Final Revised AbstractThe modern Olympic Games confront a sustainability crisis that a half-century of incremental reforms has failed to resolve. This conceptual paper questions the entrenched “business-as-usual” logic of rotational Olympic hosting—a model established over a century ago under vastly different economic and environmental realities—and invites academic and policy communities to reconsider structural alternatives. Drawing on Rittel and Webber’s (1973) framework, we characterize Olympic sustainability as a “wicked problem” whose complexity, stakeholder pluralism, and structural contradictions resist incremental solutions. Empirical evidence reveals systematic patterns: every Olympic Games since 1968 has exceeded its original budget, sustainability performance has declined rather than improved over recent decades, and the rapid post-Games dissolution of organizing committees creates governance gaps that systematically undermine legacy delivery. We argue these persistent failures stem from a “construction imperative” inherent to rotation: cyclical mega-infrastructure development generates predictable economic dysfunction, environmental degradation, and “white elephant” venues regardless of host city competence or reform initiatives. This conceptual review explores permanent or semi-permanent hosting as a transformative structural alternative that could eliminate redundant construction, redirect resources toward global athlete development, and transform venues into year-round high-performance hubs accessible to all nations. By examining historical precedents—including Greece’s 1980 Karamanlis Plan for an extraterritorial Olympic territory—and engaging counter-arguments regarding equity and feasibility, we demonstrate that reconsidering the rotational model is not a radical departure from tradition. Instead, this analysis serves as a timely catalyst for the global sports community to “think out of the box” and evaluate alternative structural configurations that might better safeguard the Olympic ideal for future generations.
Athanasios Pappous (Fri,) studied this question.