III.

Awarding the Games

In order to host the Olympics, a city must submit a proposal to the IOC. After all proposals have been submitted, the IOC votes. If no city is successful in gaining a majority in the first vote, the city with the fewest votes is eliminated, and voting continues in successive rounds until a majority winner is determined. Typically the Games are awarded several years in advance, allowing the winning city time to prepare for the Games.

In selecting the site of the Olympic Games, the IOC considers a number of factors, chief among them which city has (or promises to build) the best facilities and which organizing committee seems most likely to stage the Games successfully. The IOC also considers which parts of the world have not yet hosted the Games. For instance, Tokyo, Japan, the host of the 1964 Summer Games, and Mexico City, Mexico, the host of the 1968 Summer Games, were chosen in part to popularize the Olympic movement in Asia and Latin America.

Once the Games have been awarded, it is the responsibility of the local organizing committee—not the IOC or the NOC of the host city’s country—to finance them. This can be done with a portion of the Olympic television revenues and with corporate sponsorships, ticket sales, and other smaller revenue sources, such as commemorative postage stamps or proceeds from a national lottery. In many cases there is also direct government support.

Although many cities have achieved a financial profit by hosting the Games, the Olympics can be financially risky. Montréal, Québec, Canada, for example, spent a great deal of money preparing for the 1976 Summer Games due to extensive design and construction costs for new facilities. When the proceeds from the Games were less than expected, the city was left with such large deficits that residents were still paying the debt off in the early 2000s. Similar financial problems were encountered by Greece in hosting the 2004 Olympics, especially with the huge expenditures required for security at the Games.