The Olympic dilemma

The Olympic Games are victims of their own success: They have grown too big! As all six candidates for the presidency of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have recognized in their manifestos, there is a pressing need to control the size and cost of the Games better, while ensuring they remain unique for the athletes, spectators, and television/internet viewers.

The current IOC president, in office for another month, had already highlighted this in his election program twelve years ago. But the facts are stubborn. The recently published definitive figures for London 2012 show that most aspects of the Games have expanded once again (accreditation, transportation, security, sponsors, etc.). Investment costs for London 2012 ran to £8.77 billion (financed by the public sector), while operating costs amounted to £2.41 billion (financed by sponsors, spectators, and television networks), giving a total of more than US$17 billion. Russia’s finance minister has announced that the Sochi Games in 2014 will cost a total of US$50 billion.

This high cost and the enormous complexity of organizing the Olympics have led to a regular decrease in the number of candidate cities and countries (from 11 for 2004 to 5 for 2020). At the same time, more and more sports would like to be included in the Summer Olympic Games program in order to reap the benefits of the Games’ extensive media coverage and receive a share of the broadcasting and commercial revenues distributed by the IOC.

The IOC has preselected seven sports (baseball-softball, sport climbing, karate, roller sports, squash, wakeboard, and wushu) with the idea of including one in the 2020 Games. But a desire to maintain wrestling as part of the Olympic program without exceeding the artificial quota of 28 sports for the Summer Games (set after Sydney 2000) means it is unlikely any of the seven will be chosen. In any case, it is not the addition of one or two more sports that will satisfy the expectations of the numerous disciplines hoping to become part of the Summer Olympics.

Moreover, few sports are eligible for joining the Winter Games because of the Olympic Charter’s stipulation that they be reserved for sports practiced on snow or ice. (Possible candidates sometimes mooted include ice climbing and sled dog racing.) Hence, the expansion of the Winter Games has been mostly due to the addition of numerous skiing and snowboarding events, in all their forms.

The dilemma of the new IOC president

As a result, the next IOC president will be faced with a dilemma: accept more sports, disciplines, and events at the Summer Games, at the risk of making them even more gigantesque, costly, and risky to host, or disappoint most of the sports that would like to become Olympic, at the risk of seeing them create rival competitions and contest the role of leader of world sport which the IOC wishes to play.

This second possibility is no abstract threat, as is shown by the development over the last decade of numerous multi-sport competitions, such as continental and regional games (including a European Games as of 2015), the World Games (involving non-Olympic sports), category-specific games (university, military, school, etc.), themed games (Combat Games, Beach Games, Mind Games, Urban Games, etc.), Disney’s Summer and Winter X-Games (for “extreme sports”), and the proposal from the new president of SportAccord (association including about 90 international sport federations) to create a quadrennial “United World Championships” that will showcase all its members’ disciplines in one (very large) city or country.

Olympic Spring Games as an alternative

The solution to this “Olympic dilemma”, which the next IOC president will have to tackle as soon as he is elected in September, could be to create a new edition of the Games: the Olympic Spring Games. These Games would be held every four years in the uneven-numbered year between the Winter and Summer Games. 

At first, they would include around fifteen of the most universal and popular non-Olympic sports, chosen mostly from the around thirty sports that have long been recognized by the IOC. They would be held in the spring (April-June, or October-December in southern hemisphere countries), thereby making it possible for countries with very hot summers to host them.

Eventually, when the Spring Games are up to speed, it would not be out of the question for certain disciplines currently included in the Summer Olympics, or which would like to join the Summer Olympics, to transfer to the Spring Games and thereby lighten the Summer Games program. Basketball could introduce its 3x3 version and soccer its futsal version; volleyball could keep beach volleyball for summer and classic volleyball for spring, etc.

In the long term, when the number of Olympic-caliber sports justifies it, there could also be a Fall Olympics. In Ancient Greece, the Olympic Games were part of a prestigious four-year circuit that also included the Nemean Games (at Nemea), the Pythian Games (at Delphi), and the Isthmian Games (at Corinth).

A Spring Games would provide another occasion for spreading the Olympic message during an Olympiad (especially in the large majority of countries which do not participate in the Winter Games) and for generating extra revenue for the IOC, the National Olympic Committees, and participating International sport federations. Sponsors would appreciate the effect of an association with the Olympic movement that was more frequent than just once every four years. It would also be easier for smaller cities and countries to host the Spring Games, as long as they avoid the inflation of the Summer Games.

Close partnership between World Games and the IOC

In fact, such Games have existed since 1981, in the form of the World Games, which take place every four years, the year after the Summer Olympics. Their ninth edition, held in July 2013 in Cali (Colombia), brought together 4,500 athletes from 100 countries and involved 201 events in 26 official sports and five demonstration sports.

These Games are not controlled by the IOC but by the less prestigious International World Games Association. They would benefit greatly from a close partnership with the Olympic brand, just as the Paralympic Games have benefited since the 1990s. All that is required is to strengthen the cooperation agreements between the IOC and the World Games that have existed since 2005, and to make the president of the World Games a member of the IOC, as has been done for the president of the International Paralympic Committee.

Creating an Olympic Spring Games may appear utopian and is likely to meet with a certain amount of opposition, but it represents a unique opportunity for the IOC to adopt a strategic position in the face of increasing competition. All the candidates for the IOC presidency would, to varying degrees, like to increase the IOC’s role and importance at the head of world sport. The winning candidate should take inspiration from Coubertin, who, in 1924, created the Winter Games despite opposition from Scandinavian countries, which had their Nordic Games, or from Samaranch, who, in 1994, moved the Winter Games so they were not held the same year as the Summer Games. These two major innovations have uncontestably strengthened the IOC. It is time to emulate them!

This article also appears in French news paper Le Monde. This English version is published on www.playthegame.org with kind permission from the author.