About 10,000 athletes, a record 8.6 million tickets sold and billions of television viewers worldwide: That’s the Olympics, and they are set to start on Friday in Paris.
The summer event, which draws massive crowds and the best athletes in the world only once every four years, is an extremely costly undertaking for the host city. Since the 1960s, every city hosting the Olympics exceeded its initial budget by a large margin, according to an Oxford University study.
But this time, a different story is taking shape. Spending at the 2024 Paris Olympics is expected to come in at under $10 billion — only about 25% over the initial budget, according to an S&P Global Ratings report. In sharp contrast, the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro and 2020 Games in Tokyo deviated from their original budgets by more than 350% and 280%, respectively, the report said.
The chief advantage this time can be summed up in two words: existing infrastructure.
About 95% of the venues slated for use during the Paris Olympics existed prior to the city’s winning bid to host the Games, according to the S&P Global Ratings report. Only three were built afterward: the $1.6 billion Olympic Village, the $190 million Aquatics Centre and a $150 million gymnastics and badminton venue.
Watch the video to learn more about how Paris is poised to pull off one of the cheapest Olympics in modern history.
Disclosure: CNBC parent NBCUniversal owns NBC Sports and NBC Olympics. NBC Olympics is the U.S. broadcast rights holder to all Summer and Winter Games through 2032.