Olympic Risks

The task of governing the Olympic Games and the Olympic movement now takes place in an age in which states and societies are increasingly organized in response to risk. At the heart of the risk management in organising the Olympics is the tension between the inherent riskiness of mega-events, which is attributable to their scale and complexities, combined with immense societal, political and organisational pressures for the management of risk. Over time, too, staging the Olympics has become more complex, and riskier, as a consequence of its growing scale and commercial success. Since the 1980s, a profound transformation has occurred in how the Games are organised and governed, with the increased transfer of risk to the market and the spread of regulation as a mode of governance and the formal practice of risk management across functions ranging from finance to security to critical infrastructures to public health. This book is a unique theoretical and empirical analysis of how the Olympic Games are governed, exploring the challenges and pressures of staging the world's largest event and the recent emergence of the formal practice of risk management as a response of decision-makers to the operational demands and complexities of the Games.