Monday, October 9, 2023 IOC releases Olympic Agenda 2020+5 Midway Report Highlights
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has today released the Olympic Agenda 2020+5 Midway Report Highlights ahead of the upcoming 141st IOC Session in Mumbai, India. This document, published as Olympic Agenda 2020+5 reaches its halfway mark, outlines the key progress to date. It will be discussed by the Session.
Adopted in March 2021 as the strategic roadmap of the IOC and the wider Olympic Movement to guide our work through to 2025, Olympic Agenda 2020+5 builds on the achievements of Olympic Agenda 2020 that was adopted in December 2014 and contributed to shaping the Olympic Movement up to 2020.
Olympic Agenda 2020+5 is a set of 15 recommendations that were inspired by five influential contemporary trends, all of which have been identified as areas where sport and the values of Olympism can play a key role. These trends are:
Solidarity Digitalisation Sustainable development Credibility Economic and financial resilience
Olympic Agenda 2020+5 is being delivered with the engagement and active participation of all constituents, stakeholders and partners of the Olympic Movement, including the United Nations (UN) and NGOs that support the mission and values of the Movement. Since its adoption, Olympic Agenda 2020+5 has already made a significant impact on the work of the IOC and the wider Olympic Movement.
Reflecting on the progress to date of Olympic Agenda 2020+5, IOC President Thomas Bach said, “Our world has changed in fundamental ways in recent years. As we anticipated at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, we are now facing its far-reaching social, financial, economic and political consequences, which are exacerbated by the ongoing conflicts, wars and natural catastrophes that we must address. Olympic Agenda 2020+5 is our roadmap to prepare ourselves for this new world, and we can be proud of the progress that has been made across all 15 recommendations since it was adopted in March 2021. The accomplishments described in this Report are great examples of what we can achieve together, and are testament to the tremendous amount of work that has been carried out in partnership with our stakeholders. There is still more to be done, but we can already look forward to the Olympic Games Paris 2024 as the Games of a New Era, inspired by Olympic Agenda 2020 and Olympic Agenda 2020+5 from start to finish.”
Among the achievements to date:
A new model for the Olympic Games – Paris 2024
The Olympic Games have benefitted significantly from Olympic Agenda 2020+5 and Olympic Agenda 2020. This was already evident at Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 and is now on full display in the preparations for the Olympic Games Paris 2024.
The Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024 are the first to be planned and delivered fully in line with the reforms of Olympic Agenda 2020 and Olympic Agenda 2020+5 from start to finish. Paris 2024 will be the “Games of a New Era”, and will serve as blueprint for future editions of the Olympic Games and inspire other major events.
Notable highlights include:
Gender equality on the field of play: for the first time, the IOC has allocated quota places equally – 50 per cent female and 50 per cent male. Sustainable Games: Paris 2024 will be the first Games aligned with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Paris 2024 plans to set new sustainability standards for major sporting events, cutting the Games’ carbon footprint by half compared to the average of London 2012 and Rio 2016. Ninety-five per cent of the infrastructure is either already existing or temporary. One hundred per cent of the energy used for the Games is planned from renewable energy sources. More urban Games: Competitions will take place at iconic landmarks including the Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde and Pont Alexandre III. The Opening Ceremony will be held in the heart of the city with the River Seine as the stage to welcome the best athletes of the world, while hundreds of thousands of people will watch from the riverbank. Paris 2024 will be more inclusive: Spectators will also get the opportunity to be participants. The “Marathon Pour Tous” will afford 40,000 runners the unique experience of running the same marathon on the same day and on the same course as the Olympic marathon runners. The Champions Park will see Olympians and fans celebrate the Olympic spirit together. Paris 2024 is already inspiring the population to get active. The “Terre de Jeux 2024” label has been awarded to 4,000 cities and regions across France, inspiring millions of people to play sport. Paris 2024 has succeeded in introducing a daily 30-minute exercise period in the curriculum of French primary schools, and aims to reach 4.2 million pupils nationwide. The IOC is promoting these Games as the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024, demonstrating true inclusivity. Paris 2024 will be youthful Olympic and Paralympic Games and include sports with youth appeal. Breaking has been added to the programme, while sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding are also on the programme after their success at Tokyo 2020.
Solidarity
The principle of solidarity is the very essence of the Olympic Movement, a light to guide our way towards building a better world through sport.
