The Olympic Games remain one of the world’s most powerful platforms for place branding, but not for the reasons they once did. Where earlier debates focused on image, investment and tourism, current research is paying increasing attention to governance, institutional capacity, public diplomacy and the credibility of legacy itself. The latest special issue of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy reflects this broader shift through six studies examining Olympic hosts from Beijing and Sochi to Paris.
This perspective feels particularly timely. As the sporting world focuses on another FIFA World Cup, cities and nations continue to invest in mega-events hoping to strengthen their international reputation. But visibility alone is no longer enough. Today’s hosts are expected to deliver credible sustainability, inclusive governance and meaningful long-term benefits alongside memorable spectacles.
Guest edited by Olga Kolotouchkina and Laura Ripoll Gonzalez, the special issue reflects this broader evolution in place branding research. Rather than celebrating Olympic legacy as an automatic outcome, the collection examines the conditions under which it can actually emerge.
Reports Olga Rauhut Kompaniets, TPBO’s Associate Editor Research.
Reputation is increasingly co-created rather than controlled
Dongye Lyu, Weiguo Zhang, Luis Mañas Viniegra and Emanuel Leite Junior open the collection with Soft power through sports mega-events: Chinese media narratives during the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games and show how Chinese media projected an image of technological innovation, cultural richness and social harmony during the Winter Olympics. Yet the study also demonstrates that international perceptions were shaped by competing narratives beyond China’s control, highlighting the limits of one-way communication.
A similar conclusion emerges from Russia’s digital public diplomacy with the U.S. and China during the pre-Sochi period (2011–2014) from the language and communication perspectives, by Yue Han. Comparing communication aimed at Chinese and American audiences, the paper illustrates how public diplomacy increasingly depends on tailored narratives rather than universal messages. In an era of fragmented media landscapes, successful nation branding demands cultural sensitivity as much as communication expertise.
The challenge becomes even more visible in Dancing on the Seine: Soft Power, Diversity, Inclusion, and the “Woke” Controversy at the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony, where Pablo Gómez-Iniesta and Athanasios Sakis Pappous in their analysis of the Olympic and Paralympic Opening Ceremonies demonstrate how diversity and inclusion have become central elements of contemporary place branding while also revealing how quickly symbolic messages can generate contrasting interpretations. The challenge is no longer creating memorable narratives, but navigating audiences who interpret the same story in fundamentally different ways.
The growing importance of governance
Etienne Doré-Lesachey in their research Governance challenges in leveraging Olympic Games for region branding shifts attention from communication campaigns to institutional collaboration. Examining the experience of Choose Paris Region, the study highlights practical difficulties of aligning multiple institutions, jurisdictions and strategic priorities across a metropolitan region. More importantly, it suggests that governance itself has become a place branding capability. As mega-events increasingly span regions rather than individual cities, institutional collaboration may prove just as important as creative campaigns or iconic ceremonies.
Sustainability
Sustainability forms the collection’s third major contribution. But here too, the discussion moves beyond aspiration towards implementation.
In Beyond the podium: how sustainability evaluations shape the Olympic legacy of host cities – a systematic literature review, Katharina Schöttl, Florian Kainz and Christian Werner conclude that despite growing commitments to sustainable Games, evaluation remains inconsistent and fragmented. Their message is clear: ambitious sustainability narratives require equally robust ways of measuring outcomes.
Benjamin Duester and Indigo Willing offer a more optimistic perspective in Greening the gold: a review of the environmental turn in skateboarding and the push for sustainable Olympics, showing how sports that make use of existing urban infrastructure may help reduce the environmental footprint of future Games. Together, both papers suggest that sustainability is becoming less about ambitious promises and more about measurable practice.
Takeaways for Researchers and Practitioners in Place Branding
Taken together, the special issue reveals that research into place branding and the Olympics is becoming both broader and more practical.
Communication remains essential, but it is increasingly studied alongside governance, public diplomacy and sustainability. Legacy is no longer treated as an automatic outcome of hosting a mega-event but as something that must be deliberately coordinated, continuously evaluated and shared across institutions. And perhaps most importantly, reputation is increasingly understood as something co-created with audiences rather than controlled by organisers.
These insights are not only relevant for future Olympic hosts. As international sporting events become more geographically dispersed, politically scrutinised and sustainability-driven, many of the questions explored here will shape the future of mega-event branding more broadly.
For researchers, this special issue offers an excellent snapshot of where Olympic place branding scholarship is heading. For practitioners, it provides a timely reminder that successful place branding depends on much more than staging an unforgettable event.
Perhaps the strongest message emerging from this collection is that the future of Olympic place branding lies less in producing spectacular moments and more in building the governance, partnerships and credibility that allow those moments to create lasting value. That is a lesson worth carrying well beyond the Olympic movement.
Access the special collection of research on Olympic and Paralympic Games: their legacy in the image and reputation of hosting cities and nations here.
This research reflects the evolving academic conversation around place branding. For a complementary practitioner perspective, explore TPBO’s free State of Place Positioning Intelligence Brief, which identifies emerging positioning patterns from our editorial work with place leaders and the 2026 Place Brand Leaders Yearbook.
