The first modern Games were a success, since until then there was never so much international participation, and from then on, every four years, they opened the way to repeat the initiative, except for exceptions: the war would leave the games three times, in 1916, 1940 and 1944, and the pandemic has delayed those of 2020.

Years earlier, in 1890, Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), the main driver of the initiative, expressed concern about the danger of the world of sport: “The mercantilist spirit threatens sport,” he warned. “The passion for winning often feeds on something that is not the mere ambition of honor. If we don’t want the sport to fall and die again, we have to clean it up.” With this clear sports spirit he created the Nazort Olympic Committee at the Paris Congress of 1894 and then decided to organize the Olympic Games.

It was logical that the games were held in Athens, because the games of Antiquity had their origin there. But in Greece, in the 1890s, the economic situation was precarious and the political environment was confused. In 1894, Stephanos Skouloudiss of the organizing committee questioned whether Greece was able to assume such an event and stated that the budgets of the Coubertin Baron were short; Coubertin predicted that the games would cost about a million drachmas and Skouloudiss warned that the amount would have to be tripled. Finally, the games of 1896 cost 3,740,000 drastic.

Coubertin immediately launched a campaign to keep the Olympic movement alive and got Greek Prince Constantine (1868-1923) to slip with him, after being appointed chairman of the organizing committee. And he made available to him the solution of the financing problems, because monetary accounts would soak up the pure sporty spirit proclaimed a few years earlier. The greatest burden was borne by Greek citizens in the midst of the economic crisis: in the first call to the Greeks the prince gathered 330,000 drachmas, in another 400,000 postage stamps, 200,000 more on aid cards… George Averoff, a businessman, donated almost one million drachmas to renovate the Panathinai stadium, in exchange for a statue that is still exposed abroad and certain privileges and benefits that are not discovered.

The Olympic Games would often be examples of excessive and corruption, from there on, above the barbaric and destructive of the commercial machinery erakusleiho.Ero of the gigantic sports industry.