against tyrants for them, and we won.
It’s a constant fight. When de Coubertin launched the Modern Olympics, France was still in the early years of the Third Republic, founded in 1870 as Napoleon III’s empire was crumbling. Support for a return to absolute monarchy persisted into the 1880s; de Coubertin grew up in this world, and saw ancient Greece as a romantic ideal of what both democracy and sport could achieve.
France has been governed by the Fifth Republic since 1958, and during this relatively peaceful time, they’ve become one of the most powerful countries in the world – while also integrating with the European Union. The 2024 Paris Games gives France the opportunity to champion democracy and human rights as they try to heal the wounds opened up by their most recent elections.
Again, this is something the powers that be will mess up to some extent. Human Rights Watch, for example, has noted the use of AI-driven surveillance technology at these Games – not unlike what the Chinese government uses to track their people. This new technology is supposed to be just for the Olympics, but we’ll see about that.
In the meantime, we’ve got what promises to be one of the most interesting Olympics in recent memory on our doorstep, at just the right point in human history. Bet accordingly while you’re browsing the online sportsbooks, and enjoy the Games.