The Olympic Solidarity plan for 2021-2024 saw a budget increase of 16 per cent, bringing its budget for assistance and development to USD 590 million, including a 25 per cent increase in athlete support programmes such as athlete scholarships, training and education. The IOC has established a Mental Health Action Plan for the benefit of athletes, coaches and support staff. The IOC, in collaboration with several IFs, has launched the Women in Sport High Performance Pathway (WISH) programme, a new mentorship and training programme to help female coaches progress into high-performance coaching roles at national, continental and international competitions, and backed by USD one million in Olympic Solidarity funding. As of May 2023, there were almost 100 coaches in the programme from 17 sports and 53 countries. The Olympic Refuge Foundation (ORF) has launched new programmes in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Colombia, France, Jordan and Türkiye. These activities have directly engaged more than 99,000 displaced young people and their host communities in sport for protection, with 15 programmes being delivered in 11 countries. At the time of writing, there are 63 Refugee Athlete Scholarship-holders from 12 countries, living in 23 host countries, and representing 13 sports, training in the hope of being selected to compete at Paris 2024. The Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage (OFCH) has rolled out the Olympic Values Education Programme (OVEP) in India and Senegal. In India, the programme has so far reached more than 150,000 children in 90 schools. Early results indicate that the programme has heightened school attendance rates, increased girls’ participation in sport and transformed gender dynamics.
Digitalisation
The digital realm offers a host of new opportunities to reach, engage and inspire people all over the planet – and the IOC continues to pioneer new ways to share the Olympic values with fans worldwide.
The IOC has consolidated its digital properties into Olympics.com, and its social media channels into @olympics accounts across 12 platforms. The result has been huge increases in engagement, with an average of eight million monthly unique users on Olympics.com, 110 million followers across social media and 500 million social media engagements per month. The IOC now has 10 million subscribers on YouTube. The IOC has launched the Olympic Qualifiers season, a series of more than 3,000 competitions offering more than 180,000 athletes the opportunity to earn their spot at the Olympic Games. Many of these events are identifiable by the Paris 2024 Qualifier label. In 2022 alone, Olympics.com livestreamed all 31 events, generating more than one million unique users and 100 million athlete-centric social media engagements. In 2021, the IOC piloted the first ever Olympic Virtual Series, with more than 240,000 unique participants from more than 100 countries competing in 5 esports disciplines. The success of this event resulted in the Olympic Esports Series, in which 500,000 unique participants competed in 10 esports disciplines. The series finals took place during the Olympic Esports Week in Singapore in June 2023, for which 20,000 tickets were issued. This year, the IOC partnered with the World Health Organization (WHO) on Olympic Day in the #LetsMove initiative, a campaign to promote healthy lifestyles and encourage people to participate in sport. This led to 115.5 million engagements on Olympic social handles, 15 times more than the previous year. In addition, 15 million people reported getting active through the IOC network (NOCs, IFs, TOPs and OCOGs); 1,000 athletes also participated.
Sustainable Development
Sport has been widely recognised as an important enabler of sustainable development – not least by the United Nations (UN), which has acknowledged the role that sport and the Olympic Movement have to play in contributing to realising the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In line with the Paris Agreement, the IOC has set itself a carbon emission reduction goal of 30 per cent by 2024 and 50 per cent by 2030. As of 2023, 266 global sports organisations have endorsed the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, launched by the UN in collaboration with the IOC. The IOC is a founding partner, co-developer and initiator of the first ever Sports for Nature Framework, and was among the 23 organisations to sign this pioneering framework in December 2022 at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15). In addition to reducing emissions, the IOC is creating the Olympic Forest, part of the Great Green Wall initiative, which restores degraded landscapes across Africa’s Sahel region. In 2022, with the Olympic Movement increasing its commitment to fight climate change and preserve the natural environment, the IOC launched the Olympic Forest Network. The IOC and its stakeholders have long sought to contribute to building a more peaceful and better world through sport by supporting grassroots projects around the world. These and other projects are now being brought into one aligned and focused strategy – Olympism365, the goal of which is to strengthen the role of sport as an important enabler of the SDGs.
Credibility
Credibility on and off the field of play is crucial to the Olympic Movement. The IOC is continuing to prioritise embedding credibility across every aspect of the organisation’s work.
