The report from the Court of Auditors on the COJOP can be read as a financial assessment. This would make sense. It’s actually what is expected first from such a document: revenue, expenses, discrepancies, alerts, arbitrations, responsibilities. After Olympic and Paralympic Games as exposed as those of Paris 2024, the temptation is strong to search for the bottom line: how much did it cost, who paid for it, what was achieved, what went wrong.
But for the sports economy, the interest of the Court of Auditors’ report is not just a series of numbers as seen in other places. It explains, often indirectly, how France in a few years built an organization capable of selling, producing, and delivering one of the most complex events in the world. Paris 2024 was not just a party, a showcase, or a political object. It was also a temporary enterprise of a very large size, built to disappear almost immediately after reaching its peak of activity. It’s this paradox that deserves a closer look: the COJOP concentrated rare skills, methodologies, networks of providers, commercial, operational, and marketing know-how. The question now is what will remain of it.
The press has extensively commented on the cost of the Games, their territorial legacy, the ticketing, the security, the ceremonies, the controversies, or the popular success of the summer of 2024. These topics are legitimate. However, they are not enough to measure what Paris 2024 truly leaves to French sport. The most strategic legacy may not be in the facilities, nor even in the images that circulated worldwide. It lies in the ability acquired to organize a global event under budgetary, media, political, environmental, and commercial constraints. A competence as precious as fragile, as it can quickly disperse.
The COJOP functioned like an extraordinary enterprise. It had to recruit quickly, purchase a lot, contract with powerful partners, manage multiple risks, respond to the requirements of the IOC and international federations, coordinate the state, local authorities, providers, broadcasters, sponsors, security forces, competition sites, and territories. All this for an event with non-negotiable dates. In most companies, a delay can be negotiated. In the Games, it doesn’t exist. This constraint changes everything. It requires quick decision-making, arbitration, acceptance of some level of risk, and the creation of processes that can withstand pressure. This type of capital is not visible in ceremony photos. It’s still very valuable.
This is where the Court of Auditors’ report becomes useful beyond its initial purpose. It not only serves to control the management of an organizing committee. It helps understand the mechanics of a modern major sporting event. It no longer relies solely on infrastructure construction and ticket sales. It combines multiple economies: ticketing economy, partnership economy, hospitality economy, image economy, public economy of development, and a harder-to-measure reputation economy. Paris 2024 had to make all these work simultaneously.
The success of the Games partially lies in this ability to combine. The COJOP’s economic model relied heavily on commercial resources: IOC contributions, ticketing, national partnerships, hospitality, licenses. These revenues don’t come automatically. They require a strong brand, a believable narrative, partner trust, and solid execution for the market to follow. In short, Paris 2024 sold a promise before delivering an experience. This is the fundamental principle of contemporary sports business, but rarely on this scale.
This promise had various audiences. Sponsors bought an association with a global event and a certain image of France: heritage, innovation, sustainability, urban celebration. Spectators bought competitions, but also a place in a collective moment. Local authorities hoped for image benefits, attendance, or project acceleration. The state sought a demonstration of capacity. The IOC expected Paris to confirm the possibility of more modest, urban, better-integrated Games in an existing city. Each had their own interpretation of value. The COJOP’s role was to make these interpretations compatible.
One of the important aspects of Paris 2024 is that a major sports event no longer just sells sports. It sells a complete environment. The iconic sites obviously played a major role. Beach volleyball in front of the Eiffel Tower, fencing at the Grand Palais, equestrian events at Versailles, or urban trials in Paris weren’t just decorative choices. They were part of the product. They increased the perceived value of the event, strengthened attractiveness for broadcasters, partners, international audiences, and gave the Games an immediately recognizable identity.
The formula might seem simple: use what exists rather than build. In practice, it’s not that straightforward. Organizing events in heritage or temporary sites reduces some infrastructure costs but shifts the difficulty to operations. It requires securing, adapting, dismantling, protecting, transporting, hosting, connecting, evacuating, broadcasting. A temporary site may be less costly in the long run than a permanent unnecessary facility, but it’s not necessarily easier or cheaper to operate. Concrete sobriety can create considerable logistical complexity.
This is a point future organizers should remember. Paris 2024 didn’t just show that Games could be done with fewer new constructions. It also showed that this choice requires a high level of operational control. The city became the venue, but it wasn’t designed for it. It has its residents, constraints, flows, rules, vulnerabilities. The event temporarily took over with extreme intensity. This approach is appealing, especially to the IOC, which seeks to make Olympic bids more acceptable. Yet, it’s not easily replicable.
