Sustainable Finance Meets Olympic Legacy: ESG Reporting, Environmental Performance and Green Bond in Paris 2024

The contemporary Olympic movement finds itself at a crossroads, facing a severe crisis of legitimacy fueled by the enormous financial and environmental costs associated with hosting mega events in its history. The 2024 Games in Paris emerged as an immediate response to these challenges, it is explicitly described as a model ecological responsibility in line with the Paris Agreement. Yet, the "greenest Games in history" must be something more than a face-value judgment on temporary carbon reductions, it must be questioned at the level of structural mechanisms underlying such statements. Sustainability is so linked to financial strategy: the alignment of capital mobilization with environmental objectives, through the issuance of Green Bonds, represents fundamental evolution in the management of mega-events. Paris 2024 represents a tangible proof of this approach, showing how binding financial instruments are able to bridge the gap between the temporary needs of a global event and the resilience of long-term needs of a city.​ The credibility of the Olympic sustainability model depends on moving beyond greenwashing via verifiable data and rigorous accounting. This paper examines the Paris model as a lens through which one can understand whether the Olympic Games will ever become responsive to the climate emergency, offering critical guidance for the governance of future editions, such as Milano-Cortina 2026 and Los Angeles 2028.