How Paris 2024 is rising to the challenges of our time 

This blog is part of our series on “Leveraging the Olympics and Paralympic Games for Local Development”. By sharing insights, best practices and success stories, this campaign seeks to inspire and guide future host cities and relevant stakeholders in maximising the benefits of such global events.

The Olympic and Paralympic Games have never stood still. Just as the event itself adapted over time, so too must its impact on the host territory – to respond to today’s social and economic challenges.

Just before electing Paris as the host of the 2024 Games, the IOC issued its strategic roadmap Olympic Agenda 2020, with the aim of making the Games more sustainable and more relevant: reducing their footprint and maximising the socio-economic benefits they create for their hosts. These transformations have been enhanced with Olympic Agenda 2020+5, a post-Covid update to the strategic roadmap. 

Adapting to local needs 

In the past, cities were expected to adapt to the needs of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. But with Olympic Agenda 2020, the approach has shifted to make the Games adapt to the hosts’ existing infrastructure and to long-term needs.

The IOC requires organisers to maximise the use of existing and temporary venues and minimise their environmental footprint. From the iconic 80,000 seat Stade de France in Saint Denis – home to athletics, para-athletics and Rugby 7s – to the Saint-Quentin Velodrome which hosts cycling events – 95% of Games venues are facilities that either already existed or that will be temporarily assembled and dismantled for future reuse after the Games. 

As the first Olympic and Paralympic Games fully aligned with Olympic Agenda 2020 (and Olympic Agenda 2020+5), Paris 2024 is giving back to local communities well before the Opening Ceremony. One example of this is how Paris 2024 is promoting social innovation through sport. Thanks to the Games, 4.5 million people are directly benefiting from over 1,000 grass-roots projects in France.   

© IOC

Setting new standards 

Paris 2024 is also setting new standards for more sustainable sporting events. As early as the candidature phase, organisers committed to halving the Games’ carbon emissions compared to previous Games editions, in line with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. To achieve this, a strict carbon budget was set which includes all Games planning and operations – from construction to energy and transport, catering and procurement. Paris 2024 also proactively calculated its “material footprint” – creating a detailed map of required resources to minimise them and control their life cycle before, during and after the Games. 

Making France Move 

The idea that “Sport changes lives” is at the heart of the Paris 2024 vision.  Today, Paris 2024 has successfully advocated and supported the implementation of a daily 30-minute exercise period at French schools. Adopted as a national policy, the initiative is being progressively introduced into all 36,250 primary schools. The positive impact of daily exercise on pupils is already visible, with 94% of teachers reporting an improvement in children’s well-being, attention and concentration. Paris 2024 also created the momentum for the French government to build 5,000 proximity sport courts across the country, ensuring easier access to sports practice for everyone, closer to home.   

Better work 

In line with its “Games wide open” slogan, Paris 2024 is creating economic opportunities open to everyone. The Paris 2024 Social Charter – a first in Olympic history – signed in 2019 by public and private stakeholders, trade unions and employer organisations, established 16 commitments with focus on decent working conditions, social inclusion and ensuring small- and medium-sized enterprises get access to contracts. The results are already visible and measurable. Around 90% of Paris 2024 Games suppliers are French, while 78% of them are small- and medium-sized businesses, with more than 500 local businesses from the social and solidarity economy (ESS). 

All these efforts have been meticulously documented, measured and reported. With the aim to evaluate its impact with rigor and transparency, Paris 2024 is following the OECD’s methodological guidelines on how to measure the impact of major sports events on local development, as well as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards. 

© IOC

Keeping the pace of change 

Although these represent great advancements, the Olympic Games have a duty to remain at the forefront of sustainability by keeping up with the pace of change.  

Los Angeles will host a “radical reuse” Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028, with 100 percent use of existing and temporary venues and plans to return all temporary sites to their natural state. The organising Committee (LA28) and the IOC are investing up to USD 160 million in local youth sports. PlayLA offers affordable and accessible sport to young people of all abilities and has supported more than 500,000 young people to play Olympic and Paralympic sports across Los Angeles since 2018.    

Meanwhile, Brisbane and Queensland state has engaged in a year-long community consultation as the basis to develop a shared 20-year vision for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The organisers are already working with local communities and businesses to prioritise the most important programmes, projects, targets, partnerships, policy levers and funding sources that will be needed to make the legacy goals happen. 

The OECD Programme on global events (cultural, sports and business) helps those involved build a legacy of local development. We work with event hosts from national or local governments, the private sector, and cultural, sports or business associations to reap greater local benefits from such events.