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The Olympics and Money: The Giant Business Behind the Games

For more than a thousand years after the first Games, traditionally dated to 776 BC, a festival of contests dedicated to the gods endured at Olympia in Greece. The prize was honor — yet beneath it stirred the prestige of cities and the murmur of wagers. Episode 1 traces the starting point of the long story of money and the Games back to that ancient festival.

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  1. 01 An Offering to the Gods — The Festival of Ancient Olympia For more than a thousand years after the first Games, traditionally dated to 776 BC, a festival of contests dedicated to the gods endured at Olympia in Greece. The prize was honor — yet beneath it stirred the prestige of cities and the murmur of wagers. Episode 1 traces the starting point of the long story of money and the Games back to that ancient festival.
  2. 02 Coubertin's Ideal — The Birth of the Modern Games In 1894, at the urging of the French aristocrat Coubertin, the modern Olympics was conceived, and in 1896 the first Games opened in Athens. Yet the handmade festival that raised the banner of amateurism stood, from the very start, alongside a severe shortage of funds. Episode 2 portrays the struggle between ideal and money.
  3. 03 A Festival of Nations — Politics and Propaganda Berlin 1936 is remembered as a stage for Nazi Germany's propaganda. During the Cold War, East and West competed for medals and traded boycott for boycott. How did a festival revived as an ideal become a tool of the state? A neutral look at its light and shadow.
  4. 04 The Burden of Deficit — The Lesson of Montreal 1976 The 1976 Montreal Olympics left a massive deficit, said to have taken about thirty years to repay. Swelling hosting costs, a bid field shrunk to nearly a single city. A neutral, fact-based look at the era when the Games stood on the brink of survival.
  5. 05 The Los Angeles Revolution — 1984, the Day the Olympics Turned a Profit After Montreal's enormous deficit in 1976, the Olympics had become a burden nobody wanted to host. At the 1984 Los Angeles Games, Peter Ueberroth, a manager who came from the travel industry, ran the event with private money rather than taxes and turned it into a profit. A fact-based portrait of the light and shadow of the commercial Olympic model that took hold here.
  6. 06 Broadcast Rights, a Vein of Gold — How Television Changed the Olympics From a few million dollars to billions. The broadcast rights fees paid by American networks ballooned explosively over half a century, becoming the single largest pillar of the IOC's income. Their scale grew so vast it could decide even the start times of events according to viewers, not athletes. A fact-based reading of how broadcasting came to dominate the Olympics.
  7. 07 The TOP Programme — The Olympics of Global Corporations In 1985, the IOC launched TOP, a sponsorship scheme that gathered only the world's leading companies. The five rings became one of the most recognized marks on Earth, and giants like Coca-Cola competed for the exclusive right to use it. At the same time, a battle began against 'ambush' marketers who rode on the festival's fame without paying for an official sponsor's seat.
  8. 08 The Shadow of the Bid — The Salt Lake City Affair At the end of 1998, allegations of cash and gifts given to IOC members emerged over Salt Lake City's bid, which had won the 2002 Winter Olympics. It escalated into the unprecedented expulsion of members, forcing the IOC into sweeping reform. Why have the money and hospitality around bidding been repeated again and again? We look at it within the bounds of what has been publicly established and reported.
  9. 09 The Shadow of Doping — The Fight for a Clean Olympics A medal carries not only honor but also enormous money and a future. That is why the temptation of drugs never fully disappears. East Germany's state-run doping, the shock of Ben Johnson, the suspicions surrounding Russia, and the birth of WADA. This is a neutral account of the cat-and-mouse history of testing and cheating, within what has been confirmed and reported.
  10. 10 Toward a Sustainable Olympics — Beyond the Swelling Bidding cities vanish one after another, and referendums choose to withdraw. Faced with ballooning hosting costs, the world has stopped to begin asking. The pandemic-era Tokyo 2020, simplification and the use of existing facilities, the search for reform. What, and for whom, do the Olympics exist? The final episode closes without rushing to an answer.