The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics kick off on July 26, with elite athletes around the globe descending on the French capital for more than two weeks of sports competitions. Previous Olympics have drawn negative headlines for exorbitant costs, corruption, and questionable economic benefits, but Paris is looking to change the narrative.
A new report from WalletHub digs into some of the costs behind the games, including an estimated $8.2 billion overall price tag. There's also about $3.2 billion in infrastructure investments made in the Paris area in the years ahead of the games, although those will last far longer than the next few weeks. Overall, about 95% of the infrastructure used to host the games is either existing or temporary.
According to WalletHub, long-time Olympics broadcaster NBC has already sold over $1.2 billion of ads against its domestic Olympics coverage. The network will air an estimated 9 hours of daytime coverage in addition to primetime. Globally, over 4 billion people are expected to tune in to some form of the coverage.
In terms of attendance, an estimated 10 million tickets will be sold to the various events. The total includes 4.3 million to residents of France and 2.5 million to overseas travelers, with the balance going to people from other European countries. Opening ceremony tickets run $90–2,700, while sporting event tickets go from $24–980.
The French government is shelling out about $348 million in security costs to keep attendees safe.
Tune in July 26 to catch all the action, including the newest Olympic sport making its debut in the 2024 games: breakdancing.
