How the Olympics Turned Paris 2024 Into More Than a Sporting Event
The International Olympic Committee's "Sport. And More Than Sport: Olympic Spirit" is a global brand film campaign published on July 30, 2024, designed to reframe the Paris Summer Olympics 2024 as a universal cultural and emotional phenomenon that extends beyond athletic competition, anchoring the Olympic brand in values of unity, perseverance, and shared human aspiration.
The campaign centres on a single, high-impact film asset released globally across the Olympic Media Rights-Holder network and the IOC's owned digital platforms. Its central proposition — "It's the Olympic Spirit" and "Sport. And more than sport" — signals a deliberate strategic shift away from purely performance-driven Olympic narratives. Rather than leading with records, medals, or podium moments, the campaign foregrounds the intangible qualities that audiences and participants associate with the Olympic Games: resilience, inclusion, and collective inspiration. The hashtags #Paris2024, #Olympics, and #MoreThanSport anchored its social media presence from launch.
The campaign went live in the context of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, with the competition period running from July 18 to August 13, 2024, according to the IOC's official scheduling. The Opening Ceremony took place on July 26, 2024, making the film's July 30 archive publication date a deliberate early-Games activation, timed to amplify the emotional peak of global audience attention. The campaign was designed to run not only during the Games but to extend the Olympic Spirit narrative beyond the closing ceremony, establishing a long-form brand platform rather than a short-lived promotional moment.
As an institutional brand campaign rather than a conventional consumer product advertisement, "Sport. And More Than Sport" positions the IOC itself as a keeper of values — a custodian of something larger than the scoreboard. The campaign's narrative architecture invites audiences who may not identify as traditional sports fans to see themselves within the Olympic story, broadening the Games' cultural reach across global markets in 2024.
The IOC's campaign strategy for Paris 2024 rests on a clearly defined insight: the Olympic Games command attention at a scale no other sporting property can replicate, yet their long-term brand equity depends on emotional resonance rather than athletic spectacle alone. "Sport. And More Than Sport" operationalises that insight directly. Leandro Larrosa, Digital Engagement and Marketing Director at the International Olympic Committee, articulated the underlying philosophy in coverage published by PRWeek, stating: "We feel that we have the duty…to tell the story…not only those that qualify, but also those that are on the road to the next games." That statement defines the campaign's strategic scope — it is explicitly inclusive, reaching athletes and audiences who live the Olympic Spirit without ever standing on a podium.
The IOC set ambitious digital-engagement targets for Paris 2024, aiming for 200 million unique website and app users and 7.3 billion total engagements across platforms, according to olympics.com. The IOC reported record engagement on its digital platforms as early as July 23, 2024, per the same source, establishing the commercial and cultural context into which the film campaign was released. Against that backdrop, "Sport. And More Than Sport" functions as both brand-building and audience-expansion content — a film designed to draw casual viewers deeper into the Olympic ecosystem.
In the wider market, advertisers were increasing Olympic-related activity and targeting audiences well beyond traditional sports fans during the Paris 2024 cycle, according to reporting by Media Wbdsports and marketingmag.com.au. U.S. Olympic advertising sales exceeded US$1.2 billion during the Paris 2024 broadcast-sales cycle, according to sportspromedia.com — a figure that underscores the commercial intensity surrounding the Games. Within that competitive environment, Nike held a reported 14.1% share of the global sportswear market in 2024 and Adidas held 8.9%, according to Creative Salon — both brands running parallel Olympic-adjacent campaigns. The IOC's own brand platform needed to occupy distinct emotional territory that neither sponsor could claim: the spirit of the Games itself, unbounded by product or athlete endorsement.
The campaign deploys narrative film as its sole creative medium. The decision to build the entire campaign around one film asset is itself a creative statement — it resists the fragmented, multi-format approach that characterises most large-scale sports marketing, instead betting on the sustained emotional power of a single, well-crafted story. The film's language is explicitly that of cinema rather than advertising: it prioritises feeling over information, atmosphere over product demonstration, and collective experience over individual achievement.
