The Olympic Games attract huge interest every four years, and the International Olympic Committee has stated that Paris 2024 is on track to break broadcast and digital records.

Yet despite this interest, the impact of the Games on grassroots participation in sport is not as widely recognised as is often assumed.

Since ancient Greece, the Olympic Games have been considered a major event that attracts the interest of states, famous people and the public. Just like today, the Greek city-states were very proud when their athletes won one of the sporting competitions of the time.

At their peak, the ancient Olympic Games included 16 sports – in Paris 2024 there will be 32 sports with numerous categories and medals to be won in each of them.

The competition for Olympic medals: athletes and governments

Some research suggests that most athletes compete primarily for their own economic gain and fame rather than for their respective country (Papanikos, 2020).

Competition between athletes for medals is not as fierce as that between nations. Not surprisingly, governments around the world use every means available to win medals at the Olympic Games. Many spend significant amounts of scarce resources to prepare their athletes by developing the necessary public infrastructure and funding their training.

Some countries even offer their athletes financial incentives for winning a medal. At the Paris Olympics, for example, Hong Kong offered its gold medalists a payment of US$768,000.

What is this about?

First, it is argued that the Olympics have wider economic, social and political implications. If a country wins a high number of medals relative to its population and income, the government can use this to increase its power. Even political systems are compared in terms of their efficiency and effectiveness based on the number of medals won.

During the Cold War, the Soviet system competed with the Western system. Today, the Chinese system competes with the US government system. Somehow, they appear better when they win medals.

The Olympic Games are also used to promote international diplomatic goals by generating a positive media image for a country. This is especially true when a country hosts a major international competition, such as the recent World Cup in Qatar (Papanikos, 2023). There is also a post-Olympic legacy – most cities (countries) around the world believe that hosting the Games has an overall positive effect (Papanikos, 2022).

Second, governments and other stakeholders claim that the Olympic Games encourage public participation in sport, which is beneficial both for the health of the individual and for the country as a whole.

The benefits of this grassroots participation include improvements in individual well-being and population health, which reduces public and private health expenditure. Participation in sport also increases people’s productivity at work. Looking at the effects of physical activity on health and productivity together, participation in sport can be seen as an investment in human capital.

It is also believed that physical activity not only improves health, as measured by life expectancy, but also the quality of life. Health economists measure this using an index called quality-adjusted life years (QALYs).

Do Olympic medals encourage participation in grassroots sport?

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) believes that winning Olympic medals encourages participation in sport. For this reason, it has a policy called Fit for life to promote so-called smart investments to increase public participation. Unfortunately, no evidence is provided for this claim: it is simply assumed.

A recent study has challenged this widespread belief (Donnelly and Kidd, 2024). Contrary to what many people think, the authors found exactly the opposite effect for Canada. The more medals Canadian athletes won at the Winter and Summer Olympics, the lower the participation rate in sport in Canada. The British House of Commons provides a similar assessment for Great Britain.

Another way to answer this question is to assume that increased participation in sport by the masses increases population health and therefore life expectancy. Of course, life expectancy depends on many other factors, but we can test this hypothesis by looking at two countries that have hosted the Olympic Games.

Greece and Spain

Greece and Spain have many things in common, including their level of economic and social development and their membership in the European Union. They also share a common currency.

It is also safe to assume that Greeks and Spaniards share a common attitude towards sport and that the impact of the Olympic Games on participation in popular sport – if there was any – was probably the same.

Both countries have hosted modern Olympic Games: Spain (Barcelona) in 1992 and Greece (Athens) in 2004. Did the Games have a positive effect on life expectancy?

Figure 1 shows life expectancy in the two countries from 1960 to 2022. This dataset takes into account the impact of Covid-19, which serves as a good natural experiment to test how different events can affect life expectancy.

The first observation is that life expectancy at birth follows a similar time course in Greece and Spain. To put it in statistical jargon, both time series have a unit root, which means that their first difference (changes) is a random course.

The second observation is that the organisation and holding of the Olympic Games does not appear to have had any impact on life expectancy in Spain in 1992 or Greece in 2004. However, this can be tested for a breakpoint using a statistical test (Chow test).

Looking at different years around 1992 for Spain and 2004 for Greece, we see that there is no break in the time series around these years. This evidence does not support the hypothesis of an Olympic effect on life expectancy at birth in either country. This result is consistent with the results of the Canadian study.

Figure 1: Life expectancy at birth, Greece and Spain (1962-2022)

Source: World Bank

If we assume that this health effect is related to grassroots participation, we can conclude that hosting the Olympic Games has no impact on participation.

There are concerns about surveys that measure grassroots participation in sport, while the use of life expectancy data provides a direct test of the basic argument made by governments that grassroots participation improves the health of the wider population. A good indicator of this is life expectancy at birth.

Finally, the impact of Covid-19 has been dramatic. In both countries, life expectancy fell drastically. In Greece, it fell by 0.43% in 2020, while in Spain it fell by 1.79%. These two rates were the highest annual declines in life expectancy since 1960.

Conclusions

In line with many other aspects of the Olympic legacy, hosting the Games does not appear to increase grassroots participation in sport. If we measure this by increases in life expectancy, the sparse evidence from Greece and Spain does not support this hypothesis.

International sports competitions are here to stay because they serve many purposes besides promoting grassroots participation. This requires a different policy approach that systematically links health, productivity and improving human capital for all citizens, especially those facing integration challenges. No matter how many medals a country wins, it is unlikely to achieve the goal of increasing grassroots participation.

Where can I find out more?

Who are the experts on this question?

• Peter Donnelly, University of Toronto
• Bruce Kidd, University of Toronto
• Svein Erik Nordhagen, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Lillehammer, Norway
• Gregory T. Papanikos, Athens Institute

Author: Gregory T. Papanikos

Image: 24K production for iStock