The 2024 Paris Olympics broke many records and had multiple highlights. It constituted the first Olympics with gender parity among athletes, had a special focus on sustainability, and showed record breaking performances including 32 new world records. The Games attracted more than 1 million spectators in different venues in and around Paris, and billions of spectators on TV across the globe. Without exaggeration, the Paris Games were the largest and most popular sports event of the year, and most likely the decade so far.

Yet the Paris Olympics were not only a sporting event. From its global scale, corporate sponsors and nationalistic symbols, to the controversies some aspects of the Games triggered, they were also an inherently political spectacle. Focusing particularly on the National Olympic Hospitality Houses and the ways in which global crises such as the wars in Gaza and Ukraine complicated the organization of the Games, this volume examines the political nature of the Paris Games from various perspectives. In doing so, it highlights the dualism between sports and politics, transparency and corruption, and peace and conflict.

Daniel Stockemer is Professor of Comparative Politics in the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada.