Cost to Host the Olympics: Every Games Goes Over

Every city that has hosted the Olympics since the 1960s has exceeded its initial budget by a large margin. That is the finding of an Oxford University study, and it has no modern exceptions.

Not most cities. Not the poorly run ones. All of them.

Games	Overrun on initial budget
Rio 2016	~352%
Tokyo 2020	~280%
Barcelona 1992	266%
Paris 2024	~25% (total spending under $10bn)

Paris looks like the outlier, and in one sense it is. In another it is the clearest illustration of the problem.

Paris promised €1bn and spent nearly €6bn

The French government originally promised a €1 billion maximum public contribution to the 2024 Games. The French Court of Auditors subsequently found that organising them cost taxpayers nearly €6 billion.

Total spending across all parties was expected to come in under $10 billion, roughly 25% over the initial budget according to S&P Global Ratings — genuinely disciplined by Olympic standards, and far better than Rio or Tokyo.

Both things are true at once, and the reason is the distinction that runs through this entire subject: the organising committee’s budget and the cost to the public are different numbers. A Games can be well run against its own budget while costing the state six times what was promised, because security, transport and infrastructure sit outside the committee’s books.

LA 2028 has already risen before starting

The LA 2028 organising committee budget stands at $7.145 billion. Its history:

And LA is building no new permanent venues at all — the first Games in 80 years to do so, which makes that increase harder to explain than it looks. See our guide to LA 2028 Olympic venues.

• ~$5.3 billion — 2017 estimate
• $6.88 billion — after the Games were moved to 2028, largely inflation, per an independent budget report to the City Council in 2019
• $7.145 billion — current

That is a rise of roughly 35% before the opening ceremony, driven substantially by the passage of time rather than by any decision.

Two features make LA’s position unusual. It is relying on about $2.5 billion from tickets and hospitality, the mechanism covered in our guide to Olympic tickets. And the city is reported to be near a fiscal emergency, with no margin for a budget miss.

Why LA is building nothing permanent

Los Angeles 1984 is the standard example of an Olympics that turned a profit, and it explains the 2028 strategy directly.

LA28 is building no new permanent structures — the first Summer Games to manage that since London 1948. Athletics returns to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, swimming goes to SoFi Stadium, and softball is staged in Oklahoma City, roughly 1,400 miles away. The venue list looks scattered because the organising principle is use what exists.

That is a direct response to the pattern above. The largest overruns are construction overruns, and a Games that builds nothing permanent removes the single biggest source of them. Whether it works is the question 2028 will answer.

Why the overruns are structural

Four reasons, and none is really about incompetence.

Bids are costed a decade early. Inflation over that horizon cannot be predicted, as LA’s own $5.3 billion to $6.88 billion jump demonstrates.

Cities bid competitively. Competition rewards optimistic numbers, and the optimistic bid wins.

Security escalates. Requirements are set closer to the event, by governments rather than organisers, and are rarely fully costed at bid stage.

The commitment is irreversible. Once a Games is awarded, the host cannot walk away. Cost control loses its strongest lever.

Economists quoted by CNN have gone further, arguing that hosting has become financially untenable — a view supported by the shrinking number of cities willing to bid.

Medal bonuses, by contrast, are a rounding error against these figures — and they come from national committees rather than the IOC, which pays nothing. See our guide to the Olympic medal bonus by country.

The same pattern outside the Olympics

Large sporting construction overruns are not unique to the Games. Barcelona’s Espai Barça rebuild of Camp Nou is financed at around €1.45 billion and reported cost overruns in July 2026, with members asked to approve additional financing — see Camp Nou capacity.

And the scale of individual venue spending now rivals whole Games budgets. SoFi Stadium cost about $5.5 billion, which is close to LA 1984’s entire Olympics in today’s terms and more than most host cities’ original bids, as set out in our ranking of the most expensive stadiums.

How we checked these numbers

The LA 2028 budget of $7.145 billion and its progression from $5.3 billion and $6.88 billion are from Courthouse News and the independent budget report cited to the City Council. LA’s fiscal position and the 1984 profit comparison are from CNBC. The Paris figures — the €1 billion promise, the Court of Auditors’ finding of nearly €6 billion, and total spending under $10 billion at ~25% over budget — are from Insider Sport and NPR. The Oxford study finding on universal overruns, and the Rio, Tokyo and Barcelona percentages, are as reported by CNN and Statista.

Overrun percentages are not measured on a common basis between Games, because what counts as the “initial budget” varies by bid. They indicate scale, not precision. Organising committee budgets and public costs are stated separately throughout, because conflating them is the most common error in this subject.

Review class: event-driven. Recheck on any LA28 budget revision, when Paris’s final audited figures are published, and after the 2028 Games conclude.