In 2022, the IOC updated the Basic Universal Principles of Good Governance Within the Olympic Movement (BUPGG) to include clarification of the principle of accountability beyond the financial aspect, voting and elections processes, and transparency. The sections on anti-doping, competition manipulation, safeguarding, reporting mechanisms and education have also been further developed. A fund of USD 10 million was created to strengthen safe sport at the local level; and a Working Group is actively considering structures and systems dedicated to safe sport. The IOC has launched the IOC Safeguarding Officer in Sport Certificate and encourages all IFs and NOCs to establish a safeguarding officer position; 100 per cent of IFs have now appointed a safeguarding officer. The first cohort of 69 students from 38 countries across all five continents have finished the course. Striving for gender balance, the IOC has achieved significant female representation in governance, i.e., as of February 2023, 40 per cent of IOC Members are women and – for the first time in history – 50 per cent of IOC commission positions are occupied by women. The IOC has developed and is rolling out a Strategic Framework on Human Rights and has set up an Advisory Committee on Human Rights. This includes obligations on hosts for the Olympic Games to comply with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The IOC continues to ensure the Olympic Movement’s involvement in the International Partnership against Corruption in Sport (IPACS), a multistakeholder platform intended to bring together international sports organisations, governments, inter-governmental organisations and other relevant stakeholders to strengthen and support efforts to eliminate corruption and promote a culture of good governance in and around sport. In 2022, the IOC was designated by IPACS to chair its activities in 2023 and 2024 on behalf of the sports movement. After supporting the establishment of the International Testing Agency (ITA) with a USD 30 million investment, the IOC continues to encourage IFs and major event organisers to delegate their anti-doping programmes to the ITA. The ITA led the independent anti-doping programmes at Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 on the IOC’s behalf. The IOC contributes 50 per cent WADA’s funding, which equated to around USD 22 million in 2022. This is the same amount as all the governments of the world together, which contribute the other 50 per cent of WADA funding. The IOC has allocated a fund of USD 10 million per Olympiad to continue to support work on preventing competition manipulation. It also continues its collaboration with INTERPOL, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Council of Europe in this area.
Economic and Financial Resilience
The IOC is a non-governmental, not-for-profit association. Entirely privately funded, it receives no money from governments. It is committed to leading the Olympic Movement and building a better world through sport. It relies on revenues generated through commercial programmes, which ensure the long-term resilience, stability and success of the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games.
Thanks to our robust systems and management, built up over many years, the IOC's finances have proved to be resilient despite the global COVID-19 pandemic.
During these challenging times, we have not lost partners. On the contrary, the IOC has extended its contracts with TOP Partners Atos and P&G. It also welcomed Deloitte to the Olympic Partner Programme (TOP) in 2022, with an agreement lasting until 2032.
In addition, new agreements have been signed with Media Rights-Holders (MRHs). The Olympic Games 2032 have been awarded to Brisbane.
The IOC successfully delivered Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 against a backdrop of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Future Olympic Games Hosts have been secured until 2032: Paris 2024, Milano Cortina 2026, LA28, Brisbane 2032, as well as Gangwon 2024 and Dakar 2026 for the Youth Olympic Games. Meanwhile, the number of potential hosts interested in organising the Olympic Games 2036 runs to double digits. Long-term contracts have been signed for the broadcast of several editions of the Olympic Games with various MRHs around the globe, including the European Broadcasting Union and Warner Bros Discovery, Australia’s Nine Network, Infront Sports & Media, and CBC Radio Canada. The IOC launched its new hospitality and ticketing model in June 2021. At the same time, it appointed On Location, a leader in the experiential hospitality business, as the exclusive service provider for the Paris 2024, Milano Cortina 2026 and LA28 hospitality programmes following a multi-stage selection process. The IOC’s decision was made in consensus with all the OCOGs, which have fully engaged and integrated the strategy, the selection process and due diligence.
Despite the worldwide economic crisis, the IOC's finances continue to be stable, contrary to many other international organisations. From the discussions with other potentially interested commercial partners and Olympic Games hosts, we can conclude that the economic outlook for the IOC and the Olympic Movement can be considered at least as stable.
A major focus at the 141st IOC Session in Mumbai will be on the achievements of Olympic Agenda 2020+5 and a look ahead to what still remains to be done.
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