Paris had a rare advantage: an established symbolic capital. Few cities can turn their heritage into a global sports platform so convincingly. Therefore, the Parisian strategy consisted of monetizing existing imagery as much as organizing competitions. This is one of the most interesting dimensions of the model. The main asset wasn’t just the stadium, but the context. The location wasn’t only meant to host the event; it contributed to its commercial and media value.
For brands, this aspect matters. A partnership with Paris 2024 didn’t just give access to an abstract sporting event. It allowed alignment with a visually exportable narrative. In a content-saturated market, instant recognition becomes an asset. The Games provided partners with an environment where the brand image could align with globally known symbols. This doesn’t replace good activation, but it provides a very favorable ground.
The same logic applies to ticketing. Prices received criticism, especially when some segments seemed to alienate parts of the general public. But Olympic ticketing doesn’t just measure sports demand. It measures the event’s ability to charge for scarcity without breaking acceptability. It’s a delicate balance. Too low, the price doesn’t maximize revenues and increases reliance on other funding. Too high, it creates the perception of an event reserved for those who can afford it. Paris 2024 had to walk this fine line: embracing an ambitious revenue strategy while maintaining the image of an open celebration.
This dilemma runs through the Olympic model. The Games must remain a symbolically common good, but their financing increasingly relies on market mechanisms. They must be inclusive while heavily valuing rare elements – tickets, hospitality, association rights, visibility, premium experiences. This is perhaps the most accurate definition of contemporary major sporting events: an expensive product that must remain popular in the collective imagination. Paris 2024 successfully achieved this, thanks to a powerful narrative, high-quality execution, and the enthusiasm of the summer events. Yet, this challenge will return for all future major events.
The Court of Auditors’ report also serves as a reminder that this success is not automatic. The massive structure of a COJOP creates risks. The organization grows rapidly, absorbs significant budgets, recruits under constraints, and then dissolves. In a few years, it accumulates considerable experience, but this experience doesn’t always find a lasting receptacle. This is a classic issue with major events. Each edition learns a lot, but part of that learning gets lost. Providers leave, teams disperse, tools are archived, procedures are no longer used.
This is where French sport has a significant strategic issue. What happens to the competencies of Paris 2024? Where do those who learned to manage sites, flows, hospitality, commercial operations, accreditations, purchases, international relations, volunteer schemes, partner activations, cyber risks, security protocols, or broadcasting requirements go? How can this experience benefit federations, leagues, professional clubs, local authorities, agencies, and future bid committees? An unstructured legacy becomes a memory.
France would be wrong to reduce the Olympic legacy to infrastructures or sports practice indicators only. These topics are important, of course. But the economic and managerial legacy is equally crucial. Paris 2024 created a pool of professionals capable of working to the most demanding international standards. This is a potential competitive advantage to attract, design, or produce other events. But organizing it is vital. A French line of global sports events is not dismantled. It is built through method transmission, skill circulation, experience feedback formalization, and the capability to transform a singular success into a sustainable offer.
This point is crucial for Sport Strategies. The post-Games shouldn’t just be about memory or celebration. It should become a market subject. Can France export its event management know-how? Can it capitalize on providers, agencies, security experts, experience producers, hospitality specialists, logistics experts, temporary site architects, commercial teams, and profiles from COJOP? Can it leverage Paris 2024 to gain credibility for future major events? These are very concrete questions for the sports ecosystem.
The risk would be to let the narrative close too quickly. Once the accounts are settled, the reports published, the medals stored, and the last structures dissolved, everyone will return to their priorities. This is understandable. But this is exactly where the value can be lost. The Games brought together an exceptional concentration of skills. If they don’t produce a transferable method, their legacy remains partial. The challenge is not to artificially prolong Paris 2024 but to extract what can be useful elsewhere.
Therefore, the Court of Auditors’ report is less a conclusion than a starting point. It invites us to move beyond the usual question of cost to ask a more useful question: what have we learned, and who will make use of it? For the sports industry, this is likely where the true added value of the Olympic balance lies. Paris 2024 proved that a major event could be spectacular, urban, commercially powerful, and politically acceptable at the same time. The next step is to turn this proof into collective competence.
The Games demonstrated France’s ability to produce a global event under pressure. The subject now isn’t just to be proud of it. It’s to do something with it.
