🏆 With only 3 days left until the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games, it is a perfect time to investigate the landscape of global sports competitions, compare football leagues with other sports events and summarize the main economic KPIs of the Olympics.
💰 The visual showcases the top 16 sports competitions by total revenues, based on data recently published by Sports Value. Looking at the 14 leagues on the list that follow an annual schedule, the combined income of these properties was over $80 billion in 2023, 22% more than four years before. If we also include the revenues of the latest Olympic and the FIFA World Cup cycles, the combined value of the latest edition of these 16 competitions is close to $100 billion.
📊 Focusing on the Olympic Games, the previous, 2017-20 cycle generated around $10.8 billion in total revenues. When comparing the latest edition of sports competitions, this would put the Olympics as the 3rd largest sports competition by revenue, however if we look at annual values after taking into account the 4-year Olympic cycle, the picture is different, with the top 10 places all occupied by major US sports leagues, football competitions, plus Formula 1.
⚽️ The UEFA Champions League and four of the five “Big Five” leagues (Premier League, Bundesliga, LaLiga, Serie A) all boast a higher turnover than the yearly average of the Olympics, with the French Ligue 1 not far off either. This comparison shows the strength and importance of European football in the overall sports ecosystem.
🖥️ Similarly to football, a large portion of Olympic revenues are generated by commercial and broadcasting deals. The previous, four-year Olympic cycle surpassed a total sponsorship income of $6 billion, with the expectations even higher for this year’s event. The IOC will have 16 global sponsors, plus 70 more local partners involved in some capacity. Broadcasting is a similarly crucial revenue source of the event: just in the USA, NBC paid a total of $7.65 billion for the rights of the Games between the period of 2021 and 2032. In total, over 11,000 hours of content will be produced for more than 130 broadcasters worldwide.
⚖️ On the cost side, while only estimations can be made at this stage, the latest forecasts project a total budget of over $9 billion. However, the long-term economic impact of the event can be even higher, with the Games projected to generate around $10-12 billion for the Paris region until 2034.
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