From Boosterism to Entrepreneurialism: The 1984 Olympic Games bid and the Image of Los Angeles

Samuel Maron, Northeastern University

The Los Angeles 1984 Summer Olympic Games are remembered as an overwhelming success and a triumph of the free market mainly by producing a first-ever (and never repeated) budget surplus that has been used to fund youth sports across the city. This version of history elides the neoliberal mechanisms that created this urban mythology, including the hard-headed negotiations between city elites and the executives of the Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee. Using historical archival materials, in this paper I demonstrate how the bidding process was captured by elites who pioneered a privately managed and funded Olympic Games in the name of public accountability. In an era of neoliberalizing urban governance, the bid benefitted from a unique political context, yet is still viewed as a replicable model by other bidding cities. I argue that this was the beginning of a shift in the affairs of spectacle mega-events, reconfiguring them to be seen as enhancing the public interest rather than simply as boosts to tourism. This has implications for understanding how global cities continue to seek mega-events today to bolster their competitive advantage.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 91. From LA to Detroit