Corruption in the Bidding, Construction, and Organisation of Mega-events: An Analysis of the Olympics and World Cup

In the processes required to host a sports mega-event, corruption has been prevalent on numerous occasions, leading to unnecessary costs becoming the ultimate responsibility of a host government’s taxpayers. Little progress has been made in the prevention of such behaviour. In this chapter, the authors examine the history of corruption in sports mega-events, namely, the Olympics and the football World Cup, to identify parts of the bidding and preparation processes that are vulnerable to illicit behaviour. The chapter proposes potential solutions to be implemented at various levels in order to prevent further corruption.