The 2024 Olympics: will home advantage boost France’s medal count?

The 2024 Olympics begins soon in Paris, the third time that the summer event has taken place in the French capital. The last time the city hosted was in 1924, when France finished third in the medal table. Home advantage won’t guarantee success this time around – but history is on their side.

The 2024 Summer Olympic Games will get underway on Friday 26 July, with the opening ceremony in Paris. This marks the third time that France have hosted the modern games – the last time being a century ago. Here we look at whether home advantage might help to propel France’s chances in the medal table this time around.

Does hosting affect performance at the Olympics?

When a country hosts a Summer Olympiad, history shows that they tend to perform better than when the games take place elsewhere. The past three hosts – Japan, Brazil and the UK – all finished higher in the medal table compared with the previous three Olympics that they attended prior to hosting.

While it is too soon to know if France will continue this trend in 2024, history is certainly on their side. As a result, we can expect them to place higher than their eighth-place finish in Tokyo.

Why host the Summer Olympics?

Economists claim that the monetary benefits of hosting a sporting mega-event like the Summer Olympic Games are minimal at best, contrary to many media and official reports (Baade and Matheson, 2016; Olympics, 2024a).

Given the increasing costs in real terms of hosting the games and the questionable returns, the number of cities bidding to host has fallen (Matheson, 2018). The 2024 Summer Olympics only had two viable bids – one from Paris, the other from Los Angeles – as Boston, Budapest, Hamburg and Rome all withdrew prior to the 2017 deadline.

Out of fear of not having subsequent bids for the 2028 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee made the unprecedented decision to award the 2028 games to Los Angeles when announcing Paris as 2024 hosts.

So, is hosting the Olympics just a way to buy success? Although history suggests that host nations do improve on their previous performances, it is still a risky strategy since home advantage seems to be reducing over time (Singleton et al, 2021).

What determines Olympic success?

Research indicates that the typical determinants of Olympic success are population size, income, political ideology and hosting the games (Bernard and Busse, 2004).

With a larger share of the world’s population – and given a random distribution of elite athletes located across the globe – larger countries will contain a greater share of these athletes and therefore, be more successful. Similarly, richer countries have abundant resources to train their athletes and participate in niche sports such as sailing and equestrianism that may price out poorer counterparts.

Politics also plays a role in Olympic success. For example, the Soviet Union and its former client nations have typically performed well at the games. It has been said that they engineered medals by investing intensively in sport to showcase the dominance of their political system (Coates, 2017). Nevertheless, the effect of communism on Olympic performance has waned over time, suggesting that it is less important now than it was in the past (Noland and Stahler, 2017).

Finally, as mentioned above, the host effect influences Olympic success and is one of the most robust determinants (Rewilak, 2021).

How does home advantage help and what are its limitations?

There are several theories of how home advantage may contribute to success at the Olympics (Balmer and Williams, 2003). Familiarity with race routes, pitches and the climate are one factor that may provide home athletes with an advantage.

In France, this may apply more to certain sports than others. For example, one of the most anticipated events is the open water swimming in the Seine (Forbes, 2024). But given the levels of bacteria currently in the river, French athletes have been advised against practising there. This is despite Paris officials claiming that the water will be safe enough to host the event during the games.

Home advantage is also said to benefit domestic athletes because they do not need to travel to attend the games. Therefore, French athletes should be more rested than their counterparts and immune from additional factors such as jet lag, which have an impact on performance (Gilbert et al, 2020).

Yet, the significance of these factors is expected to be minimal given recent improvements in sports medicine and travel infrastructure. By comparison, to attend the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, the travel time exceeded 30 hours from Europe, approximately double the time it takes today (Independent, 2018).

Similarly, athletes are now more geographically mobile with competitions held all over the world. For example, track and field athletes will already be in continental Europe in the build-up to the Olympics, with diamond league events scheduled in Monaco and London just prior to the games (Diamond League, 2024).

It is often claimed that participating in front of a home crowd may stimulate athletic performance. What’s more, in subjectively judged events such as boxing or soccer, the crowd may influence an official’s decision in favour of a home athlete. This is a further way in which home advantage may translate into Olympic success.

But recent research places doubt on this hypothesis (Bryson et al, 2021). During the Covid-19 pandemic – when professional soccer games were played without supporters – while referees did hand out more (fewer) yellow cards to home (visiting) teams, there was no impact on home win share or goal difference. This suggests that crowd effects did not influence the overall outcome.

Further anecdotal evidence supports this claim. During the Tokyo Olympics, which were held without spectators because of the pandemic, Japan still improved their performance and finished third in the medal table. This was a significant improvement on the previous three Olympiads as Table 1 shows (Olympics, 2024b). This places further doubt on whether France will benefit from home advantage by participating in front of a home crowd.

Table 1: Japan's position in the medal table in the Summer Olympic Games

Olympiad	Position
Beijing 2008	6^th
London 2012	11^th
Rio de Janeiro 2016	8^th
Tokyo 2020	3^rd

Source: Author’s calculations

What is potentially driving the relationship between hosting and Olympic success?

The factor that could be the key explanation of why host nations perform better at the Olympics may be resources. In order to prepare to host the Summer Olympics, capital is mobilised towards sport and it is such spending that matters.

This may also explain why performance sometimes improves in the games prior to the one that a country hosts – a phenomenon known as the ex-ante effect (Forrest et al, 2010).

This can occur because host nations are usually confirmed seven years before the Olympics to give them time to prepare. As another games takes place during this preparation period, the increased spending on sport could plausibly improve performance at that games. But note that France did not witness this ex-ante effect in Tokyo in 2021 (the delayed 2020 Olympics).

In addition, host nations may introduce new events at the Olympics (NBC, 2024). Often these are ones in which the host nation demonstrates skill and medal potential. For example, Japan introduced softball and karate, in which their athletes won gold medals.

France has introduced breaking (break-dancing) for the first time in 2024 and we would expect them to perform well in this event. Kayak cross is another new event this year. While adding new sports does not guarantee the host more success, it should increase the probability. Indeed, there is a high correlation between hosting and the breadth of medals won across a wider range of disciplines (Globan and Rewilak, 2024).

Could France top the medal table?

It would be naïve to suggest that France will not improve on its previous medal counts at the Summer Olympics this year, especially given their slight dip of one place in Tokyo 2020. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that they will top the medal rankings at the 2024 games.

Often the best way to predict the medal tables is to examine historical placings. This is because past success is a strong predictor of future success. Therefore, it is highly likely that China and the United States will be fighting it out for the top spot. Coincidentally, both of these countries also meet the criteria of having a large population and abundant economic resources that enable nations to prosper at the Olympics.

Given France’s history of repeatedly finishing in the top ten in the medal table, it would be very unlikely that they finish any lower. Whether the country experiences big improvements as Japan did in the delayed Tokyo games remains to be seen, but we will find out over the coming weeks.