The IOC described the launch film as "an uplifting short film that encapsulates the unique spirit and feeling of the Olympic Games," according to olympics.com, with global distribution through the Olympic Media Rights-Holder network ensuring reach across every major market simultaneously. That distribution architecture — spanning broadcast rights-holders and the IOC's own digital platforms — is unusual in institutional brand communications and reflects the unique media position the Olympic Games occupy. No other sporting property controls simultaneous global broadcast and digital distribution at equivalent scale.
Creatively, the film's structure follows the logic of its proposition. It does not confine itself to Paris 2024 competition footage or medal moments. Instead, it draws on the broader vocabulary of the Olympic Spirit — the journey, the sacrifice, the community — to construct an emotional argument for why the Olympics matter beyond sport. This approach aligns with the IOC's evolved brand identity, developed in collaboration with Canadian agency Hulse and Dorrington, which redefined the Olympic visual and verbal language to carry more universal emotional weight, as documented by Marketing Interactive. Production credits specific to the "Sport. And More Than Sport: Olympic Spirit" film are not fully publicly documented. The campaign registered 139,230 views and 2,023 likes on the platform where it was archived, with 117 comments indicating active audience engagement at the point of publication.
No independently verified third-party performance data specific to the "Sport. And More Than Sport: Olympic Spirit" film campaign is publicly available beyond the engagement figures recorded on its archive platform. The film recorded 139,230 views and 2,023 likes, with 117 comments, according to the Clapboard archive. These figures reflect direct platform engagement rather than the full reach generated through the Olympic Media Rights-Holder broadcast network and IOC-owned digital channels, which distributed the film globally from late July 2024 onward.
The campaign's structural effectiveness can be assessed through several observable dimensions. First, the timing of publication — July 30, 2024, four days into the Paris Games — placed the film at the precise moment of maximum global Olympic attention, aligned with the IOC's reported record digital engagement on July 23, 2024, per olympics.com. Second, the campaign's single-asset approach concentrates creative impact rather than dispersing it, a discipline that typically improves memorability and message coherence in brand-building contexts. Third, the explicit extension of the campaign beyond the closing ceremony signals IOC intent to use "Sport. And More Than Sport" as a sustained brand platform rather than a time-limited promotional vehicle, which increases the long-term value of the creative investment.
The Paris 2024 sponsorship programme reached approximately 99% of its €1.24 billion revenue target before the Games began, according to Aws1 Campaignasia, providing the commercial foundation against which the IOC's brand campaign was activated. The Clapboard Score for "Sport. And More Than Sport: Olympic Spirit" is 69 out of 100, reflecting competent narrative execution and strong contextual placement, with room to develop more distinctive creative differentiation within the Olympic brand platform.
"Sport. And More Than Sport: Olympic Spirit" is a global IOC brand film campaign published on July 30, 2024. It positions the Paris Summer Olympics 2024 as a cultural and emotional phenomenon beyond athletic competition, anchoring Olympic identity in values of unity, perseverance, and collective human aspiration through a single narrative film asset.
The IOC launched the "Sport. And More Than Sport" brand platform in June and July 2024, ahead of the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony on July 26. The campaign film was published to archive on July 30, 2024, four days into the Games, timed to amplify peak global audience engagement during the Paris Summer Olympics 2024.
The IOC set a target of 200 million unique website and app users and 7.3 billion total engagements for Paris 2024, according to olympics.com. The organisation reported record digital platform engagement as early as July 23, 2024, establishing the scale of audience attention into which the Olympic Spirit campaign was released.
Leandro Larrosa serves as Digital Engagement and Marketing Director at the International Olympic Committee. He stated in PRWeek coverage that the IOC has a duty to tell the stories of athletes beyond those who qualify, a philosophy that directly shaped the inclusive narrative approach of the "Sport. And More Than Sport: Olympic Spirit" campaign.
The "Sport. And More Than Sport: Olympic Spirit" campaign received a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100. The score reflects competent narrative execution and strong contextual timing around the Paris 2024 Games, while indicating potential for stronger creative differentiation within the broader Olympic brand platform established by the IOC.
Unlike Nike and Adidas, which ran Paris 2024 campaigns tied to products and athlete endorsements, the IOC's "Sport. And More Than Sport" campaign claims the intangible spirit of the Games itself as its territory. Nike held 14.1% and Adidas 8.9% of the global sportswear market in 2024, according to creative.salon, making the IOC's brand distinction strategically essential.
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