Managing the Games: Prospects for the Future

Abstract

This volume had a defined goal: to critically examine the planning, management and delivery of the Olympics as a mega-event. It evaluated how organizers produce the Games, taking into account knowledge from previous Olympics, as well as the emergence of models of best practice. This operational focus is an underexplored aspect of the Games, and so the book is merely a step towards gaining a more sophisticated understanding of what is required to run an Olympic mega-event. A single volume cannot do justice to the vast operational repertoire required of Olympic Games organizers, so the book focused on a selection of key aspects of Olympic programme delivery. There are, of course, further areas to be researched; what follows is a sketch for additional scholarly inquiry.

Holding an Olympic Games means evoking history.

– Pierre de Coubertin