The IOC’s Legacy and the Host’s Legacy Are Not the Same Thing

1.  What the IOC is

The IOC is the owner of the Olympic Games and the leader of the Olympic Movement. Its mission is set by the Olympic Charter, and it is funded mainly by the broadcast and commercial rights to the Games. Those revenues go back into the Movement through the International Federations, the National Olympic Committees, athletes and the organising committees.

2.  The IOC’s institutional legacy

That reinvestment is a central part of the IOC’s institutional legacy. Olympic Solidarity’s US$650 million budget for 2025–2028 funds athletes, coaches, sport administration and community programmes through NOCs. The IOC sets these objectives, funds them, delivers them through its own structures and can be held to account for them.

The restructuring protects this. The bodies that remain include:

• Olympic Solidarity
• the Athletes’ Commission
• the Finance, Ethics and Legal Affairs commissions, and the Audit Committee
• the boards of IOC Television and Marketing Services, Olympic Broadcasting Services and Olympic Channel Services
• the Olympic Refuge Foundation
• the Future Host and Coordination Commissions

The retained bodies preserve the machinery for funding sport, governing the institution and selecting and overseeing Olympic hosts.

3.  Event legacy belongs to the host

Event legacy is different. It is what a country or city says hosting will achieve, such as transport, regeneration, skills, participation or environmental improvement. It is the case made for spending public money. It is funded by host governments and cities, and delivered by institutions that will remain after the event: ministries, city authorities, transport operators, schools and facility owners.

The Charter reflects this. It commits the IOC “to promote a positive legacy from the Olympic Games to the host cities, regions and countries”. The IOC is committed to promote legacy, not deliver it. It cannot direct a country’s transport priorities or sustain its community facilities, and it should not claim to.

The Sustainability and Legacy Commission advised the IOC across these responsibilities, including the legacy of the Games. Its closure changes the advisory structure; it does not remove the IOC’s obligations. The departments and budgets that carry out this work reportedly remain, at least for now. The IOC has not abandoned the subject. What has changed is the standing structure through which it is advised and held to account.

4.  Why the distinction matters

When the two legacies are blurred, nobody fully owns event legacy. The organising committee is temporary and exists to deliver the event. The departments responsible for each promised benefit have their own budgets and priorities.

In my experience, when costs rise or preparations fall behind, event legacy is among the first things reduced. Compulsory event requirements stay. The benefits used to justify the public spending become negotiable, but the spending itself remains.

Event owners add to this pressure. Competition formats, service levels and venue requirements set the cost of hosting. Each added requirement can absorb money the host meant for wider benefits.

5.  What event legacy needs

If event legacy is the host’s commitment, it has to be governed as one. Every promised benefit needs:

• An accountable owner. It should be a permanent institution with authority to deliver, and not the organising committee.
• Ring-fenced funding. It should be separate from the cost of meeting event obligations, secured through transition and protected throughout delivery.
• An explicit decision to change it. Any reduction should be recorded, open to public scrutiny and clear about what will no longer be delivered.

6.  Where the IOC’s lever sits

The IOC’s strongest lever remains the award of the Games, through host evaluation, guarantees and the commitments secured before election. Those three conditions should be built into that process, not left as aspirations in a bid book. Award conditions alone cannot prevent later erosion, which is why ownership and funding have to carry through into delivery. The IOC should also explain how it will meet its Charter responsibilities for sustainability and legacy now the commission has gone.

7.  A discipline for other sporting institutions

Whatever the motive, the effect is prudent. The IOC is concentrating its standing structures on what it funds, governs and can influence. Other sporting institutions should apply the same discipline. Sport increasingly presents itself as an agent of outcomes far beyond sport, but too often the credit is claimed through the event while the cost is carried by the host. A sporting institution can legitimately claim influence through its own institutional programmes, the ones it funds, delivers and answers for. It cannot claim it through an event whose wider outcomes depend on others.

The IOC should be judged on the legacy it funds and the consequences of the requirements it sets. Hosts should be judged on the legacy they promise. The test for both is the same: when delivery comes under pressure, does the commitment still govern the decisions being made?

Sources:

• IOC replaces commissions with working groups under Fit for the Future (ANI via NewKerala)IOC evolves stakeholder engagement model through dedicated working groups (IOC, 16 October 2026)
• IOC shuts down 12 Olympic committees (AP via CP24)IOC Commissions (IOC)
• IOC evolves stakeholder engagement model through dedicated working groups
• IOC Mission (Olympic Charter Rule 2)
• IOC sets out next steps for selecting the 2036 Olympic Games host
• IOC Sustainability Report (Sustainability and Legacy Commission remit)Olympic Solidarity 2025–2028 Plan (IOC)
• Fit for the Future as seen from the grassroots (sportanddev, 20 October 2026)