Market reaction to the announcement of the Summer Olympic Games host. Event study among the stock indices of winners and losers in the years 1984–2032

This paper used an event study to assess whether public information regarding the host of the Summer Olympic Games influenced the national host's stock market. We analysed all events for which the organiser was announced between the years 1978 and 2021, including events from the period 1984–2032. We confirm that the host announcement causes a statistically significant abnormal positive rate of return on the event day for future organisers. While this is true for blue-chip indices, we did not obtain statistically significant results for main market indices. On the markets of countries that did not obtain rights for the organisation of the analysed event, we found statistically significant abnormal negative (−0.8% on average) rates of return two days before the event and statistically significant abnormal positive (0.5% on average) rates of return one day before the event. Such results were obtained for both blue-chip indices and main indices.